"Connecticut police have charged two people with cutting more than 2,000 fiber optic cables" on March 24, reports the Associated Press — leaving more than 15,000 people without internet access. Norwalk police said they arrested Asheville, North Carolina, residents Jillian Persons and Austin Geddings on Saturday during a surveillance operation. Both were charged with larceny and criminal mischief crimes, as well as interfering with police. Persons also was accused of giving a false statement to police. Both were detained on $200,000 bail....The outages caused by the cable cutting have since been restored, according to Optimum's website.
The Stamford Advocate investigated how many people were affected: Norwalk Deputy Police Chief Terry Blake said Sunday more than 40,000 customers in the area were left without internet service as a result of the vandalism. However, an Optimum spokesperson claimed at the time the outages only affected roughly 16,000 customers and the inflated numbers were inaccurate because of an issue with the company's online outage map.

U.S. states are now "doling out more cash than ever to lure multibillion-dollar microchip, electric vehicle and battery factories," reports the Associated Press, "inspiring ever-more competition as they dig deeper into their pockets to attract big employers and capitalize on a wave of huge new projects." Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas have made billion-dollar pledges for a microchip or EV plant, with more state-subsidized plant announcements by profitable automakers and semiconductor giants surely to come. States have long competed for big employers. But now they are floating more billion-dollar offers and offering record-high subsidies, lavishing companies with grants and low-interest loans, municipal road improvements, and breaks on taxes, real estate, power and water....

The projects come at a transformative time for the industries, with automakers investing heavily in electrification and chipmakers expanding production in the U.S. following pandemic-related supply chain disruptions that raised economic and national security concerns. One of the driving forces behind them are federal subsidies signed into law last summer that are meant to encourage companies to produce electric vehicles, EV batteries, and computer chips domestically. Another is that states are flush with cash thanks to inflation-juiced tax collections and federal pandemic relief subsidies. The number of big projects and the size of state subsidy packages are extraordinary, said Nathan Jensen, a University of Texas professor who researches government economic development strategies.

"It is kind of a Wild West moment," Jensen said. "It's wild money and every state seems to be in on it."

Many of the companies drawing the biggest subsidy offers — such as Intel, Hyundai, Panasonic, Micron, Toyota, Ford and General Motors — are profitable and operate around the globe. Some lesser-known names in the nascent EV field are getting big offers too, such as Rivian, Volkswagen-backed Scout Motors and Vietnamese automaker VinFast. The subsidy offers are generally embraced by politicians from both major parties and the business elite, who point to promises of hundreds or thousands of jobs, massive investments in construction and equipment, and what they contend are immeasurable trickle-down benefits.

Still, academics who study such subsidies find them to be a waste of money and rarely decisive in a company's choice of location.

"A Texas truck theft ended in gun fire after the suspected thief was tracked down by thevehicle's owner's AirTag," reports AppleInsider: San Antonio police received a stolen vehicle report at around 1 pm from a Braesview home. However, before police could recover the stolen truck, the owners of the vehicle decided to perform their own investigation, using an AirTag left in the truck to do so. The unnamed owners tracked the truck to a shopping center in Southeast Military Drive, reports KSAT. However, rather than wait for police to arrive, the truck owners decided to approach the vehicle and confront the suspect.

While it is unknown exactly what happened, Police say it seems the suspected thief may have pulled out their own firearm. The vehicle owner responded by shooting and killing the suspect while they were inside the truck. It is unclear whether the vehicle owner will face charges over the matter, and an investigation is ongoing into whether the suspect actually had a weapon in the first place.
The San Antonio police department's public information officer offered these remarks (in a video from KSAT):

"Most importantly is, to the public, SAPD is urging you if you are to get your vehicle stolen: I know that it's frustrating, but please do not take matters into your own hands like this. Our police department has plenty of resources that could go into finding your vehicle, i.e. our drone system, trackers ourselves, very good patrolmen that look for these kind of things. It's never safe to take matters into your own hands, as you can see today by this incident.... That's why I urge the public, wait for police in this matter. Let us go with you. We have the training. We know exactly how to determine what's going to happen, these kind of factors and situations, and we know how to handle them."

Today a warning was published from the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. "Experts say post-pandemic woes stemming from office workers staying home instead of commuting into the city could send San Francisco into a 'doom loop' that would gut its tax base, decimate fare-reliant regional transit systems like BART and trap it in an economic death spiral...." Despite our housing crisis, it was years into the COVID pandemic before our leaders meaningfully questioned the logic of reserving some of the most prized real estate on Earth for fickle suburbanites and their cars. Downtown, after all, was San Francisco's golden goose. Companies in downtown offices accounted for 70% of San Francisco's pre-pandemic jobs and generated nearly 80% of its economic output, according to city economist Ted Egan. And so we wasted generous federal COVID emergency funds trying to bludgeon, cajole and pray for office workers to return downtown instead of planning for change. We're now staring down the consequences for that lack of vision.

The San Francisco metropolitan area's economic recovery from the pandemic ranked 24th out of the 25 largest regions in the U.S., besting only Baltimore, according to a report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. In the first quarter of 2023, San Francisco's office vacancy rate shot up to a record-high 29.4% — the biggest three-year increase of any U.S. city. The trend isn't likely to end anytime soon: In January, nearly 30% of San Francisco job openings were for hybrid or fully remote work, the highest share of the nation's 50 largest cities. Amid lower property, business and real estate transfer taxes, the city is projecting a $728 million deficit over the next two fiscal years. Transit ridership remains far below pre-pandemic levels. In January, downtown San Francisco BART stations had just 30% of the rider exits they did in 2019, according to a report from Egan's office. Many Bay Area transit agencies, including Muni, are rapidly approaching a fiscal cliff.

San Francisco isn't dead; as of March, it was home to an estimated 173 of the country's 655 companies valued at more than $1 billion. Tourism is beginning to rebound. And new census data shows that San Francisco's population loss is slowing, a sign its pandemic exodus may be coming to an end. But the city can't afford to wait idly for things to reach equilibrium again. It needs to evolve — quickly. Especially downtown. That means rebuilding the neighborhood's fabric, which won't be cheap or easy. Office-to-housing conversions are notoriously tricky and expensive. Demolishing non-historic commercial buildings that no longer serve a purpose in the post-pandemic world is all but banned. And, unlike New York after 9/11, San Francisco is a city that can't seem to stop getting in its own way.
So what's the solution? The CEO of the Bay Area Council suggests public-private partnerships that "could help shift downtown San Francisco's focus from tech — with employees now accustomed to working from home — to research and development, biotech, medical research and manufacturing, which all require in-person workers."

And last week San Francisco's mayor proposed more than 100 changes to streamline the permitting process for small businesses, and on Monday helped introduce legislation making it easier to convert office buildings to housing, expand pop-up business opportunities, and fill some empty storefronts. This follows a February executive order to speed housing construction. The editorial points out that "About 40% of office buildings in downtown San Francisco evaluated in a study would be good candidates for housing due to their physical characteristics and location and could be converted into approximately 11,200 units, according to research from SPUR and the Urban Land Institute San Francisco."

But without some action, the editorial's headline argues that "Downtown San Francisco is at risk of collapsing — and taking much of the Bay Area with it."

ProPublica looks at "a booming underground community of Instagram scammers and hackers who shut down profiles on the social network and then demand payment to reactivate them." While they also target TikTok and other platforms, takedown-for-hire scammers like OBN are proliferating on Instagram, exploiting the app's slow and often ineffective customer support services and its easily manipulated account reporting systems. These Instascammers often target people whose accounts are vulnerable because their content verges on nudity and pornography, which Instagram and its parent company, Meta, prohibit.... In an article he wrote for factz.com last year, OBN dubbed himself the "log-out king" because "I have deleted multiple celebrities + influencers on Meta & Instagram... I made about $300k just off banning and unbanning pages," he wrote.

OBN exploits weaknesses in Meta's customer service. By allowing anyone to report an account for violating the company's standards, Meta gives enormous leverage to people who are able to trick it into banning someone who relies on Instagram for income. Meta uses a mix of automated systems and human review to evaluate reports. Banners like OBN test and trade tips on how to trigger the system to falsely suspend accounts. In some cases OBN hacks into accounts to post offensive content. In others, he creates duplicate accounts in his targets' names, then reports the original accounts as imposters so they'll be barred for violating Meta's ban on account impersonation. In addition, OBN has posed as a Meta employee to persuade at least one target to pay him to restore her account.

Models, businesspeople, marketers and adult performers across the United States told ProPublica that OBN had ruined their businesses and lives with spurious complaints, even causing one woman to consider suicide. More than half a dozen people with over 45 million total followers on Instagram told ProPublica they lost their accounts temporarily or permanently shortly after OBN threatened to report them. They say Meta failed to help them and to take OBN and other account manipulators seriously. One person who said she was victimized by OBN has an ongoing civil suit against Meta for lost income, while others sent the company legal letters demanding payment....

A Meta spokesperson acknowledged that OBN has had short-term success in getting accounts removed by abusing systems intended to help enforce community standards. But the company has addressed those situations and taken down dozens of accounts linked to OBN, the spokesperson said. Most often, the spokesperson said, OBN scammed people by falsely claiming to be able to ban and restore accounts.... After banning an account, OBN frequently offers to reactivate it for a fee as high as $5,000, kicking off a cycle of bans and reactivations that continues until the victim runs out of money or stops paying.
A Meta spokesperson told the site they're currently "updating our support systems," including a tool to help affected users and letting more speak to a live support agent rather than an automated one. But the Meta spokesperson added that "This remains a highly adversarial space, with scammers constantly trying to evade detection by social media platforms."

ProPublica ultimately traced the money to a 20-year-old who lives with his mother (who claimed he was only "funnelling" the money for someone else). After that conversation OBN "announced he would no longer offer account banning as a service" — but would still sell his services in getting your account verified.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Authorities in Germany this week seized Internet servers that powered FlyHosting, a dark web offering that catered to cybercriminals operating DDoS-for-hire services, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. FlyHosting first advertised on cybercrime forums in November 2022, saying it was a Germany-based hosting firm that was open for business to anyone looking for a reliable place to host malware, botnet controllers, or DDoS-for-hire infrastructure. A statement released today by the German Federal Criminal Police Office says they served eight search warrants on March 30, and identified five individuals aged 16-24 suspected of operating "an internet service" since mid-2021. The German authorities did not name the suspects or the Internet service in question.

"Previously unknown perpetrators used the Internet service provided by the suspects in particular for so-called 'DDoS attacks', i.e. the simultaneous sending of a large number of data packets via the Internet for the purpose of disrupting other data processing systems," the statement reads. The German authorities said that as a result of the DDoS attacks facilitated by the defendants, the websites of various companies as well as those of the Hesse police have been overloaded in several cases since mid-2021, "so that they could only be operated to a limited extent or no longer at times." The statement says police seized mobile phones, laptops, tablets, storage media and handwritten notes from the unnamed defendants, and confiscated servers operated by the suspects in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a new report published Thursday, the New York Office of the Inspector General for the New York Police Department (OIG-NYPD) said the New York Police Department violated the 2020 ââPublic Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which required the NYPD to publicly disclose surveillance technology. The POST Act was signed into law by then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and required the NYPD to disclose information about its current and future surveillance technologies and how it wants to use them.

In the report, the OIG-NYPD said that NYPD was not in compliance with the POST Act orders to publish Impact and Use Policies (IUPs) for existing surveillance tech 180 days after the Act was signed and new IUPs at least 90 days before the use of any new surveillance tech. The IUPs were supposed to "describe the capabilities of surveillance technology, and include any rules, processes, and guidelines that regulate access to or use of the technology, and any prohibitions or restrictions on its use, and any potential disparate impacts," according to the report. But, the OIG-NYPD said that the 36 IUPs NYPD published after the Act was signed were general and not detailed, leaving the OIG-NYPD unable to conduct an audit and assess whether NYPD's use of surveillance devices complies with its IUPs and report any suspected violations.

India is hunting for new spyware with a lower profile than the controversial Pegasus system blacklisted by the US government, with rival surveillance software makers preparing bids on lucrative deals being offered by Narendra Modi's government. Financial Times: Defence and intelligence officials from the South Asian country have decided to acquire spyware from less exposed competitors to the NSO Group, the Israeli makers of Pegasus, according to people familiar with the move, seeking to spend up to $120mn through new spyware contracts. About a dozen competitors are expected to join the bidding process, according to two people with knowledge of the talks, stepping into the void created by the pressure on NSO from human rights groups and the administration of US President Joe Biden.

India's move shows how demand for this sophisticated -- and largely unregulated -- technology remains strong despite growing evidence that governments worldwide have abused spyware by targeting dissidents and critics. India has never publicly acknowledged being a customer of NSO. However, the company's malware has been found on the phones of journalists, left-leaning academics and opposition leaders around India, sparking a political crisis. Pegasus can turn phones into surveillance devices and can hoover up encrypted WhatsApp and Signal messages surreptitiously. Modi government officials have grown concerned about the "PR problem" caused by the ability of human rights groups to forensically trace Pegasus, as well as warnings from Apple and WhatsApp to those who have been targeted, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Biden administration's $80 billion overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service is facing a new line of attack, this time from lobbyists representing tax preparers who fear that the agency's growing power will cripple their businesses and infringe upon taxpayer privacy. The fight is over a potential plan for the I.R.S. to create its own tax-filing system that would allow taxpayers to submit their returns directly to the federal government at no cost. That type of free service could diminish the need for those provided by tax preparation companies like H&R Block and TurboTax. The idea, which is still being studied, is stoking backlash from Republicans and business groups who argue that President Biden's plans to bolster the I.R.S. will give it even more power over ordinary taxpayers.

The I.R.S. received a giant infusion of money as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping climate and energy bill that Congress passed last year. That legislation set aside $15 million for the I.R.S. to conduct a study to determine how it could develop a program that would let Americans file their tax returns directly with the agency. The I.R.S. is expected in the coming days to release its plan for how it intends to spend the $80 billion that it was allocated as part of that legislation. Republican lawmakers have maintained firm opposition to the funding, which will help the agency hire 87,000 employees, and have been taking steps to claw it back. [...] Democrats have long pushed to make filing free for everyone, seeing that as a way to make the process easier and less costly. But that ambition could upend the business models of the multibillion-dollar tax preparation industry, which earns hefty fees for helping people navigate the tax code.

Several companies already provide free tax-filing services through the I.R.S. website to those who earn less than $73,000, and the agency provides forms that taxpayers who do not need any guidance can use to file their returns for free. Some other software platforms offer limited free services for simple tax returns that also do not offer guidance through the process. Initially, a tax-filing system developed by the I.R.S. would be similar to the existing free options. But proponents of the idea believe that over time it could evolve to become a more comprehensive system that would provide taxpayers with returns that are already filled out based on wage data that the I.R.S. tracks. At that point, taxpayers could just sign off on their returns as easily as responding "yes" to a text message.

Meta announced that starting next Wednesday, some Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union will for the first time be able to opt out of sharing first-party data used to serve highly personalized ads, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a big change from Meta's current business model, where every video and piece of content clicked on its platforms provides a data point for its online advertisers. Ars Technica reports: People "familiar with the matter" told the Journal that Facebook and Instagram users will soon be able to access a form that can be submitted to Meta to object to sweeping data collection. If those requests are approved, those users will only allow Meta to target ads based on broader categories of data collection, like age range or general location. This is different from efforts by other major tech companies like Apple and Google, which prompt users to opt in or out of highly personalized ads with the click of a button. Instead, Meta will review objection forms to evaluate reasons provided by individual users to end such data collection before it will approve any opt-outs. It's unclear what cause Meta may have to deny requests.

A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta is not sharing the objection form publicly at this time but that it will be available to EU users in its Help Center starting on April 5. That's the deadline Meta was given to comply with an Irish regulator's rulings that it was illegal in the EU for Meta to force Facebook and Instagram users to give consent to data collection when they signed contracts to use the platforms. Meta still plans to appeal those Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) rulings, believing that its prior contract's legal basis complies with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the meantime, though, the company must change the legal basis for data collection. Meta announced in a blog post today that it will now argue that it does not need to directly obtain user consent because it has a "legitimate interest" to collect data to operate its social platforms. "We believe that our previous approach was compliant under GDPR, and our appeal on both the substance of the rulings and the fines continues," Meta's blog said. "However, this change ensures that we comply with the DPC's decision."

Anti-piracy group CODA is reporting the shutdown of B9Good, a pirate manga site that targeted Japan but was operated from China. In response to a criminal complaint filed by CODA on behalf of six Japanese companies, which were backed by 21 others during the investigation, Chinese authorities arrested four people and seized one house worth $580,000. TorrentFreak reports: Manga piracy site B9Good initially appeared in 2008 and established itself under B9DM branding. SimilarWeb stats show that the site was enjoying around 15 million visits each month, with CODA noting that in the two-year period leading to February 2023, the site was accessed more than 300 million times Around 95% of the site's visitors came from Japan. B9Good had been featured in an MPA submission to the USTR's notorious markets report in 2019. Traffic was reported as almost 16 million visits per month back then, meaning that site visitor numbers remained stable for the next three years. The MPA said the site was possibly hosted in Canada, but domain records since then show a wider spread, including Hong Kong, China, United States, Bulgaria, and Japan.

Wherever the site ended up, the location of its operator was more important. In 2021, CODA launched its International Enforcement Project (CBEP), which aimed to personally identify the operators of pirate sites, including those behind B9Good who were eventually traced to China. Pursuing copyright cases from outside China is reportedly difficult, but CODA had a plan. In January 2022, CODA's Beijing office was recognized as an NGO with legitimate standing to protect the rights of its member companies. Working on behalf of Aniplex, TV Tokyo, Toei Animation, Toho, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), and Bandai Namco Film Works, CODA filed a criminal complaint in China, and starting February 14, 2023, local authorities began rounding up the B9Good team.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor's office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri. This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries' state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.

ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined (PDF) explicit sexual material as images "showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse," "sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse," or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.

"The house budget committee's choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri's public libraries is abhorrent," Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard. Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers -- every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn't have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June. "State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities," Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. "Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut."

Alphabet's Google LLC intentionally destroyed employee "chat" evidence in antitrust litigation in California and must pay sanctions and face a possible penalty at trial, a U.S. judge ruled on Tuesday. Reuters reports: U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco said in his order (PDF) that Google "fell strikingly short" in its duties to preserve records. The ruling is part of a multidistrict litigation that includes a consumer class action with as many as 21 million residents; 38 states and the District of Columbia; and companies including Epic Games Inc and Match Group LLC. The consumers and other plaintiffs are challenging Google's alleged monopoly for distributing Android mobile applications, allegations that Google has denied. Plaintiffs have claimed aggregate damages of $4.7 billion.

The judge asked the plaintiffs' lawyers by April 21 to provide an amount in legal fees they are seeking as a sanction. Separately, the plaintiffs will have a chance to urge Donato to tell jurors that Google destroyed information that was unfavorable to it. He said he wants to see "the state of play" at a later stage in the case. "Google has tried to downplay the problem and displayed a dismissive attitude ill tuned to the gravity of its conduct," the judge said.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with directing $40 million in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his cryptocurrency business in a rewritten indictment unsealed Tuesday. CBS News reports: The charge of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act means Bankman-Fried faces now faces a total of 13 charges after being arrested in the Bahamas last December and brought to the United States soon thereafter. [...] The indictment said Chinese law enforcement authorities in early 2021 froze certain Alameda crypto-trading accounts on two of China's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The accounts, it said, contained about $1 billion worth of crypto.

Bankman-Fried understood that the accounts had been frozen by Chinese authoritIes as part of an ongoing probe of a particular Alameda trading counterparty, the indictment said. After Bankman-Fried failed several attempts to unfreeze the accounts through the use of lawyers and lobbying, the 31-year-old ultimately agreed to direct a multimillion dollar bribe to try to unfreeze the accounts, the indictment said.

"Bankman-Fried and others sought to regain access to the assets to fund additional Alameda trading activity, in order to assist Bankman-Fried and Alameda in obtaining and retaining business," court documents state. The bribe payment of cryptocurrency -- then worth about $40 million -- was moved from Alameda's main trading account to a private cryptocurrency wallet in November 2021 and the frozen accounts were unfrozen at about the same time, the indictment said.

Lebanon's government has reversed a decision to delay the shift to daylight savings time by a month, which had sparked both anger and confusion. The BBC reports: Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced that clocks would now go forward on Wednesday night. He had agreed to a delay last week so Muslims could break their fasts earlier during the holy month of Ramadan. But Christian authorities defied the order and changed their clocks as usual on Sunday, which was the last in March. Many businesses, media outlets and educational institutions followed suit, leaving people living in one of the smallest countries in the Middle East struggling to deal with two different time zones.

Mr Mikati, who is a Sunni Muslim, insisted on Monday that his initial decision to delay the time change until 20 April to "relieve" those fasting during Ramadan had not been for "sectarian reasons", adding: "A decision like this should not have triggered such sectarian responses." He blamed the deep political and religious divisions that have resulted in parliament being unable to agree on a new president since October and a caretaker cabinet with limited powers being left to run the country. "The problem is not summer time or winter time... The problem is the presidential vacuum."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Record: A national association of current and former military digital security leaders is calling on Congress to establish a separate cyber service, arguing that the lack of one creates an "unnecessary risk" to U.S. national security. In a March 26 memorandum, the Military Cyber Professional Association urged lawmakers to establish a U.S. Cyber Force in this year's annual defense policy bill.

"For over a decade, each service has taken their own approach to providing United States Cyber Command forces to employ and the predictable results remain inconsistent readiness and effectiveness," according to the group, which boasts around 3,700 members. "Only a service, with all its trappings, can provide the level of focus needed to achieve optimal results in their given domain," the memo states. "Cyberspace, being highly contested and increasingly so, is the only domain of conflict without an aligned service. How much longer will our citizenry endure this unnecessary risk?"

The creation of a Cyber Force would follow the arrival of the Space Force in 2019. It was the first new branch of the U.S. military in 72 years, bringing the total to six. The association's missive is likely to spark fresh debate on Capitol Hill, where an increasing number of policymakers see a cyber-specific military service as an inevitability. [..] In its memo, the association says that while "steps should be taken to establish such a service, with urgency, pursuing it in a hasty manner would likely prove to be a source of great disruption and risk to our own forces and operations." Therefore, any legislative approval of a Cyber Force should be accompanied by a "thorough study to determine what this military service should look like, how it be implemented, and the applicable timeline," according to the group.

Plans for a government backed non-fungible token (NFT) produced by the Royal Mint have been dropped, the Treasury has announced. The BBC reports: Rishi Sunak ordered the creation of a "NFT for Britain" that could be traded online, while chancellor in April 2022. The Treasury announced it was "not proceeding with the launch" following a consultation with the Royal Mint. But economic secretary Andrew Griffiths said the department would keep the proposal "under review."

Responding to the announcement, Harriet Baldwin, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, said: "We have not yet seen a lot of evidence that our constituents should be putting their money in these speculative tokens unless they are prepared to lose all their money. "So perhaps that is why the Royal Mint has made this decision in conjunction with the Treasury."

The Treasury is working to regulate some cryptocurrencies and had planned to enter the NFT market as part of a wider bid to make the UK a hub for digital payment companies. In April 2022, the then-chancellor Mr Sunak said: "We want to see the [cryptocurrency] businesses of tomorrow - and the jobs they create - here in the UK, and by regulating effectively we can give them the confidence they need to think and invest long-term."

The island nation of Greenland — population 56,000 — has "sprung forward" for the very last time, reports Bloomberg: On March 25, Greenland will move its clocks forward one hour to UTC -2 time zone for the summer, just as it has done in the past. Except starting this year, it will stay in that time zone for good. No more suffering through twice-yearly clock changes; come October, Greenland won't roll back to standard time like they will in the rest of Europe and the US....

For residents in areas of the island that are below the Arctic Circle, it will mean one hour of light later in the day — although as a tourist you're not likely to notice the difference given the seasonal extremes of sunrise and sunset. The capital city, Nuuk, may see up to 20 hours of sunlight in summer, but only gets about four hours of sunlight in the winter, for instance....The main argument in Greenland in favor of the change: It's a chance to be closer to European business hours, which would benefit the economy, explains Tanny Por, head of international relations at Visit Greenland.

"TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday about safety and national security concerns surrounding his social media behemoth," writes MSNBC, adding "He was not well received." Given what we know about how Big Tech abuses data, about how China's authoritarian government systematically embraces surveillance as a tool of social control, and about the increasingly adversarial geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China, it's not sinophobic to ask questions about how to guard against TikTok's misuse. It's common sense. While a ban is probably too drastic and may fail to solve all the issues at hand, regulating the company is sensible. Fortunately, one of the key ways to address some of the concerns posed by TikTok — restricting all companies' capacity to collect data on Americans — could help us solve problems with online life that extends well beyond this social media platform....

[Evan Greer, the director at Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization], believes members of Congress laser focused on TikTok are "on a sidequest" in the scheme of a bigger crisis of surveillance of online life; Greer points to the American Data Privacy and Protection Act as a potential solution. That law would put in place strong data minimization policies, strictly limiting how and how much data companies can collect on people online. It also would deal a huge blow to the power of the algorithms of TikTok and other social media apps because their content recommendation relies on collecting huge amounts of data about its users. The passage of that act would force any company operating in the U.S., not just TikTok, to collect far less data — and reduce all social media companies' capacities to shape the flow of information through algorithmic amplification.

In addition to privacy legislation, the Federal Trade Commission could play a more aggressive role in creating and enforcing rules around commercial surveillance, Greer pointed out. TikTok raises legitimately tricky questions about national security. But it's not the only social media company that does, and national security concerns aren't the only reason to rethink the freedom we've given to social media companies in our society. Any time a powerful actor has vast control over the flow of information, it should be scrutinized as a possible source of exploitation, censorship and manipulation — and, when appropriate, regulated. TikTok should serve as the springboard for that conversation, not the beginning and ending of it.
CNN points out that TikTok isn't the only Chinese-owned platform finding viral success in America. "Of the top 10 most popular free apps on Apple's U.S. app store, four were developed with Chinese technology." Besides TikTok, there's also shopping app Temu, fast fashion retailer Shein and video editing app CapCut, which is also owned by ByteDance.
Duncan Clark, chairman and founder of investment advisory BDA China, tells CNN that these apps could be next.

But writing in the New York Times, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia argues that "it's difficult to see how a ban could survive First Amendment review." The Supreme Court and lower courts have held repeatedly that the mere invocation of national security is insufficient to justify the suppression of First Amendment rights. In court, the government will have to introduce evidence that the threats it is addressing are real, not merely conjectural, and that the proposed ban would address those threats. The evidence assembled so far is not likely to be sufficient. All of this will no doubt be frustrating to some policymakers, including to some who are commendably focused on the very real risks that social media companies' practices pose to Americans' privacy and security. But the legitimacy of our democracy depends on the free trade of information and ideas, including across international borders.

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Is there a dark side to online dating apps like Tinder? "According to the FTC, reports of fraud losses from romance scams topped $1.3 billion in 2022," reports the Verge. The head of the FBI's Portland field office tells them that "Technology gives you this false sense of trust." But the co-founder of the nonprofit Advocating Against Romance Scammers argues it's more than that — that technology "gives criminals a crucial tool to find new victims, and they are definitely getting more brazen overall."

And then the Verge tells the story of a 32-year-old technology entrepreneur and self-proclaimed multimillionaire who didn't see the red flags when a mysterious date on Tinder asked him what kind of car he owned — and told him that when he paid for their hotel room, bring cash...

Yes, he ends up being carjacked at gunpoint in a Tinder car-theft scheme by a largely transient con artist. But then he posts to his 245,000 followers on Instagram — hiring a marketing company to manage a car-recovery campaign. He hears from fences who offer to sell back his car for $30,000 — along with an alleged police informant. There's good luck and bad luck in this wild tale of car chases, police scanners, a neighborhood they call "Methville," and an attempt to bring accountability to a 21-year-old catfisher and her two 18-year-old acomplices.

But the story ends with the 32-year-old self-proclaimed multimillionaire back on Tinder, looking for another date.

Slashdot reader quonset writes: In an effort to more personalize a customer's experience, the U.S. restaurant chain Panera Bread is rolling out palm-scanning technology which will link the palm print with the customer's loyalty program. According to Panera Bread CEO Niren Chaudhary, the move will allow a "frictionless, personalized, and convenient" evolution of Panera's loyalty program, which boasts 52 million members. The claim is this will allow the company to offer menu choices based on a customer's order history, allow staff to personally greet the customer, and offer further suggestions.

Privacy advocates are not so sure. From the story:

Panera says the technology will securely store its customers' biometric data. However, digital rights activists worry that information could be tapped by federal agencies or accessed by hackers.

"Federal agencies like Customs and Border Protection have experienced devastating hacks where large databases of biometric information have been stolen," Fight for the Future told CBS MoneyWatch in an email. "Do we really expect Amazon, or Panera, to have better cybersecurity practices?"
The scanners are already installed at locations in St. Louis, Panera announced Wednesday, and scanners will "expand to additional locations in the coming months." (Panera has 2,113 locations in 48 states.) "After a simple scan of the palm, Panera associates will be able to greet guests by name, communicate their available rewards, reorder their favorite menu items, or take another order of their choice," the announcement gushes, "extending the guest experience into a true and meaningful relationship.

"When they are done ordering, guests can simply scan their palm again to pay."

The Free Software Foundation held their annual LibrePlanet conference last week — and announced that Eli Zaretskii, co-maintainer of GNU Emacs, won their "Advancement of Free Software" award. "He has been a contributor to Emacs for more than thirty years," notes the FSF announcement, "and as co-maintainer, coordinates the work of more than two hundred active contributors. During Zaretskii's tenure as co-maintainer, the Emacs development community has implemented several important new features, including native compilation of the editor's Emacs Lisp backbone into machine code."

Zaretskii was honored with a recorded message from the original author/principal maintainer of GNU Emacs back in 1985, Richard Stallman: "For many years, I was the principal maintainer of GNU Emacs, but then others came along to do the work, and I haven't been heavily involved in Emacs development for many, many years. Nowadays, our principal maintainer of Emacs is extremely diligent and conscientious and has brought about a renaissance in new features and new packages added to Emacs, and the result is very impressive. So I'm happy to give the Free Software Award to Eli Zaretskii, principal maintainer of GNU Emacs. Thank you for your work."

In his recorded acceptance of the award, Zaretskii said, "The truth is my contribution to free software in general and to Emacs development in particular is quite modest, certainly compared to those who won this award before me.... And even my modest achievement as the Emacs developer and lately the co-maintainer would have been impossible without all the other contributors and the Emacs community as a whole. No significant free software project can be developed, maintained, and led forward without participation and support of its members. And Emacs is no exception."
Their award for Outstanding New Free Software Contributor went to Tad (SkewedZeppelin), the chief developer of DivestOS, a fork of Android which removes many proprietary binaries "and which puts freedom, security, and device longevity as its main concerns," according to the FSF's announcement. "Tad has also contributed to the Replicant distribution of Android, a project fiscally sponsored by the FSF."

And their award for Project of Social Benefit went to GNU Jami, a free software videoconferencing tool "that is fully decentralized and encrypted, allowing thousands around the world to communicate in both freedom and security. In contrast to proprietary conferencing programs like Zoom, which are nonfree software, Jami is an official GNU package licensed under the GNU GPLv3+."

Toronto-based Feroot Security "found that so-called tracking pixels from the TikTok parent company were present in 30 U.S. state-government websites across 27 states," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including some where the app has been banned from state networks and devices." The review was performed in January and February. The presence of that code means that U.S. state governments around the country are inadvertently participating in a data-collection effort for a foreign-owned company, one that senior Biden administration officials and lawmakers of both parties have said could be harmful to U.S. national security and the privacy of Americans.

Administrators who manage government websites use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok.... The presence of the TikTok tracking code on government websites underlines the challenge for those who deem the China-owned app a potential data-security threat. Lawmakers in both parties are considering a nationwide ban, but simply uprooting the app from U.S. smartphones wouldn't stop all data-tracking activities....

Feroot found that the average website it studied had more than 13 embedded pixels. Google's were far and away the most common, with 92% of websites examined having some sort of Google tracking pixel embedded. About 50% of the websites the firm examined had Microsoft Corp. or Facebook pixels. TikTok had a presence in less than 10% of sites examined.

The Verge reports: A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library. Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create "derivative works," and so would have needed authorization from the books' copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program. The Internet Archive says it will appeal.
The decision was "a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve," argued Chris Freeland, the director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive. In a blog post he argued the decision "impacts libraries across the U.S. who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online. It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.
The Verge adds that the judge rejected "fair use" arguments which had previously protected a 2014 digital book preservation project by Google Books and HathiTrust: Koetl wrote that any "alleged benefits" from the Internet Archive's library "cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers," declaring that "there is nothing transformative about [Internet Archive's] copying and unauthorized lending," and that copying these books doesn't provide "criticism, commentary, or information about them." He notes that the Google Books use was found "transformative" because it created a searchable database instead of simply publishing copies of books on the internet.

Koetl also dismissed arguments that the Internet Archive might theoretically have helped publishers sell more copies of their books, saying there was no direct evidence, and that it was "irrelevant" that the Internet Archive had purchased its own copies of the books before making copies for its online audience. According to data obtained during the trial, the Internet Archive currently hosts around 70,000 e-book "borrows" a day.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader esme for sharing the news.

France announced Friday it is banning the "recreational" use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees' phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures. Reuters reports: The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration, Stanislas Guerini, said in a statement that ''recreational" apps aren't secure enough to be used in state administrative services and "could present a risk for the protection of data." The ban will be monitored by France's cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok.

Guerini's office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps. Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes, like public communication, they can request permission to do so. Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter.

GitHub has rotated its private SSH key for GitHub.com after the secret was was accidentally published in a public GitHub repository. BleepingComputer reports: The software development and version control service says, the private RSA key was only "briefly" exposed, but that it took action out of "an abundance of caution." In a succinct blog post published today, GitHub acknowledged discovering this week that the RSA SSH private key for GitHub.com had been ephemerally exposed in a public GitHub repository.

"We immediately acted to contain the exposure and began investigating to understand the root cause and impact," writes Mike Hanley, GitHub's Chief Security Officer and SVP of Engineering. "We have now completed the key replacement, and users will see the change propagate over the next thirty minutes. Some users may have noticed that the new key was briefly present beginning around 02:30 UTC during preparations for this change." As some may notice, only GitHub.com's RSA SSH key has been impacted and replaced. No change is required for ECDSA or Ed25519 users.

France's AI-powered array of surveillance cameras for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics cleared a final legislative hurdle on Thursday. From a report: The French government wants to experiment with large-scale, real-time camera systems supported by an algorithm to spot suspicious behavior, including unsupervised luggage and triggering alarms to warn of crowd movements like stampedes, for the mega-sports event next year. In a sparsely-attended chamber, French members of parliament approved the controversial bill after more than seven hours of heated debate. The text can still be challenged before the country's top constitutional court. Last week, a group of about 40 European lawmakers -- mainly left-wing -- asked their French counterparts to vote against the text. They warned in a letter that "France would set a surveillance precedent of the kind never before seen in Europe, using the pretext of the [2024 Paris Summer] Olympic games."

In the past few months, the plan was also met with intense pushback from digital rights NGOs, including France's La Quadrature du Net, as well as international groups such as Amnesty International and Access Now. Besides privacy concerns, they pointed out a potential conflict with the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, which is currently under discussion in Brussels and could limit biometric surveillance. The government argues that algorithmic surveillance cameras are necessary to ensure the safety of the millions of tourists expected to visit Paris next year. During the debates Wednesday evening, lawmakers from President Emmanuel Macron's party claimed AI-powered cameras could have prevented the 2016 Nice terror attack by spotting the truck before it could drive into the crowd. They also said it could have helped avoid the security fiasco at the football Champions League final last summer.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said on Thursday he will send to the country's Congress next week a bill to eliminate all taxes on technology innovations as well as computing and communications hardware manufacturing. "Next week, I'll be sending a bill to congress to eliminate all taxes (income, property, capital gains and import tariffs) on technology innovations, such as software programming, coding, apps and AI development," he said on Twitter. The tax cut would also encompass computing and communications hardware manufacturing, Bukele added. In 2021, the Salvadoran leader introduced legislation to make El Salvador the world's first sovereign nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. He also unveiled plans to build a "Bitcoin City" at the base of a volcano.

Utah's governor has signed two bills that could upend how teens in the state are able to use social media apps. Engadget reports: Under the new laws, companies like Meta, Snap and TikTok would be required to get parents permission before teens could create accounts on their platforms. The laws also require curfew, parental controls and age verification features. The laws could dramatically change how social platforms handle the accounts of their youngest users. In addition to the parental consent and age verification features, the laws also bar companies "from using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction to the company's social media platform." For now, it's not clear how Utah officials intend to enforce the laws or how they will apply to teenagers' existing social media accounts. Both laws are scheduled to take effect next March.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: At a city council meeting in June 2021, Mayor Thomas Kilgore, of Lakeway, Texas, made an announcement that confused his community. "I believe it is my duty to inform you that a surveillance system has been installed in the city of Lakeway," he told the perplexed crowd. Kilgore was referring to a system consisting of eight license plate readers, installed by the private company Flock Safety, that was tracking cars on both private and public roads. Despite being in place for six months, no one had told residents that they were being watched. Kilgore himself had just recently learned of the cameras. "We find ourselves with a surveillance system," he said, "with no information and no policies, procedures, or protections." The deal to install the cameras had not been approved by the city government's executive branch. Instead, the Rough Hollow Homeowners Association, a nongovernment entity, and the Lakeway police chief had signed off on the deal in January 2021, giving police access to residents' footage. By the time of the June city council meeting, the surveillance system had notified the police department over a dozen times. "We thought we were just being a partner with the city," Bill Hayes, the chief operating officer of Legend Communities, which oversees the Rough Hollow Homeowners Association, said at the meeting. "We didn't go out there thinking we were being Big Brother."

Lakeway is just one example of a community that has faced Flock's surveillance without many homeowners' knowledge or approval. Neighbors in Atlanta, Georgia, remained in the dark for a year after cameras were put up. In Lake County, Florida, nearly 100 cameras went up "overnight like mushrooms," according to one county commissioner -- without a single permit. In a statement, Flock Safety brushed off the Lake County incident as an "an honest misunderstanding," but the increasing surveillance of community members' movements across the country is no accident. It's a deliberate marketing strategy. Flock Safety, which began as a startup in 2017 in Atlanta and is now valued at approximately $3.5 billion, has targeted homeowners associations, or HOAs, in partnership with police departments, to become one of the largest surveillance vendors in the nation. There are key strategic reasons that make homeowners associations the ideal customer. HOAs have large budgets -- they collect over $100 billion a year from homeowners -- and it's an opportunity for law enforcement to gain access into gated, private areas, normally out of their reach.

The founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, appears to have been arrested in Montenegro, according to a tweet by the country's minister of interior, Filip Adzic. CoinDesk reports: "Montenegrin police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs," Adzic tweeted. Kwon has been the target of several investigations and was even on Interpol's red notice after stablecoin terraUSD (UST) and its $40 billion ecosystem imploded last year, sending shockwaves across the crypto markets. The suspect was detained at the Podgorica airport with falsified documents, Adzic added, saying he was still waiting for official confirmation of identity.

The Korean National Police Agency said that it had confirmed the suspect appeared to be Kwon based on checking age, name, and nationality of his ID card, according to a report by the Yonhap news agency. The unverified account of Adzic is followed by the official account of the prime minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazovic. The tweet announcing Kwon's arrest was also retweeted by Abazovic's account. Adzic's account has previously been cited in official tweets.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Justin Sun Wednesday on allegations of selling and airdropping unregistered securities, fraud and market manipulation. From a report: The SEC said in a press release it was suing Sun, the Tron Foundation, the BitTorrent Foundation and BitTorrent (now known as Rainberry) over the sale of tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens, which it described as unregistered crypto asset securities. The regulator further alleged that the defendants "fraudulently manipulat[ed]" TRX's secondary market through an "extensive wash trading" scheme. The agency is also suing Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, Ne-Yo, Akon and Michele Mason on illegal touting charges for their roles allegedly promoting TRX and BTT without disclosing they were paid to do so. The majority of these celebrities settled the charges.

Sun, who was named Grenada's ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year, tried to artificially inflate TRX's trading volume through the wash trading scheme, the SEC alleged, by having his own employees "engage in more than 600,000 wash trades of TRX between two crypto asset trading platform accounts he controlled." Somewhere between 4.5 million and 7.4 million TRX was traded daily through these wash trades, the agency said.

Top tech companies are mounting a push to limit how US intelligence agencies collect and view texts, emails and other information about their users, especially American citizens. From a report: The companies, including Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms and Apple, want Congress to limit Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as they work to renew the law before it expires at the end of the year, according to three people familiar with the discussions. There is a growing bipartisan consensus in Congress to not only renew the law but to make changes in response to a series of reports and internal audits documenting abuses. That's left the tech industry optimistic that broader reforms will get through Congress this time, according to two lobbyists who asked not to be identified relaying internal discussions.

The law, passed by Congress in 2008 in response to revelations of warrantless spying on US citizens by the Bush administration, granted sweeping powers that have been criticized over the years for different reasons. Civil liberties groups think more privacy protections are needed. Former President Donald Trump and his allies claim that spying powers enable intelligence agencies to conspire against conservatives. "Reforms are needed to ensure dragnet surveillance programs operate within constitutional limits and safeguard American users' rights, through appropriate transparency, oversight and accountability," said Matt Schruers, president of the tech trade group Computer & Communications Industry Association, which counts Apple, Google, Meta and Amazon among its members. Intelligence agencies say Section 702 is an essential tool that has generated critical information on the espionage and hacking activities of countries such as China and contributed to the successful drone strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last year.

The Supreme Court will take a break on Wednesday from the unusually political mix of cases it decided to hear during its current term, to consider a case about poop jokes. From a report: Jack Daniel's v. VIP Products asks whether VIP Products, the nation's second-largest maker of dog toys, infringed upon the whiskey maker's trademarked bottle shape and label when it sold dog toys that resemble a bottle of Jack Daniel's. The dog toy, named "Bad Spaniels," juxtaposes imagery drawn from the whiskey maker's trademarks with a gag about a dog dropping âoethe old No. 2 on your Tennessee carpet." Jack Daniel's seeks a court order prohibiting VIP from continuing to sell this toy.

Jack Daniel's is, on the surface, a very silly case, which prompted some very silly attempts by the whiskey maker's lawyers to explain why their client is so offended by this dog toy. Sample quote from their brief: "Jack Daniel's loves dogs and appreciates a good joke as much as anyone. But Jack Daniel's likes its customers even more, and doesn't want them confused or associating its fine whiskey with dog poop." Lurking below the surface, however, are very serious questions about the First Amendment. And about how far courts should go in second-guessing Congress's decisions about how to balance the needs of the marketplace with the demands of free speech. VIP has strong legal arguments that it should prevail in this case, but Jack Daniel's also raises strong claims that the lower courts did too much to undermine federal trademark law.

Google defended its use of "history-off chats" for many internal communications, denying the US government's allegation that it intentionally destroyed evidence needed in an antitrust case. The history-off setting causes messages to be automatically deleted within 24 hours. Ars Technica reports: The US government and 21 states last month asked a court to sanction Google for allegedly using the auto-delete function on chats to destroy evidence and accused Google of falsely telling the government that it suspended its auto-deletion practices on chats subject to a legal hold. Google opposed the motion for sanctions on Friday in a filing (PDF) in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Google said it uses a "tiered approach" for preserving chats. "When there is litigation, Google instructs employees on legal hold not to use messaging apps like Google Chat to discuss the subjects at issue in the litigation and, if they must, to switch their settings to 'history on' for chats regarding the subjects at issue in the litigation, so that any such messages are preserved," the Google filing said.

Google said the government plaintiffs "contend that the Federal Rules specifically mandate that Google should have applied a forced history on setting for all custodians for all chats created while the custodian was on legal hold, regardless of the possible relevance of the message to the litigation." But federal rules only require "reasonable steps to preserve" information, Google pointed out. "Google's vast preservation efforts here -- and specifically its methodology with respect to history-off chats -- were 'reasonable steps' under the Rule," Google argued. Google said the US and state attorneys general "have not been denied access to material information needed to prosecute these cases and they have offered no evidence that Google intentionally destroyed such evidence." Google also argued that the objections came too late, alleging that the government knew before litigation began "that there was a subset of chats not automatically retained." "Plaintiffs' motions are barred at the outset because they were on notice of Google's approach to chats for years, yet did not object until well after the close of discovery. Those tactics should not be countenanced," Google told the court.

Google said its November 2019 disclosures in an ESI (Electronically Stored Information) questionnaire "show that the distinction between 'on-the-record' and other chats was apparent to anyone who wanted to pursue the matter from the outset of DOJ's investigation. For instance, the ESI Questionnaire response specifies that chat 'messages are generally retained for a period of 30 days if they have been marked on-the-record, and potentially longer if on-the-record messages are on legal hold.'" Google also said, "it is no secret how Google's Chat product operates" because it's a publicly available product and the Google Chat website explains the history-off feature. The Justice Department's motion last month said things happened very differently. "Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours" for nearly four years, the government motion said, continuing [...].

Microsoft has won dismissal of a private consumer antitrust lawsuit over its $69 billion proposed purchase of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, but the plaintiffs were given 20 days to refine their legal challenge. From a report: A federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the lawsuit from a group of video game plaintiffs "lacks allegations" supporting their claim that the proposed acquisition would harm market competition. "Plaintiffs' general allegation that the merger may cause 'higher prices, less innovation, less creativity, less consumer choice, decreased output, and other potential anticompetitive effects' is insufficient," wrote U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Corley. "Why? How?" The decision does not affect the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) regulatory challenge to the largest-ever gaming industry deal.

Indian authorities severed mobile internet access and text messaging for a second day Sunday across Punjab, a state of about 27 million people, as officials sought to capture a Sikh separatist and braced for potential unrest. The Washington Post reports: The statewide ban -- which crippled most smartphone services except for voice calls and some SMS text messages -- marked one of the broadest shutdowns in recent years in India, a country that has increasingly deployed the law enforcement tactic, which digital rights activists call draconian and ineffective. The Punjab government, led by the opposition Aam Admi Party, initially announced a 24-hour ban starting midday Saturday as its security forces launched a sprawling operation to arrest the fugitive Amritpal Singh, then extended the ban Sunday for another 24 hours.

Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, has been a popular figure within a separatist movement that seeks to establish a sovereign state in Punjab called Khalistan for followers of the Sikh religion. He rocketed to nationwide notoriety in February after his supporters stormed a police station to free one of his jailed supporters. The Khalistan movement is outlawed in India and considered a top national security threat by officials, but the movement has sympathizers across Punjab state, which is majority Sikh, and among members of the large Sikh diaspora who have settled in countries such as Canada and Britain. In a bid to forestall unrest and curtail what it called "fake news," Punjab authorities blocked mobile internet service beginning at noon Saturday, shortly after they failed to apprehend Singh as he drove through central Punjab with a cavalcade of supporters. Officials were probably also motivated by a desire to deprive Singh's supporters of social media, which they briefly used Saturday to seek help and organize their ranks.

Singh was still on the run as of late Sunday, and the 4G blackout remained in effect. Three Punjab residents who spoke to The Washington Post said life had been disrupted since midday Saturday. Only essential text messages, such as confirmation codes for bank transfers, were trickling through. Wired internet services were not affected. "My entire business is dependent on internet," said Mohammad Ibrahim, who accepts QR code-based payments at his two clothing shops in a village outside of Ludhiana and also sells garments online. "Since yesterday, I've felt crippled."

A U.S. and Greek national who worked on Meta's security and trust team while based in Greece was placed under a yearlong wiretap by the Greek national intelligence service and hacked with a powerful cyberespionage tool, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and officials with knowledge of the case. From the report: The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology, the use of which has been the subject of a widening scandal in Greece. It demonstrates that the illicit use of spyware is spreading beyond use by authoritarian governments against opposition figures and journalists, and has begun to creep into European democracies, even ensnaring a foreign national working for a major global corporation.

The simultaneous tapping of the target's phone by the national intelligence service and the way she was hacked indicate that the spy service and whoever implanted the spyware, known as Predator, were working hand in hand. The latest case comes as elections approach in Greece, which has been rocked by a mounting wiretapping and illegal spyware scandal since last year, raising accusations that the government has abused the powers of its spy agency for illicit purposes. The Predator spyware that infected the device is marketed by an Athens-based company and has been exported from Greece with the government's blessing, in possible breach of European Union laws that consider such products potential weapons, The New York Times found in December. The Greek government has denied using Predator and has legislated against the use of spyware, which it has called "illegal."

After almost 17 years online, file-hosting veteran Zippyshare will shut down at the end of the month. TorrentFreak: Founded in 2006, Zippyshare was known for its free, no-nonsense, no-frills approach to storing files online. Having changed very little over the years, Zippyshare's operators say the platform is now a dinosaur that costs too much to run in a world where ad-blocking is widespread. Zippyshare said, "Since 2006 we have been on the market in an unchanged form, that is, as ad financed/free file hosting. However, you have been visiting in less and less over the years, as the arguably very simple formula of the services we offer is slowly running out of steam. I guess all the competing file storage service companies on the market look better, offer better performance and more features. No one needs a dinosaur like us anymore."

A federal judge on Monday will weigh pleas by four major book publishers to stop an online lending library from freely offering digital copies of books, in a case that raises novel questions about digital-library rights and the reach of copyright law that protects the work of writers and publishers. From a report: Nonprofit organization Internet Archive created the digital books, building its collection by scanning physical book copies in its possession. It lends the digital versions to readers worldwide, with more than three million digitized books on offer. Titles range from Stephen King's scary bestseller "It" to Kristin Hannah's historical novel "The Nightingale." The archive expanded its digital lending during the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily lifting limits on how many people could check out a book at one time. The move helped prompt the publishers' copyright infringement lawsuit in 2020, which is pending before U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan.

The plaintiffs are Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, John Wiley and Sons, Bertelsmann SE's Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins Publishers, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. They argue the Internet Archive book platform "constitutes willful digital piracy on an industrial scale" and hurts writers and publishers who rely on consumers buying their products. William Adams, general counsel for HarperCollins Publishers, said the archive's approach has no basis in law. "What they're doing is supplanting what authors and publishers do with libraries and have been doing for a long time," he said. The Internet Archive says its lending practices are a fair and legal use of the books, in the same way that traditional bricks-and-mortar libraries have a right to share their collections with the public.

And starting in 2021 — long before the run on Silicon Valley Bank — the Federal Reserve had "repeatedly warned the bank that it had problems," reports the New York Times: In 2021, a Fed review of the growing bank found serious weaknesses in how it was handling key risks. Supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw Silicon Valley Bank, issued six citations. Those warnings, known as "matters requiring attention" and "matters requiring immediate attention," flagged that the firm was doing a bad job of ensuring that it would have enough easy-to-tap cash on hand in the event of trouble.

But the bank did not fix its vulnerabilities. By July 2022, Silicon Valley Bank was in a full supervisory review — getting a more careful look — and was ultimately rated deficient for governance and controls. It was placed under a set of restrictions that prevented it from growing through acquisitions. Last autumn, staff members from the San Francisco Fed met with senior leaders at the firm to talk about their ability to gain access to enough cash in a crisis and possible exposure to losses as interest rates rose.

It became clear to the Fed that the firm was using bad models to determine how its business would fare as the central bank raised rates: Its leaders were assuming that higher interest revenue would substantially help their financial situation as rates went up, but that was out of step with reality. y early 2023, Silicon Valley Bank was in what the Fed calls a "horizontal review," an assessment meant to gauge the strength of risk management. That checkup identified additional deficiencies — but at that point, the bank's days were numbered. In early March, it faced a run and failed within a matter of days....

The picture that is emerging is one of a bank whose leaders failed to plan for a realistic future and neglected looming financial and operational problems, even as they were raised by Fed supervisors. For instance, according to a person familiar with the matter, executives at the firm were told of cybersecurity problems both by internal employees and by the Fed — but ignored the concerns.
The Federal Reserve Bank system has 12 distircts, and the one overseeing California had a board of directors which included SVB's CEO Greg Becker, the article points out. "While board members do not play a role in bank supervision, the optics of the situation are bad."

Gizmodo reports that Amazon "is thinking about releasing a web browser, a boring-sounding project that could have massive implications." The company has sent a survey to users asking detailed questions, including which features would "convince you to download and try" a "new desktop/laptop browser from Amazon...."

The survey asked a variety of questions. Most telling was the last question: "Imagine that there is a new desktop/laptop browser from Amazon available to do. Select which of the following you would most like to know more about." The survey went on to list topics such as privacy, syncing passwords across devices, and shopping features.... Users were asked to rate the importance of features including text to speech, extensions, the availability to sync data across desktop and mobile devices, and — notably — blocking third party cookies.

Amazon seems to be seriously considering a web browser of its own, and it comes at a time when it would have an unusual impact on the advertising business. The ad industry is bracing for cataclysmic change as Google moves closer to killing third-party cookies in Chrome, the world's most popular web browser, which would kneecap one of the primary ways businesses track consumers for ads.... Part of what makes Amazon so attractive to marketers is the fact that the company sits on a treasure trove of data about what consumers are buying and what their shopping habits are like. If Amazon could match that information with the data collection that comes from a web browser, it could tip the scales of internet advertising in favor of the retail giant.
One thing Amazon asked users is whethered they'd be convinced to download and try a browser if it offered "AI-enabled tab, history, and bookmarks management to automatically sort these into categories for quick search and retrieval."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Federal agents have arrested a Peekskill, New York, man they say ran the notorious dark web data-breach site "BreachForums" under the name "Pompompurin." Conor Brian Fitzpatrick was arrested by a team of investigators at his home around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, an FBI agent said in a sworn statement filed in court the next day. Fitzpatrick is charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud.

BreachForums hosted the stolen databases of almost 1,000 companies and websites. The databases often includes personal information, such as names, emails and passwords. The information is offered for sale by users of the site and can be used for fraud. Pompompurin's profile on BreachForums describes him as "Bossman" and pictures the Sanrio Co. cartoon dog whose name he used as an online alias. The profile shows Fitzpatrick's most recent visit to the site was Wednesday at 3:53 p.m., shortly before his arrest. The FBI agent, who led the other agents in the arrest, said Fitzpatrick admitted he had used the alias "Pompompurin" and was the owner and operator of BreachForums.

In November 2021, Pompompurin claimed responsibility for sending out fake emails that originated from an "fbi.gov" email address. Pompompurin claimed responsibility for the breach in an interview with Brian Krebs. Details of the charges, filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, have not been made public. A spokeswoman for the US Attorney in Alexandria didn't return phone and email messages seeking comment. Fitzpatrick was presented in federal court in White Plains, New York, and released on a $300,000 unsecured bond, signed by his parents. Fitzpatrick is required to avoid any contact with co-defendant, co-conspirators and witnesses in the case. He's due to appear in court in Alexandria on March 24.

The Brazilian government is studying whether to regulate Internet platforms with content that earns revenue such as advertising, its secretary for digital policies, Joao Brant, said on Friday. Reuters reports: The idea would be for a regulator to hold such platforms, not consumers, accountable for monetized content, Brant told Reuters. Another goal is "to prevent the networks from being used for the dissemination and promotion of crimes and illegal content" especially after the riots by supporters of former far-right President JairBolsonaro in Brasilia in January, fueled by misinformation about the election he lost in October.

Brant said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government also intends to make companies responsible for stopping misinformation, hate speech and other crimes on their social media platforms. Platforms would not be held responsible for content individually, but for how diligent they are in protecting the "digital environment," he said in an interview. Brant did not detail what the regulatory body would look like, but said the government wants to regulate monetized content and prevent the platforms from spreading misinformation.

The UK Space Agency said Friday it would back research by Rolls-Royce looking at the use of nuclear power on the moon. CNBC reports: In a statement, the government agency said researchers from Rolls-Royce had been working on a Micro-Reactor program "to develop technology that will provide power needed for humans to live and work on the Moon." The UKSA will now provide [around $3.52 million] of funding for the project, which it said would "deliver an initial demonstration of a UK lunar modular nuclear reactor."

Rolls-Royce is set to work with a range of organizations on the project, including the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and Nuclear AMRC, and the University of Oxford. "Developing space nuclear power offers a unique chance to support innovative technologies and grow our nuclear, science and space engineering skills base," Paul Bate, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said. Bate added that Rolls-Royce's research "could lay the groundwork for powering continuous human presence on the Moon, while enhancing the wider UK space sector, creating jobs and generating further investment." According to the UKSA, Rolls-Royce [...] is aiming "to have a reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A cancer patient whose nude medical photos and records were posted online after they were stolen by a ransomware gang, has sued her healthcare provider for allowing the "preventable" and "seriously damaging" leak. The proposed class-action lawsuit stems from a February intrusion during which malware crew BlackCat (also known as ALPHV) broke into one of the Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) physician's networks, stole images of patients undergoing radiation oncology treatment along with other sensitive health records belonging to more than 75,000 people, and then demanded a ransom payment to decrypt the files and prevent it from posting the health data online. The Pennsylvania health care group, one of the largest in the US state, oversees 13 hospitals, 28 health centers, and dozens of other physicians' clinics, pharmacies, rehab centers, imaging and lab services. LVHN refused to pay the ransom, and earlier this month BlackCat started leaking patient info, including images of at least two breast cancer patients, naked from the waist up.

According to the lawsuit [PDF] filed this week, here's how one of the patients, identified as "Jane Doe" found out about the data breach -- and that LVHN had stored nude images of her on its network in the first place. On March 6, LVHN VP of Compliance Mary Ann LaRock, called Doe and told her that her nude photos had been posted on the hackers' leak site. "Ms. LaRock offered plaintiff an apology, and with a chuckle, two years of credit monitoring," the court documents say. In addition to swiping the very sensitive photos, the crooks also made off with everything needed for identity fraud.

According to the lawsuit, LaRock also told Doe that her physical and email addresses, along with date of birth, social security number, health insurance provider, medical diagnosis and treatment information, and lab results were also likely stolen in the breach. "Given that LVHN is and was storing the sensitive information of plaintiff and the class, including nude photographs of plaintiff receiving sensitive cancer treatment, LVHN knew or should have known of the serious risk and harm that could occur from a data breach," the lawsuit says. It claims LVHN was negligent in its duty to safeguard patients' sensitive information, and seeks class action status for everyone whose data was exposed with monetary damages to be determined. Pennsylvania attorney Patrick Howard, who is representing Doe and the rest of the plaintiffs in the proposed class action, said he expects the number of patients affected by the breach to be in the "hundreds, if not thousands."

New Zealand will ban TikTok on devices with access to the parliamentary network because of cybersecurity concerns, a government official said on Friday. CNBC reports: TikTok will be banned on all devices with access to New Zealand's parliamentary network by the end of March, said Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero. Gonzalez-Montero, in an email to Reuters, said the decision was taken after advice from cybersecurity experts and discussions within government and with other countries.

"Based on this information the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand Parliamentary environment," he said. Special arrangements can be made for those who require the app to do their jobs, he added.

The FBI and the Department of Justice are investigating the events that led TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to use the app to surveil American journalists, including this reporter, Forbes reported, citing sources familiar with the departments' actions. From the report: According to a source in position to know, the DOJ Criminal Division, Fraud Section, working alongside the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has subpoenaed information from ByteDance regarding efforts by its employees to access U.S. journalists' location information or other private user data using the TikTok app. According to two sources, the FBI has been conducting interviews related to the surveillance. ByteDance's use of the app to surveil U.S. citizens was first reported by Forbes in October, and confirmed by an internal company investigation in December.

"We have strongly condemned the actions of the individuals found to have been involved, and they are no longer employed at ByteDance. Our internal investigation is still ongoing, and we will cooperate with any official investigations when brought to us," said ByteDance spokesperson Jennifer Banks. This is the first report of the federal government investigating ByteDance's surveillance practices. It is not clear if the DOJ's subpoena is connected to the FBI's interviews. The DOJ and the FBI are both part of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which this week demanded that ByteDance divest from TikTok or face a nationwide ban of the app. For the past several years, CFIUS has attempted to negotiate a national security contract with TikTok meant to mitigate concerns that it could be used by the Chinese government to access valuable private information about U.S. citizens or manipulate U.S. civic discourse.

The US Copyright Office has issued (PDF) guidance today to clarify when AI-generated material can be copyrighted. Ars Technica reports: Guidance comes after the Copyright Office decided that an author could not copyright individual AI images used to illustrate a comic book, because each image was generated by Midjourney -- not a human artist. In making its decision, the Copyright Office committed to upholding the longstanding legal definition that authors of creative works must be human to register works. Because of this, officials confirmed that AI technologies can never be considered authors. This wasn't the only case influencing new guidance, but it was the most recent. Wrestling with the comic book's complex authorship questions helped prompt the Copyright Office to launch an agency-wide initiative to continue exploring a wider range of copyright issues arising as the AI models that are used to generate text, art, audio, and video continue evolving.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the guidance is an author's "duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in a work submitted for registration." When registering works, authors must distinguish which content is human-authored and which content is AI-generated. If applicants aren't sure how to refer to the AI-generated content, the Copyright Office recommends providing a general statement that the work contains AI-generated content. That will prompt the office to follow up to help each author fill in the blanks in an application.

For artists who have pending applications or have already registered works that contain AI-generated content, the Copyright Office suggests correcting the public record by submitting a supplementary registration. Any failure to accurately reflect the role of AI in copyrighted works could result in "losing the benefits of the registration," the office warned. That could leave works vulnerable to being copied, with little or no legal recourse for copyright infringement claims. Failure to disclose AI-generated content is the only type of infringement discussed in the guidance. Critics like Alex J. Champandard, a co-founder of Creative.ai -- a group of hackers and artists interested in generative AI -- tweeted to say that current guidance puts authors in a precarious catch-22 situation. "By disclosing the AI, you're opening yourself up to infringement, but by not disclosing AI, it's safer but in violation of [the US Copyright Office]!" Champandard's tweet suggested.

Amazon did not alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored by facial recognition technology, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges. CNBC reports: In a class-action suit, lawyers for Alfredo Perez said that the company failed to tell visitors to Amazon Go convenience stores that the technology was in use. Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require businesses to post signs if they're tracking customers' biometric information, such as facial scans or fingerprints. [...] The lawsuit says that Amazon only recently put up signs informing New York customers of its use of facial recognition technology, more than a year after the disclosure law went into effect. "To make this 'Just Walk Out' technology possible, the Amazon Go stores constantly collect and use customers' biometric identifier information, including by scanning the palms of some customers to identify them and by applying computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion that measure the shape and size of each customer's body to identify customers, track where they move in the stores, and determine what they have purchased," says the lawsuit.

"It means that even a global tech giant can't ignore local privacy laws," Albert Cahn, project director, said in a text message. "As we wait for long overdue federal privacy laws, it shows there is so much local governments can do to protect their residents."