News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Amazon Shuts Down Man’s Entire Smart Home After Delivery Worker Claims Racism

Earlier this month, Amazon locked a man out of his account, disrupting his extensive smart home system. The suspension was driven by a delivery driver who claimed the man used a racial slur through his automated doorbell system. The only problem is that the man captured the entire interaction on his security system — the communication to the worker was an automated greeting of, “Excuse me, can I help you?”
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“On Wednesday, May 31, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted nearly a week,” Jackson shared. “This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions.”

Jackson’s smart home system primarily uses Alexa to communicate with Amazon Echo gadgets. This system was hampered by the lockout, making the devices unusable. Jackson was still able to use Siri and locally hosted services to control his smart home system in spite of the lockout.

The lockout was caused by a report made by an Amazon delivery driver. The driver allegedly mistook an automated message from Jackson’s doorbell for a racist remark. Jackson provided video proof to contradict the claim, but Amazon did not respond right away, and the account remained locked for almost a week.

“I reviewed the footage and confirmed that no such comments had been made. Instead, the doorbell had issued an automated response: ‘Excuse me, can I help you?’ The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message,” Jackson explained. The confused homeowner apparently does not believe that the Amazon employee would engage in a hate hoax.

 I still remember an article on a family in Texas that felt they could die due to the extreme weather conditions thanks to an automated system that didn't allow them to cool their homes properly. Now we see how Amazon's system try to that man out of his own smart home. What if he had no alternate way to manage all those devices?
Seriously,  automated systems suck.

Mom Loses $100K 401(K) to Tinder Scammer in ‘Pig Butchering’ Trick

The recently divorced mother said the man she met on the app convinced her to invest in fake cryptocurrency schemes just after she left her second marriage, the Daily Mail reported Sunday.
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Rebecca Holloway reportedly lost over $100,000 to a group pretending to be a French entrepreneur that described himself as Fred who claimed he lived in Philadelphia and had a daughter.

“She is the third victim to come forward in recent months about a cruel scam known as ‘pig butchering’ — whereby victims are effectively ‘fattened up’ with a fake romantic relationship before being ‘butchered’ by fraudulent investment advice,” the Mail report said.

In October, the “pig butchery” scam resulted in a warning from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the New York Post.

Satnam Narang, a senior research engineer at cyber exposure management company Tenable, told the outlet the scam artists are using the “long con” by spending weeks targeting one person.

They also use social media and apps such as Tinder for their schemes to connect with their victims, later swindling them for large amounts of money through crypto investments.

Military Monitors Social Media for Mean Posts About Generals

The U.S. Army’s Protective Services Battalion (PSB), the Department of Defense’s equivalent of the Secret Service, now monitors social media to see if anyone has posted negative comments about the country’s highest-ranking officers.

Per a report by the Intercept, the PSB’s remit includes protecting officers from “embarrassment,” in addition to more pressing threats like kidnapping and assassination.

An Army procurement document from 2022 obtained by the Intercept reveals that the PSB now monitors social media for “negative sentiment” about the officers under its protection, as well as for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats.
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Per the report, the Army intends not just to monitor platforms for “negative sentiment,” but also to pinpoint the location of posters.

The Army’s new toolkit goes far beyond social media surveillance of the type offered by private contractors like Dataminr, which helps police and military agencies detect perceived threats by scraping social media timelines and chatrooms for various keywords. Instead, Army Protective Services Battalion investigators would seemingly combine social media data with a broad variety of public and nonpublic information, all accessible through a “universal search selector.”

These sources of information include “signal-rich discussions from illicit threat-actor communities and access to around-the-clock conversations within threat-actor channels,” public research, CCTV feeds, radio stations, news outlets, personal records, hacked information, webcams, and — perhaps most invasive — cellular location data.

 Why does a term like dystopia come to my mind right now?

[kyonides]

Election Interference: YouTube Censors
Jordan Peterson Interview of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

YouTube has taken down a video interview by Jordan Peterson of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., prompting accusations that the Google-owned platform is once again seeking to manipulate national politics and interfere in a presidential election in the U.S.

The interview took place on the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, and is over an hour and a half long. It can still be watched in full on Twitter, whose owner, Elon Musk, hosted the Democrat candidate for a Spaces interview earlier this month.
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“Now YouTube has taken upon itself to actively interfere with a presidential election campaign,” said Jordan Peterson after news of the censorship broke.

RFK Jr. also spoke out, calling for public pressure to address the platform’s actions.
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“Do you really need Big Tech censors to decide what you should hear? Or would you prefer to be treated as a competent adult who can listen to various viewpoints and come to his or her own conclusions?”
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“It may be that YouTube has broken no laws in this blatant interference in the electoral process,” continued RFK Jr. “In that case, change will come only through public pressure. That’s democracy in action!”

The Democrat candidate called on people who disagreed with the platform’s decision to upload videos to YouTube “telling them what you think.”

In a statement to the media, YouTube said it took down the Jordan Peterson interview because of “vaccine misinformation.”
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“Free speech is the fertilizer; it’s the sunlight; it’s the water for democracy,” [Kennedy] continued. “There is no time in history where the people who were censoring speech were the good guys.

Perhaps we should go back to 2019 to learn how YouTube actually works.

‘THE SMOKING GUN’: Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results
for Abortion, Maxine Waters, David Hogg

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.”

The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg.

The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.

In the leaked discussion thread, a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source.

“We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”
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The software engineer noted that the change had occurred following an inquiry from a left-wing Slate journalist about the prominence of pro-life videos on YouTube, and that pro-life videos were replaced with pro-abortion videos in the top ten results for the search terms following Google’s manual intervention.

“The Slate writer said she had complained last Friday and then saw different search results before YouTube responded to her on Monday,” wrote the employee. “And lo and behold, the [changelog] was submitted on Friday, December 14 at 3:17 PM.”

The manually downranked items included several videos from Dr. Antony Levatino, a former abortion doctor who is now a pro-life activist. Another video in the top ten featured a woman’s personal story of being pressured to have an abortion, while another featured pro-life conservative Ben Shapiro. The Slate journalist who complained to Google reported that these videos previously featured in the top ten, describing them in her story as “dangerous misinformation.”

Russian Hacking Group Claims Execution of Reddit Attack
Threatens Leaking Censorship Data

Social media site Reddit reported a hacking incident for which the ALPHV Russian ransomware group has now claimed to be the perpetrator. The group threatens to leak censorship and other sensitive, stolen information in relation to Reddit if the company does not pay $4.5 million.

Reddit had reported the data breach on February after an employee fell victim to a phishing attack, giving passwords that allowed access to a part of the company’s files.

The ransomware group ALPHV, also known as BlackCat, claimed the attack on Saturday, BleepingComputer reported.

BlackCat claimed to have stolen 80 gigabytes (GB) of data from Reddit, including internal documents, source code, employee data, and advertiser data.
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“We show no indications of breach of our primary production systems (the parts of our stack that run Reddit and store the majority of our data).”

BlackCat has posted an article on its data leaking website and says it plans to leak the data if Reddit does not pay $4.5 million. The hacking group said it contacted Reddit in April and June, asking for the money.

“I told them in my first email that I would wait for their IPO to come along. But this seems like the perfect opportunity! We are very confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data,” BlackCat’s post says.

“But I am very happy to know that the public will be able to read about all the statistics they track about their users and all the interesting confidential data we took. Did you know they also silently censor users? Along with artifacts from their GitHub!”

The hacking group also demanded the withdrawal of a pricing change Reddit recently did for third-party use of its website.
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BlackCat has also infiltrated the Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth, obtaining information from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), a client of the firm, according to a June 15 report.

One of the biggest business law companies in Australia, HWL Ebsworth, offers expert assistance to the OAIC.

This comes after AlphV stole four terabytes of corporate data, including personnel information, in April.

On June 8, the hacker collective was reported to have released more than 1.45 terabytes of sensitive data on the dark web. However, since HWL Ebsworth has a variety of governmental and business clients, it is unclear what information has been released.

Intel to Build $33-Billion Chip Plant in Germany
After Government Pledges to Cover 1/3rd of Cost

Intel and the German government signed a deal Monday that will see the U.S. company spend more than 30 billion euros ($32.8 billion) to build a chip manufacturing site in the eastern city of Magdeburg, after Germany pledged to cover a third of the investment required.

Word of the agreement came as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in Berlin.

Intel acquired the land for two semiconductor facilities in Magdeburg in November. It says the first one is expected to start production in four or five years.
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Before the revised letter of intent was signed Monday plans had foreseen a total investment of at least 17 billion euros. The German government confirmed that it will now provide 9.9 billion euros toward the total.

The plan will need approval by the European Union’s executive branch to ensure the deal doesn’t give Intel an unfair advantage over its competitors.

The “Silicon Junction” project in Magdeburg adds to Intel’s plans for an assembly and test facility near Wroclaw, Poland, and an existing chip factory in Ireland.

In a speech to Germany’s main industry lobby group earlier Monday, Scholz highlighted efforts to encourage chip production in Europe, reducing his country’s dependence on imported chips and global supply chains.

[kyonides]

FTC Sues Amazon for ‘Sabotaging’
Customer Attempts to Quit Prime Service

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken legal action against Amazon for allegedly enrolling customers in its Prime program without their consent and then devising an elaborate scheme to prevent them from unsubscribing.

The consumer protection agency made the allegations in a lawsuit (pdf) filed on June 21 at the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington.

“Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions,” the agency said in a statement.

The FTC accused Amazon of “cancellation trickery” and knowingly failing to address non-consensual subscriptions to the Prime service, which comes at a monthly charge of $14.99.

A subscriptions to Prime buys access to Prime Video, as well as free Amazon delivery and faster shipping. In the first quarter of 2023, Prime accounted for some $9.6 billion in Amazon earnings.
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“Amazon designed the Iliad cancellation process (‘Iliad Flow’) to be labyrinthinine,” the agency claimed, while alleging that Amazon leadership “slowed or rejected user experience changes that would have made Iliad simpler for consumers because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line.”

In order to cancel Prime, consumers must to click multiple pages where they’re faced with confusing options, with many selections taking customers out of the “Iliad Flow” so that in order to unsubscribe, they would have to start the process all over again.

“On the eighth and final page, Amazon presented five buttons,” the FTC said in the complaint. “Only the fifth and final button (‘End Now’) immediately cancelled the membership.”
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A number of Amazon employees pressed the company’s executives to address “nonconsensual enrollment” and make changes so that the firm would not be tricking its customers, the FTC said.

However, despite the issue being flagged for action internally, Amazon and its leadership “slowed, avoided, and even undid user experience changes that they knew would reduce Nonconsensual Enrollment because those changes would also negatively affect Amazon’s bottom line.”

Meta Lowers Minimum Age of Quest Headsets
in Bid to Lure Children Into VR

Facebook parent company Meta announced plans to enable children as young as 10 years old to enter virtual reality through its Meta Quest headset later this year, despite a recent advisory warning social media can negatively impact the mental health and well-being of children.

“Today we’re announcing changes to give families even more ways to use and enjoy Meta Quest. Starting later this year, parents will be able to set up parent-managed Meta accounts for Meta Quest 2 and 3 for their children ages 10—12,” the company stated in a blog post on Friday.

The policy change will lower the minimum age for a Quest account from 13 years old in order to allow preteens to immerse themselves in a virtual world filled with digital avatars and other technological fabrications.

In its blog post, Meta said that parents will play a pivotal role in creating and managing their children’s accounts for the Quest 2 and Quest 3 headsets, and promised that preteens’ access will be limited to “age-appropriate” apps deploying virtual reality, or VR.
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The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company’s push to lower the minimum age in a bid to lure preteens into a virtual world comes amid debate over potential health consequences linked to social media use and wireless device radiation.
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“The most common question parents ask me is, ‘Is social media safe for my kids.’ The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” Murthy said in a press release published in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment,” he added. “And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address.”

Here is the article published back in February on the safety concerns several people have voiced about the Virtual Reality Headsets.

[kyonides]

iPhone Users Urged to Update Their Devices as Soon as Possible

Apple on Wednesday released an update to devices using the latest version of iOS that fixes two serious security flaws that are reportedly being used in hacks that are currently targeting iPhones and iPads.

According to a support page released by Apple, iOS 16.5.1 fixes an issue in the kernel, tracked with the code CVE-2023-32434, that could enable an attacker to execute code with kernel-level privileges. Like in previous security updates, Apple did not release more information about the fix.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.7,” the company said.

Two tech websites reported that the flaw that was exploited may be tied to the so-called “Operation Triangulation” campaign that targeted Apple’s iMessage to deliver malicious code before transmitting recordings, photos, and geolocation data from devices. One of the sites, The Hacker News, described it as a “zero-day” exploit, which means that the flaw is likely being exploited out in the wild.

The other serious issue that was fixed in the update is a flaw in WebKit, which is the engine that is used by the Apple Safari browser. That problem would allow an attacker to execute code via web content, and Apple said it is “aware of a report” that the flaw could be “actively exploited.”

3 Hurt When Google Critic Crashes Car
Into Building Near Company’s NYC Headquarters

A man who has claimed for years that Google was torturing users with flashing lights crashed a car into a building near the company’s New York City headquarters, injuring three pedestrians, authorities said.

The man, 34, drove onto the sidewalk and crashed his Ford Fusion into a building on West 15th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood just after 6 p.m. Tuesday, police said.

A 12-year-old girl and two women ages 50 and 47 were hit by the car, a police spokesperson said. They were hospitalized in stable condition.

The driver was arrested on charges including assault and attempted assault, police said. He had not yet been arraigned as of Wednesday and it was not clear if he had an attorney who could speak for him.

Images posted on social media show a homemade sign that says “Google Tortured Me!” and what appears to be a gasoline can at the crash scene, which is about a block from Google’s 15-story New York headquarters.

The man, who has worked as an Uber driver, filed a lawsuit in New York state court in Brooklyn in 2019 accusing Google of using blinding lights to operate a “social control program.”

He claimed in a 2021 Facebook post that Google’s Android operating system was flashing users in the eyes “for purposes of maliciously injury.”

Millions of Genworth Policyholders
and California Pensioners Had Data Stolen in Cyberhack

The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation’s largest public pension fund and insurer, Genworth Financial, admitted that the personal information of millions of account holders was compromised in a major security breach.

A third-party file storage vendor, PBI Research Services, was attacked by Russian hackers after going through a loophole in its MOVEit Transfer software, who then stole the data from CalPERS and Genworth.

The cybercriminals were able to exploit a weakness in the system that contained the records of deceased CalPERS members.

MOVEit file storage software is popular with many organizations around the world to store and share sensitive data.

The public pension funds in Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee also utilize MOVEits’ mortality verification service, according to its website.

Ipswitch, which is the maker of the MOVEit, is owned by Progress Software, first discovered the security flaws in their product in May.

However, CalPERS was only informed of the breach on June 6, after PBI told them that the hackers broke into their data storage system and downloaded streams of sensitive data.

Cybersecurity firms only began to issue reports of MOVEit’s security problems the same day that PBI informed its clients about the cyber attacks.

The number of victims of the MOVEit data theft hack is in the millions, according to CalPERS and Genworth, which faced the brunt of the thefts.

New York Lawyers Sanctioned for Using
Fake ChatGPT Cases in Legal Brief

A U.S. judge on Thursday imposed sanctions on two New York lawyers who submitted a legal brief that included six fictitious case citations generated by an artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT.

U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan ordered lawyers Steven Schwartz, Peter LoDuca, and their law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman to pay a $5,000 fine in total.

The judge found the lawyers acted in bad faith and made “acts of conscious avoidance and false and misleading statements to the court.”

Levidow, Levidow & Oberman said in a statement on Thursday that its lawyers “respectfully” disagreed with the court that they acted in bad faith.
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Schwartz admitted in May that he had used ChatGPT to help research the brief in a client’s personal injury case against Colombian airline Avianca and unknowingly included the false citations. LoDuca’s name was the only one on the brief that Schwartz prepared.

Lawyers for Avianca first alerted the court in March that they could not locate some cases cited in the brief.

Bart Banino, a lawyer for Avianca, said on Thursday that irrespective of the lawyers’ use of ChatGPT, the court reached the “right conclusion” by dismissing the personal injury case. The judge in a separate order granted Avianca’s motion to dismiss the case because it was filed too late.

Musk’s Twitter Threatened With $700,000 Daily Fine
Unless It Tackles ‘Hate Speech’

Australia’s eSafety commissioner has issued Elon Musk’s Twitter with a legal notice to explain what it is doing to tackle hate speech on its platform.

The commissioner says it has received “more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past 12 months” than any other platform and alleges an “increasing number” of reports of serious online abuse since Musk took over in October 2022.

If Twitter fails to respond to the notice in 28 days, the tech giant will face a maximum fine of $700,000 (US$476,000) per day for “continuing breaches.”
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The commissioner also apportioned blame for the increase in “hate speech” on Musk’s decision to cut Twitter’s global workforce from 8,000 to 1,500 (including its “trust and safety teams”) and ending its public policy presence in Australia.

Musk has indicated that the staff cuts were necessary because the company was inefficient and overstaffed. Despite being publicly listed and widely used, Twitter is yet to turn a profit consistently.
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The latest move from Australian authorities comes as the European Union (EU) also finds ways to pressure Twitter over “disinformation.”

In May, Musk withdrew Twitter from the EU’s voluntary code of practice to control discussion around topics like election manipulation, cyber violence against women, and harmful content towards minors.
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At the same time, some research bodies have found a decline in hate speech on Twitter.

An assessment by Springklr, an “AI-based Toxicity Model,” measured hate speech differently from other researchers by evaluating “slurs in the nuanced context of their use.”

Sprinklr’s analysis found that hate speech received 67 percent fewer impressions per post than non-toxic slur posts on Twitter.

Australia’s Banks Caught up in Russian Cyber Attack

The recent Russian cyberattack on law firm EWL Ebsworth has claimed another set of victims—this time, Australia’s four major banks.

This comes as over 40 Australian government agencies are feared to have been impacted by the database hacking of HWL Ebsworth by the Russian cybercriminal group AlphV.

While the four banks—ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), and Westpac—have confirmed that they have engaged the firm’s legal services, they have assured customers and staff that their systems have not been impacted.

“We are aware that HWL Ebsworth, a law firm engaged by NAB for some legal services, has been impacted by a cyber-attack. NAB’s systems were not impacted and remain secure. We are working with HWLE as they continue to get more information in relation to the content of these matters,” a NAB spokesperson said in a statement.

The ANZ has issued a similar response but added that it will contact employees and customers who may have been impacted and need to be notified.

The CBA told The Epoch Times it is in regular contact with the law firm and is managing the cyber attack as an “urgent priority.”

[DerVVulfman]

YOUTUBE LOOKS TO
STOP AD-BLOCKERS

The powers that be are now testing a means to detect ad-blockers, and ask viewers to either turn them off or pay for a premium subscription after three videos.

Viewers on Reddit posted screenshots from Youtube showing the warning that users should expect to see when using an ad-blocking application. The warning says: "Video player will be blocked after 3 videos," which is followed by "It looks like you maybe using an ad blocker. Video playback will be blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled."

Yet another person revealed a screenshot claiming ad-blockers violate Youtube's terms of service.

Youtube told TechCrunch that this warning sign is part of an experiment to urge users with ad blockers to permit advertisements or to push their subscription services.

[kyonides]

Musk Says Twitter Limiting How Many Tweets Users Can Read

Twitter owner Elon Musk said Saturday that the social media platform will limit how many tweets users can read due to “extreme” levels of system manipulation and data scraping.

Musk said in a statement that Twitter has applied the following temporary limits on users, with new unverified accounts limited to reading just 300 posts per day.

The limits rise to 1,000 posts per day for existing unverified accounts, meaning ones without a blue checkmark, while verified accounts enjoy ten times the volume, 10,000 posts, per day.

Meanwhile, the quota for a new unverified account was raised to 500 posts per day.

Some users expressed disappointment about the throttling.

“Putting hard limits on reads is web 1.0 stuff,” wrote the Disclose.tv verified account, which has around 1.2 million followers.
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Earlier, Twitter announced it would require users to have an account on the social media platform to view tweets, a move that Musk on Friday called a “temporary emergency measure.”

Musk said at the time that hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively,” with a negative impact on user experience.

The Twitter chief had earlier expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, for using Twitter’s data to train their large language models.

India Court Rejects Twitter’s Plea Against Govt’s Content Blocking Orders

India’s Karnataka High Court on Friday denied a petition filed by Twitter to overturn the federal government’s content-blocking orders and fined the U.S.-based company 5 million rupees (around $61,000).

In its ruling, the court deemed the blocking orders against Twitter to be “reasoned decisions,” citing the “anti-national” element and the potential of the content to incite “cognizable offenses relating to the sovereignty and integrity of India.”

“Many of them have outrageous content; many are treacherous and anti-national; many have abundant propensity to incite commission of cognizable offenses relating to sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State and public order,” the court said.
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The court said that Twitter was levied for failing to comply with the government’s blocking orders on time.

“For more than a year, the blocking orders were not implemented by the petitioner, and there is no plausible explanation offered therefor,” it said. “There is a willful non-compliance of the blocking orders.”

The case dates back to 2021 when Twitter declined to fully comply with an order to take down accounts and posts that India alleged were spreading misinformation about anti-government protests by farmers.

The court said that Twitter was levied for failing to comply with the government’s blocking orders on time.

“For more than a year, the blocking orders were not implemented by the petitioner, and there is no plausible explanation offered therefor,” it said. “There is a willful non-compliance of the blocking orders.”

The case dates back to 2021 when Twitter declined to fully comply with an order to take down accounts and posts that India alleged were spreading misinformation about anti-government protests by farmers.

Federal Agency Confirms It Was Hit in Massive Cyberattack

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said that hackers have targeted it as part of a global cyberattack that exploited a software flaw.

In a statement to news outlets Thursday, the agency said that “no HHS systems or networks were compromised,” adding that “attackers gained access to data by exploiting the vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer software of third party vendors.”

“HHS is taking all appropriate actions … and will provide Congress with additional information as the investigation continues,” the agency, which oversees a range of programs, told The Hill and Reuters in a statement.

Earlier this month, it was confirmed that a multitude of federal agencies were impacted in a wide-ranging breach. The Department of Energy was reportedly affected in the attack and was asked to pay a ransom.

Hackers behind the massive breach also claimed credit for stealing data from two major law firms, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and K&L Gates LLP. The ransomware gang known as Cl0p posted the names of Kirkland & Ellis LLP and K&L Gates LLP to its leak site, typically a sign that negotiations between the victims and the hackers had broken down.

HHS’s name did not appear among Cl0p’s list of purported victims. The group has previously insisted it doesn’t deliberately steal data from government organizations, but that doesn’t mean that data haven’t been compromised.

Believed by researchers to be a Russian-speaking group of hackers, Cl0p was recently able to gain access to a wide swathe of organizations’ data by compromising MOVEit Transfer, a file commercial management tool made by Progress Software.

Earlier this month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is run by the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed federal agencies were targeted.

Russian Court Fines Google an Additional $47 Million

A Russian court has fined Alphabet’s Google 4 billion roubles ($47 million) for failing to pay an earlier fine over alleged abuse of its dominant position in the video hosting market, the country’s anti-monopoly watchdog said on Tuesday.

Google was fined 2 billion roubles in February 2022. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) at the time said Google’s YouTube had a “non-transparent, biased and unpredictable” approach to “suspending and blocking users’ accounts and content,” the TASS news agency reported.

Google ultimately appealed that decision.
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The FAS said the previous fine it imposed on Google had been doubled due to non-payment.

“The company must additionally pay more than 4 billion roubles to the Russian Federation’s budget,” the FAS concluded.

YouTube, which has blocked Russian media globally, is under heavy pressure from Russian state bodies and politicians, but Moscow has stopped short of blocking it, a step taken against the likes of Twitter and Meta’s Facebook, and Instagram.

Google stopped selling online advertising in Russia in March 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but has kept some free services available. Its Russian subsidiary officially filed for bankruptcy after authorities seized its bank account, making it impossible to pay staff and vendors.

Google Lays Off Staff at Its Mapping App Waze

Alphabet-owned Google on Tuesday said it is cutting jobs at mapping app Waze as it merges the app’s advertising system with Google Ads technology, without giving details on the number of layoffs.

“In order to create a better, more seamless long-term experience for Waze advertisers, we’ve begun transitioning Waze’s existing advertising system to Google Ads technology. As part of this update, we’ve reduced those roles focused on Waze Ads monetization,” Google, which acquired Waze for about $1.3 billion in 2013, said.

Google had in December said that it will merge Waze and Google Maps teams to consolidate processes, making it a part of the Google Geo division, its portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.

Study Accuses Google of Violating
Promised Advertising Standards and Misleading Businesses

Google allegedly misled numerous companies by violating its promised quality standards while placing video ads on third-party websites and apps, thus potentially costing these firms billions of dollars, according to a recent report.

Google’s TrueView delivers advertisements on YouTube as well as millions of third-party apps and websites. Google charges a premium from customers promising that their ads will be run on high-quality websites, along with audio. In addition, advertisers using TrueView only pay for “actual views of their ads, rather than impressions,” Google claims. However, a report published by advertising research firm Adalytics this week found that “significant quantities” of TrueView ads were run on thousands of apps and websites that did not meet Google’s claimed standards. This has been observed to be happening for the past three years, thus potentially costing ad buyers billions in digital ad dollars.

The report states that many TrueView ads were served on independent websites with no audio. “Often, there was little to no organic video media content between ads, the video units simply played ads only.”
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According to the findings, Google had served brand ads on websites that had tens of thousands of copyright violation claims, suggesting these were potential piracy sites where copyrighted content could be downloaded illegally. Thousands of TrueView ads were found delivered to bots running from Google cloud data center servers.

Some ads were served on apps that are not allowed on Google Play Store, with a few of these apps developed by vendors from countries sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, such as Iran.

Nvidia Reacts to Possible US Chip Restrictions to Beijing

Nvidia is downplaying possible U.S. chip-export restrictions to China by the Biden administration.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 27 that the White House was mulling even more restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) chip exports to China.

A potential chip ban could affect Nvidia’s status as the world’s leader for the graphics processors needed to build AI software like ChatGPT.

Nvidia’s latest A100 and H100 chips are highly desired by tech firms around the world to build advanced AI systems.

The U.S. Department of Commerce might stop chip shipments by Nvidia and other manufactures to customers in China as early as July, the report said.

The White House is increasingly concerned that the company’s technology could be used for military or espionage purposes by the Chine Communist Party (CCP).

Nvidia, Micron, and AMD are the chipmakers most affected by the escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington, and they may take a multibillion-dollar hit.

The United States had already persuaded the top chip equipment manufacturers of the Netherlands and Japan to join its policy on curbing technological access to Beijing.

On the other hand, the Biden administration allowed chip makers in South Korea and Taiwan to continue operating and expanding their existing plants in China that produce older and less advanced chips.

The Commerce Department ordered the San Jose, California-based tech giant last September to stop exporting two advanced computer chips models for AI work to China.
...
China has been one of the largest markets for semiconductors for years.

Atif Malik, an analyst at Citi, wrote in a note that last year’s restrictions on China had a $400 million impact on sales, which could rise even higher due to increased demand for chips.

Didn't the Pentagon admit the other day that China was using American technology against the US?
Of course, they later commented that they couldn't transmit data back to China. Let's hope so but I wouldn't bet on it at all.

[kyonides]

Judge Delivers Major Blow to Biden Admin in Social Media Censorship Case

A federal judge has made a historic ruling by partially granting an injunction that blocks various Biden administration officials and government agencies such as the Justice Department and the FBI from working with big tech firms to censor posts on social media.

The injunction came in response to a censorship-by-proxy lawsuit brought by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who have accused Biden administration officials and various government agencies of pressuring social media companies to suspend accounts or take down posts.

Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana wrote in the July 4 ruling (pdf) that various government agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. State Department, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are prohibited from taking a range of actions regarding social media companies.

Specifically, the agencies and their staff members are prohibited from meeting or contacting by phone, email, or text message or “engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech,” per the injunction.

The agencies are also barred from flagging content on posts on social media platforms and forwarding them to the companies with requests for action such as removing or otherwise suppressing their reach.

Encouraging or otherwise egging on social media companies to change their guidelines for the removal, suppression, or reduction of content that contains protected free speech by the government also isn’t allowed.
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Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote in the decision that the Republican attorneys general who sued the Biden administration “have produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.”

While the judge’s ruling isn’t final, the preliminary injunction is a victory for the Republican attorneys general, who have accused the Biden administration of pressuring big tech companies to engage in a censorship-by-proxy scheme.

Zuckerberg Launching Twitter Rival Called ‘Threads’

Called “Threads,” the Meta-backed microblogging platform is billed as “Instagram’s text-based conversation app,” according to a listing on Apple’s App Store.

The listing indicates that Threads will released on Thursday, July 6.

“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” the app description reads.
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Before it became clear that Thread would be the name of Meta’s challenger to Twitter, there were reports in early June that the Zuckerberg-led company was working on a Twitter competitor code named Project 92 or P92.

Twitter Says Users Must Be Verified to Access TweetDeck

Twitter users will soon need to be verified in order to use TweetDeck, the social media company said in a tweet on Monday.

The change will take effect in 30 days, the company said.

Twitter made the announcement in a tweet detailing an improved version of TweetDeck with new features. It was unclear if Twitter will charge users for both the new and old version of TweetDeck. Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Charging for TweetDeck, which was previously free and is widely used by businesses and news organizations to easily monitor content, could bring a revenue boost to Twitter.

Australian Firm Sues Twitter for $665,000 for Not Paying Bills

An Australian project management firm has filed a lawsuit against Twitter Inc. in a U.S. court seeking cumulative payments of about A$1 million ($665,000) over alleged non-payment of bills for work done in four countries, court filings showed.

Sydney-based private company Facilitate Corp. on June 29 filed the suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District Of California claiming breach of contract over Twitter’s failure to pay its invoices.

The Australian firm’s lawsuit is the latest alleging non-payment of bills and rent against Twitter since Elon Musk bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.

Facilitate said from 2022 through early 2023, it installed sensors in Twitter’s offices in London and Dublin, completed an office fit-out in Singapore, and cleared an office in Sydney.

For those works, Twitter owed the company about 203,000 pounds, S$546,600, and A$61,300, respectively, Facilitate said.

Twitter, also known as X Corp., no longer has a media relations office.

Facilitate said it was seeking compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, legal costs, and interest at the maximum legal rate.

In May, a former public relations firm filed a suit in a New York court saying Twitter had not paid its bills, while early this year U.S.–based advisory firm Innisfree M&A Inc. sued it, seeking about $1.9 million for what it said were unpaid bills after it advised Twitter on its acquisition by Musk.

Britain’s Crown Estate, an independent commercial business that manages the property portfolio belonging to the monarchy, in January began court proceedings over alleged unpaid rent on Twitter’s London headquarters.

[kyonides]

‘OK Kim Jong-Un’ — Macron Compared to Communist Dictators over Call to ‘Cut Off’ Social Networks During Riots

In a meeting with 300 mayors at the Élysée Palace in Paris earlier this week, embattled President Emmanuel Macron suggested that the government could implement a blackout to “cut off social networks” when “things get carried away” during riots, according to Le Figaro.

The country, which is somewhat accustomed to people rioting in the streets has faced the most destructive mayhem in recent memory following the police shooting of an Algerian teen after he sped away from a traffic stop in the Nanterre suburb of Paris last Tuesday. During the ensuing riots, over 5,000 vehicles have been destroyed and some 1,000 buildings were set on fire. So far, over 3,000 people, mostly teenagers, have been arrested.

Nevertheless, Macron’s call for censorship of social media to combat the violent riots — a measure typically only deployed in war zones or in despotic regimes — has prompted a fierce backlash, with many comparing his inclinations to those of communist dictators.

President of the centre-right Les Républicains group in the National Assembly, Olivier Marleix wrote on Twitter: “Cut social media? Like China, Iran, North Korea? Even if it is a provocation to divert attention, it is in very bad taste.”

Green Party MP Cyrielle Châtelain echoed the sentiment, questioning: “ We are going to manage social networks like in Russia or China?”
...
Ironically, one of the few national leaders to refrain from criticising the president for his call for censorship was Fabien Roussel, the national secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), who called for similar censorship measures to be imposed in response to the riots.

Attempting to quell the outrage, the government later tried to clarify the remarks from Macron, with Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion Christophe Béchu noting that it was “not the announcement of a censorship law, in any way”.

 Right... and then they suddenly notice how the social networks get cut off anyway.

French Police to Spy Through Phones, Laptops, Cars Using Remote Camera, Microphone Activation

France’s Parliament has voted to approve a controversial new clause in the justice reform bill allowing police to remotely turn on cameras and microphones in a host of internet-connected devices for up to six months to surveil suspects.

A move by the Emmanuel Macron government to grab more power for the security state has passed a key stage in the national Parliament, with MPs voting 80 to 24 in favour of article three of the justice bill. As reported, included in the article are provisions allowing police to ask a judge for permission to use modern personal technology to spy on suspects.

The new rules would allow police to surveil suspects for six months by using their smart devices including mobile phones, computers, and even car dashboards to watch, listen, and locate using cameras, microphones, and GPS.

Le Monde reports that while the law has been criticised by defenders of freedom and privacy from both left and right, its defenders insist this is not ‘1984’, will only be used in a handful of cases a year, and will save lives.

Constraints on the power added to the bill include needing the permission of a judge to activate a cell phone remotely, a time limit on that permission’s validity, that the snooping has to be “justified by the nature and seriousness of the crime”, and that it only be applicable to suspected crimes punishable by five or more years in prison.

That's like saying that  Hall 2000 is a humanitarian, a real beneficient machine...

Elon Musk Sues Wachtell Law Firm to Recoup Fees From Twitter Buyout

Elon Musk has sued the elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to recover most of a $90 million fee it received from Twitter for defeating his bid to walk away from his $44 billion buyout of the social media company.

The complaint by Mr. Musk’s X Corp., which owns Twitter, was filed on Wednesday in the California Superior Court in San Francisco.

Mr. Musk accused Wachtell of exploiting Twitter by accepting, in the final days before the Oct. 27, 2022, buyout closed, huge “success” fees doled out by departing Twitter executives who were grateful that Mr. Musk would be forced to close.

The world’s richest person, who also runs Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, called the $90 million payout “unconscionable,” given that Wachtell had billed less than one-third that sum for its few months of work on the Delaware lawsuit.
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Mr. Musk wants to recoup “excess” fees that Wachtell charged under an agreement signed on the day of closing by one of its partners and Twitter’s chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde.

The complaint also quoted former Twitter director Martha Lane Fox who, upon learning how much lawyers would be paid, emailed general counsel Sean Edgett: “O My Freaking God.”
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Wachtell is no stranger to lawsuits by billionaires over buyouts, having spent years litigating with Carl Icahn over his 2012 hostile takeover of CVR Energy.

Google Will Record Everything Users Post Online to Train Its AI Products

Google will record everything people post online in order to train its artificial intelligence products.

On July 1, Google amended its privacy policy to allow it to scrape comments that posters put on the internet, to help it to hone its AI tools.

The tech company’s plan to harvest and harness online public data is raising new privacy concerns.

Google’s previous user policy stated that publicly available information would only be scraped to help train its “language models” for Google Translate.
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There are also concerns that advanced AI technology will be used to steal intellectual property and eliminate several professions done by humans, along with violating user privacy.
...
So far, the tech giant seems to have shifted its data collection focus from language to AI models, and mentioned Bard and Cloud AI for the first time in its updated service terms.

Google will keep and read any public comments from now on, with some of them being retained for chatbot training.

Twitter Threatens Legal Action Against Meta Over Rival Threads App

In a July 5 letter addressed to Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro wrote that Twitter has “serious concerns” that Meta has engaged in “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”

The lawyer then went on to accuse Meta of having hired “dozens” of former Twitter employees over the past year who he claimed “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets” and other confidential information.

Mr. Musk launched a series of layoffs at Twitter when he took over the company last year after discovering the social media site was losing over $4 million a day.
...
“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” the lawyer continued. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.”
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“Please consider this letter a formal notice that Meta must preserve any documents that could be relevant to a dispute between Twitter, Meta, and/or former Twitter employees who now work for Meta,” Mr. Musk’s attorney wrote in his letter.

Australia’s Cybersecurity Chief Confirms ‘Sensitive Government Information’ Stolen by Russian Hackers

Australia’s newly appointed national cybersecurity coordinator, Air Vice-Marshal (AVM) Darren Goldie, has confirmed that Australian government entities embroiled in the HWL Ebsworth cyberattack have had their “sensitive personal and government information” stolen by Russian cybercriminals.

This comes as over 40 Australian government agencies are feared to have been impacted by the database hacking, including Australia’s four major banks.

AVM. Goldie said that he is working with the law firm EWL Ebsworth to understand the full extent of the data breach.
...
As the cyber security chief’s first order of business, AVM. Goldie was tasked to seek briefings from the Department of Home Affairs and HWL Ebsworth on the status of the cyberattack, which occurred in April.

Of the four terabytes that were stolen by Russian cybercriminal BlackCat, approximately 1.45 terabytes of sensitive information were published by the hacking grouping on the dark web on June 8.
...
Departments such as Home Affairs, the Australian Taxation Office, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), the Defence Department, and the Australian Federal Police have been impacted by the database hacking of HWL Ebsworth.

Other governmental departments include the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury, Education, Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Industry, Science, and Resources, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT), ASIC, the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Fair Work Ombudsman, and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

 This truly smells bad. They couldn't even protect the prime minister's office from being hacked by Russians!?

[kyonides]

Judge Denies DOJ’s Request for Stay in Social Media Censorship Case

A federal judge on July 10 denied the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to stay a ruling that places limits on government communications with social media firms, rejecting the White House’s argument that such an order could put a damper on law enforcement activity online.

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote that his order last week had created exceptions for communications for cyberattacks, election interference, and national security threats. The DOJ and Biden administration, he wrote, didn’t provide any specific examples that “would provide grave harm to the American people or our democratic processes.”
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“It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”

The judge further wrote that Republican attorneys general who brought the suit are most likely going to prevail in proving that federal agencies and officials “significantly encouraged,” “coerced,” or “jointly participated” in allegedly suppressing social media posts that included information critical of COVID-19 vaccines or questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

In response, lawyers for the Biden administration’s DOJ filed an emergency stay of the injunction at the 5th U.S. District Court of Appeals. They argued that Mr. Doughty’s ruling was too vague and broad.
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It came as the attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana have submitted a petition to oppose the Biden administration’s motion to stay an injunction against its efforts allowing it to contact social media firms about a range of online content, including its efforts to flag so-called misinformation.

Over the weekend, the two states filed (pdf) a memorandum of opposition to the administration’s motion, coming days after a federal judge partially granted an injunction that blocks various Biden administration officials and government agencies such as the Justice Department and the FBI from working with big tech firms to censor posts on social media. It came in response to a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general, who accused the White House and various federal agencies of putting pressure on social media firms to take down posts or suspend accounts.
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“In the end, their position is fundamentally defiant toward the Court’s judgment. It demonstrates that the Government will continue violating First Amendment rights by censoring core political speech on social media as soon as it can get away with it. The motion to stay should be denied.”

Mr. Doughty ruled on July 4 that the Biden administration must cease contacting social media companies about a broad range of online content, including the administration’s efforts to flag alleged misinformation. The judge said that some of the administration’s past communications with social media companies violated the First Amendment and that during the pandemic, the government assumed a role similar to that of “an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.”

Apple Will Permanently Delete iPhone Photos in July

Apple will permanently delete a photo album from iPhones in about two weeks and has stopped uploading pictures to it, the company confirmed.

My Photo Stream is an iCloud service that originally launched in 2011. What the service does is temporarily uploads photos taken on a device so they can be seen on another device with My Photo Stream enabled. It also allows users to import the pictures to that device.

Up to around 1,000 photos can be stored in My Photo Stream for about 30 days. They are then automatically deleted from Apple’s iCloud.

But it will no longer be available in just a few days, and users are advised to save any photos they may have in that soon-to-be-deleted photo album.

Apple confirmed in a recent bulletin that My Photo Stream will be “shutting down” on July 26. It did not provide a reason for the shuttering of the service that was launched in 2011.

The Cupertino, California-based firm added that new photo uploads stopped on June 26. Apple then provided a statement that there “will be no photos remaining in My Photo Stream” by July 26.

“My Photo Stream is a separate service from iCloud Photos. Moving forward, iCloud Photos is the best way to keep the photos and videos you take up to date across all your devices and safely stored in iCloud,” Apple said. “If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, you don’t need to do anything else—your photos are already uploaded and stored in iCloud.”

Florida Mom Says School Ignored TikTok ‘Death Threat’ Targeting Her Child

Now the angry Polk County mother is attempting to hold her daughter’s school and the entire district school board responsible for what she sees as chronic mishandling of bullying reports.

The dispute began when a 5th-grade girl at Rosabelle W. Blake Academy in Lakeland, Florida, allegedly posted a TikTok video that dramatizes her shooting an 11-year-old classmate in the head.

The Polk County State Attorney’s Office now is deciding whether to charge the child for violating a Florida statute that makes it illegal to make “written or electronic threats to kill or do bodily injury,” according to the Lakeland Police Department.

But school officials didn’t see the video as a problem and took no action, said Trisha Brown, the mother of the child shown as slain in the video.

And after Ms. Brown took her daughter out of school for the last few weeks of the education year, she was told she’d be trespassing if she returned, she told The Epoch Times.

In a statement four days after the video was brought to the school’s attention, Polk County Public Schools released a statement saying that children “do foolish things on social media,” but said school officials take such incidents “seriously and investigate them to determine if there is a credible threat to anyone’s safety.”

Ms. Brown sees the video as a death threat.

[kyonides]

Apple Suddenly Pulls Emergency Update for iPhone Users

Apple issued new emergency updates to address a “zero-day” exploit that was being used to launch attacks on iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers, but it said a day later that the updates are causing some websites to not display properly and suggested users remove it.

According to Apple support documentation posted on Tuesday, the company is planning to release new updates to address this issue in the near future. Apple did not provide an explanation as to why the affected websites were prevented from loading correctly.
...
Users can remove the Rapid Security Response fix in iPhone or iPad by going to Open Settings, then going to About, then iOS Version, and then tap “Remove Serucity Response.” Users are then prompted to tap “Remove” to confirm their decision to remove it.

On Mac computers or laptops, users can choose the Apple menu, click About this Mac, click More Information, and then under MacOS, click the Info (i) button next to the MacOS version number. Click “Remove and Restart” before clicking again to confirm.

The Cupertino, California-based tech giant added that a new version of the updates will soon be available. It did not say when.

It came after Apple on Monday released an update for the bug, tracked as CVE-2023-37450, for iOS 16.5.1, macOS Ventura 13.4.1, and iPadOS 16.5.1, according to an announcement from Apple. It did not provide more details on the bug, as is the custom for certain patches for actively exploited bugs, but it did say that the problem could lead to arbitrary code execution.

US Judge Rules Microsoft Deal to Buy Activision Can Go Forward

A U.S. judge ruled on Tuesday that Microsoft can proceed with its planned acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion after the European Union (EU) approved the deal between the two gaming companies.

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) objected to the deal in April, arguing that it hurts consumers and that it was prepared to consider Microsoft’s proposals to resolve antitrust concerns in the United Kingdom.

The deal would be the largest for Microsoft and the biggest in the history of the videogame business. Activision shares were up 11.3 percent at $92.01, and Microsoft shares were flat.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had asked U.S. district judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco to stop the proposed deal, arguing it would give Microsoft exclusive access to Activision games, including the best-selling “Call of Duty.” The agency’s concern was that the deal would potentially preclude the availability of those videogames on other platforms.

The federal government “has not shown it is likely to succeed on its assertion the combined firm will probably pull Call of Duty from Sony PlayStation, or that its ownership of Activision content will substantially lessen competition in the video game library subscription and cloud gaming markets,” Judge Scott Corley wrote in the 53-page partially redacted opinion.

Corley’s decision is another setback in the Biden administration’s efforts to increase antitrust enforcement efforts.

The U.S. court in San Francisco gave the FTC until Friday to appeal the judge’s decision.

FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said the antitrust regulator was “disappointed in this outcome given the clear threat this merger poses to open competition in cloud gaming, subscription services, and consoles. In the coming days, we’ll announce our next step to continue our fight to preserve competition and protect consumers.”

Microsoft president Brad Smith said that the company was “grateful” for the “quick and thorough” decision.

Blue Origin Blunder: Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Company Suffers Engine Explosion During Testing

Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin suffered a rocket engine explosion during testing last month, when its BE-4 rocket engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test. The explosion destroyed the engine and severely damaged the company’s testing infrastructure.

The rocket engine explosion occurred on June 30 at Blue Origin’s facility in Texas, according to a report by CNBC News.

Sources told the outlet that they saw video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and causes severe damage to the test stand infrastructure.

“No personnel were injured and we are currently assessing root cause,” a Blue Origin spokesperson told CNBC. “We already have proximate cause and are working on remedial actions.”

The spokesperson added that the company “ran into an issue while testing Vulcan’s Flight Engine 3.”

While the explosion also suggests that the company’s already-delayed first Vulcan launch will be further pushed back, the Blue Origin spokesperson insisted “the BE-4 testing issue is not expected to impact our plans for the Vulcan Cert-1 mission.”

Taliban Backs ‘Free Speech’ Elon Musk in Twitter vs. Threads War

Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban official and member of the notorious Haqqani Network jihadist organization, endorsed Twitter over its nascent Facebook rival Threads on Monday, celebrating pro-China owner Elon Musk for allegedly protecting “freedom of speech.”

Haqqani condemned Facebook and Threads’s parent organization, “Meta,” for being “intolerant,” presumably to Sunni jihadist ideology, in a post on Twitter apparently indicating that the de facto Afghan government and terrorist organization’s plans to continue using Twitter as its preferred publicity platform for the foreseeable future.

Meta launched Threads last week, marketing it as a “sanely run” alternative to Twitter, suggesting more limits on speech on the platform. Threads notably began its run last week by censoring Donald Trump, Jr., on its first day, warning users that his account allegedly offended “our independent fact-checkers.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg explicitly compared the social media network to Twitter, which he claimed had not “nailed” its function to users. The Facebook corporation claimed that over 50 million new profiles were created on Threads during its first day of operation, generating 95 million posts.
...
[Anas Haqqani] weighed into the debate over Meta’s challenge to Twitter on Monday with an endorsement of the latter.

‘Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms. The first privilege is the freedom of speech,” Haqqani wrote. “The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it.”

Taliban leaders have shown a preference for Twitter long before Musk purchased the platform and remain highly active online. Only about 15 percent of Afghans have access to the internet, indicating that their posts are mostly meant for an international audience, even when written in Pashto or other regional languages. The jihadist group releases many of its official “government” statements through the official account of its top spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid. The official spokesman of the Taliban’s “Foreign Affairs Ministry,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, is also a prolific user, sharing images of high-level meetings with foreign officials and other state business. The official Taliban news agency, Bakhtar, also maintains Twitter profiles in multiple languages and updates regularly.

Hackers Steal Personal Data of 11 Million People From HCA Healthcare

HCA Healthcare, one of the largest companies in the United States, announced on Monday that hackers breached its system and stole the personal data of 11 million patients.

In its announcement, the company said the patient accounts were posted by an unknown and unauthorized party on an online forum.

The health care company’s dataset has approximately 27 million accounts, which include patients’ personal information and certain visit records, and HCA believes that some of it is now up for sale.

HCA said the data breach did not apparently include critical medical records and that the files were stolen from an “external storage location exclusively used to automate the formatting of email messages.”

The compromised information does not include clinical data such as treatment, diagnosis, or condition information; payment information; user passwords; driver’s licenses; or Social Security numbers, according to HCA.

However, the health care provider confirmed that patient names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and information about medical appointments were stolen.

Some experts say that the stolen data can still be used for fraud or identity theft.

WeChat Warned It Could Be Banned After Refusing to Appear at Australian Govt Inquiry

The chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, Sen. James Paterson, said at a press conference on July 11 that the refusal showed how little regard WeChat and its parent company Tencent, which is tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has for Australia’s democratic process.
...
A Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app, WeChat, which is alternatively known as Weixin, was developed by the major conglomerate Tencent. Globally it was used by over 1.2 billion active users in the month of September 2020, with around 690,000 daily active users in Australia.

Sen. Paterson noted that WeChat was the only major social media company that refused to attend the hearings, which he said was deeply disturbing because the inquiry would draw conclusions from their lack of openness.
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The senator speaking to Sky News on July 11, also said the refusal raised “very grave doubts about their willingness to comply with Australian law.”

As WeChat has no legal presence in Australia, the government has no power to compel the company to attend the inquiry.
...
WeChat’s refusal to attend the inquiry comes after Seth Kaplan, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, who advises organizations such as the United Nations, U.S. State Department, and the OECD, told the parliamentary inquiry in April that he believed WeChat posed a bigger risk than TikTok.

“Everything that we fear about what TikTok may become already is occurring on WeChat,” Mr. Kaplan said.

“Narratives are managed, information in there is managed, dissenting views are demoted or eliminated, and it’s basically a narrative machine for the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and what it wants to promote similar to what actually happens in China.”

He warned that where WeChat exists, it is monitoring, surveilling, and developing a strong influence on the Chinese diaspora community, making it vulnerable to false narratives and manipulation.