Big Tech rolls on as investors shrug off regulatory pressure

WASHINGTON - Pressure is rising on Big Tech firms, signaling tougher regulation in Washington and elsewhere that could lead to the breakup of the largest platforms. But you'd hardly know by looking at their share prices.

Shares in Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet have hovered near record highs in recent weeks, lifted by pandemic-fueled surges in sales and profits that have helped the big firms extend their dominance of key economic sectors.

The Biden administration has given signs of more aggressive regulation with appointments of Big Tech critics at the Federal Trade Commission. 

But that has failed to dent the momentum of the largest tech firms, despite tough talk and antitrust litigation in the United States and Europe, with US lawmakers eyeing moves to make antitrust enforcement easier.

Big Tech critics in the United States and the EU want Apple and Google to loosen the grip of their online app marketplaces; more competition in a digital advertising market dominated by Google and Facebook; and better access to Amazon's e-commerce platform by third-party sellers.

One lawsuit tossed out by a judge but in the process of being refiled could force Facebook to spin off its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, and some activists and lawmakers are pressing for breakups of the four tech giants.

All four have hit market valuations above $1 trillion, with Apple over $2 trillion. Alphabet shares are up some 80 percent from a year ago, with Facebook up nearly 40 percent and Apple almost 30 percent. Amazon shares are roughly on par with last year's level after breaking records in July.

Microsoft, with a $2 trillion valuation, has largely escaped antitrust scrutiny, even as it has benefitted from the cloud computing trend.

The surging growth has stoked complaints that the strongest firms are extending their dominance and squeezing out rivals. 

Yet analysts say any aggressive actions, in the legal or legislative arena, could take years to play out and face challenges. 

Fast-moving environment 

"Breakup is going to be nearly impossible," said analyst Daniel Newman at Futurum Research, citing the need for controversial legislative changes to antitrust laws.

Newman said a more likely outcome would be multibillion-dollar fines that the companies could easily absorb as they adjust their business models to adapt to problematic issues in a fast-moving environment.

"These companies have more resources and know-how than the regulators," he said.

Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities said any antitrust action would likely require legislative change -- unlikely with a divided Congress.

"Until investors start to see some consensus on where the regulatory and law changes go from an antitrust perspective, it's a contained risk, and they see a green light to buy tech," he said.

Other factors supporting Big Tech include a massive shift to cloud computing and online activities that allow the strongest players to benefit, and a crackdown in China on its large technology firms.

"The China regulatory crackdown has been so massive in scale and scope, it has driven investors from Chinese tech to US tech," Ives said. 

"Even though there is regulatory risk in the US, it pales in comparison to the crackdown we're seeing from Beijing."

Analysts say the big tech firms are also well-positioned to deal with tougher regulations.

Tracy Li of the investment firm Capital Group, in a recent blog post that the tech giants face major risks in regulation around privacy, content moderation and antitrust.

"Concerns related to privacy or content may actually strengthen, rather than weaken, the moats of the largest platforms," Li said. 

"These companies often boast well-established protocols and have more resources to tackle privacy and legal matters."

Facebook 'gold mine' 

Other analysts point to the swift movement by tech firms to adapt their business models in contrast to the slow efforts to regulate. 

Facebook, for example, is adapting to changing conditions by moving into the "Metaverse" of virtual and augmented reality experiences, noted Ali Mogharabi at Morningstar.

Mogharabi said Facebook's vast data collected from its 2.5 billion users gives it the ability to withstand a regulatory onslaught.

"Antitrust enforcement and further regulations pose a threat to Facebook's intangible assets, data," the analyst said in a July 29 note.

"However, increased restrictions on data access and usage would apply to all firms, not just Facebook."

Independent analyst Eric Seufert said in a tweet that "regulatory changes will have a significant impact on Facebook's business, but the sheer scale of Facebook and the growth trajectory of digital advertising ameliorate that. Facebook's gold mine is far from depleted."

Newman said the large tech firms have expanded during the pandemic by delivering innovative services, extending a trend that has seen the strong get stronger.

"These platforms have created better experiences for consumers, but it is extremely difficult for new entrants," he said.

For investors, Newman added, "that means no one is creating revenue and profit growth faster." 

Agence France-Presse

  

Facebook sparks row by cutting off researchers

WASHINGTON - Facebook has cut off some academic researchers for "scraping" data from the platform, sparking a fresh controversy about the leading social network's transparency to outside experts studying misinformation and abusive content.

The California tech giant acted late Tuesday to block the research from New York University's Ad Observatory Project, citing privacy concerns.

Facebook product management director Mike Clark said the accounts from the project were disabled "to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people's privacy in line with our privacy program."

The NYU project had been at loggerheads for months with Facebook over the program, which used a browser tool to collect data on ads spreading political hoaxes, violence and Covid-19 misinformation.

"Research cannot be the justification for compromising people's privacy," Clark said in a blog post, arguing that the researchers were collecting user names, ads, and links to user profiles even for people who did not install the browser tool or consent to the collection.

But the Facebook move prompted an angry response from researchers and free-speech activists who argued the social network is blocking independent access to its internal tools.

"Over the last several years, we've used this access to uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, to identify misinformation in political ads, including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebook's apparent amplification of partisan misinformation," said Laura Edelson, the NYU researcher heading the project.

"By suspending our accounts, Facebook has tried to shut down all this work. Facebook has also effectively cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who get access to Facebook data through our project, including our work measuring vaccine misinformation."

The row marked the latest clash for Facebook, which has sought to clamp down on third parties with access to private user data while at the same seeking to enable outside researchers to study its inner workings. 

Facebook claims it took the action in compliance with a 2019 settlement with US regulators on user privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which data was scraped for political ad targeting.

But critics said Facebook needs more transparency.

"We can't allow Facebook to decide what the public gets to know about Facebook. Independent research that respects user privacy is absolutely crucial right now," said Alex Abdo of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

"It's essential to figuring out how disinformation spreads on the platform, how advertisers exploit Facebook's micro-targeting tools, and how Facebook's system of amplification may be pushing us further apart."

Matt Bailey of the writers' free expression group PEN America said the action "is part of a larger pattern of Facebook seeking to undercut or silence anyone analyzing the platforms' practices from the outside."

Agence France-Presse

Apple doubles down on privacy in new iPhone software

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple on Monday said it is ramping up privacy and expanding features in new iPhone operating software to be released later this year.

The Silicon Valley technology colossus opened its annual developers conference by teasing improvements to security, privacy and interoperability of its devices, even as the company remains under fire for its tight control of its App Store.

"All of this incredible software will be available to all of our users this fall," Apple chief executive Tim Cook said during the Worldwide Developers Conference opening presentation.

"I am so excited for these new releases and how they will make our products even more powerful and more capable."

The next version of iPhone operating software, called iOS 15, will have improved privacy features including overviews of how apps access smartphone cameras or microphones as well as data such as location or contacts.

"We don't think you should have to make a trade-off between great features and privacy," said Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi.

Apple added notifications on "tracking" in the current version of its mobile operating system, to the chagrin of app-makers such as Facebook that contended it would undermine the targeting of ads that support free online content.

The update comes with Apple being challenged on several fronts over its control of apps on its ecosystem.

Fortnite maker Epic Games has accused Apple in a lawsuit of having monopoly power with its App Store that serves as the sole gateway onto iPhones or iPads.

Apple booted Fortnite from its App Store last year after Epic dodged agreed-upon revenue sharing with the iPhone maker.

The European Union has formally accused Apple of unfairly squeezing out music streaming rivals based on a complaint brought by Sweden-based Spotify and others, which claim the California group sets rules that favor its own Apple Music.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, who has described Apple as a rival, on Monday put out work that creators will continue to pay nothing to host paid or subscription events at the leading social network until the year 2023.

"And when we do introduce a revenue share, it will be less than the 30 percent that Apple and others take," Zuckerberg said in a post at his Facebook page.

Agence France-Presse

Data from 500 million Facebook accounts posted online: reports

WASHINGTON - Data affecting more than 500 million Facebook users that was originally leaked in 2019, including email addresses and phone numbers, has been posted on an online hackers forum, according to media reports and a cybercrime expert.

"All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free," Alon Gal, chief technology officer at the Hudson Rock cybercrime intelligence firm, said Saturday on Twitter.

He denounced what he called the "absolute negligence" of Facebook.

Some of the data appeared to be current, according to a report in Business Insider which AFP was unable to confirm independently. It said some of the leaked phone numbers still belong to the owners of Facebook accounts.

"This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked," Gal said. 

But Facebook said the reports were old news.

"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019," a company spokesperson told AFP. "We found and fixed this issue in August 2019."

Close to 32 million American accounts and 20 million French accounts were among those affected, Gal tweeted in January, when the person holding the data was trying to sell it. 

The data include phone numbers, complete names, birthdates and, for some accounts, email addresses and relationship status.

"Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing," Gal said on Twitter.

This is not the first time leaks or use of data from the world's largest social network -- with nearly two billion users -- has embroiled Facebook in controversy.

In 2016, a scandal around Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to target political ads, cast a shadow over the social network and its handling of private information.

Agence France-Presse

Apple adding privacy fact labels to App Store items

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Apple on Monday began adding labels that reveal what user data is gathered by games, chat or other software offered in the App Store for its popular mobile devices.

The iPhone maker announced plans for such "privacy labels" when it first unveiled the new version of its iOS mobile operating system, which it released in September.

"App Store product pages will feature summaries of developers' self-reported privacy practices, displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format," Apple said in a blog post when iOS 14 launched.

"Starting early next year, all apps will be required to obtain user permission before tracking."

Apple began pushing out the labels on Monday, with the rule applying to new apps for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Mac computers.

The labels will contain information provided by developers when they submit apps for approval to appear on the App Store's virtual shelves, according to the Silicon Valley-based company.

Apple last week began requiring developers to submit privacy information for use in labels.

"Apple recently required that all apps distributed via their App Store display details designed to show people how their data may be used," Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp said in a blog post explaining what data the app gathers.

"We must collect some information to provide a reliable global communications service."

The aim, according to Apple, is for users to be able to easily see and understand what apps do with their data, from lists of contacts to where they are.

Data types added to labels will include tracking in order to target advertising or sharing with data brokers, as well as information that could reveal user identity.

Apple and Android mobile operating systems provide tools for controlling the kinds of data apps can access once they are installed.

Agence France-Presse

US seeks data on how Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others use personal data

WASHINGTON - The Federal Trade Commission is seeking information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media and video streaming companies about how they use the personal information that they collect on their users, the U.S. agency said on Monday.

In addition to Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc, the orders requesting data were sent to Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, Amazon.com Inc, China's ByteDance unit TikTok, Discord Inc, Reddit Inc, Snap Inc, and Google subsidiary YouTube LLC.

The FTC is seeking to learn how the companies collect data on users, how they decide which advertisements to show and how algorithms are used, among other information, the agency said in a statement. It is also seeking information about how the companies' practices affect children and teenagers.

The companies have 45 days to respond to the orders, which are usually used to generate policy or recommend legislation.

In a joint statement, two Democratic members of the commission, Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Slaughter, and one Republican, Christine Wilson, noted their impetus for the order.

"Never before has there been an industry capable of surveilling and monetizing so much of our personal lives," they wrote. "Social media and video streaming companies now follow users everywhere through apps on their always-present mobile devices. This constant access allows these firms to monitor where users go, the people with whom they interact, and what they are doing. ... Too much about the industry remains dangerously opaque.

Discord said it looked forward to answering the FTC's questions. "We make no money from advertising, selling user data to advertisers, or sharing users' personal information with others. Instead, the company generates its revenue directly from users through a paid subscription service," a spokesperson said in an email statement.

None of the other companies immediately responded to a request for comment. 

(Reporting by Diane Bartz Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Richard Chang)

-reuters-

Microsoft aims to help businesses get handle on data with new tool

Microsoft Corp on Thursday announced a new cloud-based tool designed to help corporate customers understand where data is scattered throughout their operations and whether they are in compliance with data privacy regulations.

Once known for its Windows operating system and applications such as Office, Microsoft has built a large business in cloud computing, helping store and process huge amounts of data for corporate customers.

Last year, it introduced a tool called Azure Synapse that is being used by companies such as FedEx Corp to analyze the flow of its 16 million daily packages.

But for large companies, stores of data have become so large, and distributed across so many countries, that Microsoft is rolling out a tool called Azure Purview to help companies better understand precisely what information they have and where it resides.

In particular, the tool is designed to help data privacy and risk management officials ensure their companies are in compliance with rules such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, John "JG" Chirapurath, vice president of Azure data, artificial intelligence and edge, told Reuters in an interview.

The new tool uses artificial intelligence to detect sensitive or regulated data and can automatically mask it out, for example by redacting data on European customers from a sales report to U.S. employees who are not authorized to access it.

"It's one thing to generate insights from data, but it's another thing to ask questions about the data itself. Can we use this data? Are we being responsible with the fair use of this data?" Chirapurath said. "These might seem like esoteric terms, but they are vital to how we run modern businesses. You have to be able to trust your data."

Microsoft said on Thursday the service was being used by a handful of customers, and Chirapurath said it was expected to become generally available "shortly."

-reuters-

Facebook launches dating service in Europe

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it is launching its dating service, Facebook Dating, in 32 countries in Europe after the launch was delayed earlier this year due to regulatory concerns.

The social media company postponed the rollout of the service in Europe in February after Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the main regulator in the European Union for a number of the world's biggest technology firms including Facebook, raised concerns about the launch.

Facebook Dating announced the launch of the services in the United States in September last year. It is currently available in 20 other countries.

-reuters-

Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

SAN FRANCISCO, United State - A group of European digital advertising associations on Friday criticized Apple Inc's plans to require apps to seek additional permission from users before tracking them across other apps and websites.

Apple last week disclosed features in its forthcoming operating system for iPhones and iPads that will require apps to show a pop-up screen before they enable a form of tracking commonly needed to show personalized ads.

Sixteen marketing associations, some of which are backed by Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, faulted Apple for not adhering to an ad-industry system for seeking user consent under European privacy rules. Apps will now need to ask for permission twice, increasing the risk users will refuse, the associations argued.

Facebook and Google are the largest among thousands of companies that track online consumers to pick up on their habits and interests and serve them relevant ads.

Apple said the new feature was aimed at giving users greater transparency over how their information is being used. In training sessions at a developer conference last week, Apple showed that developers can present any number of additional screens beforehand to explain why permission is needed before triggering its pop-up.

The pop-up says an app "would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies" and gives the app developer several lines below the main text to explain why the permission is sought. It is not required until an app seeks access to a numeric identifier that can be used for tracking, and apps only need to secure permission once.

The group of European marketing firms said the pop-up warning and the limited ability to customize it still carries "a high risk of user refusal."

Apple engineers also said last week the company will bolster a free Apple-made tool that uses anonymous, aggregated data to measure whether advertising campaigns are working and that will not trigger the pop-up.

"Because it's engineered to not track users, there's no need to request permission to track," Brandon Van Ryswyk, an Apple privacy engineer, said in a video session explaining the measurement tool to developers.

-reuters-

Instagram to collect ages in leap for youth safety, alcohol ads

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc's Instagram said it will require birthdates from all new users starting on Wednesday, expanding the audience for ads for alcohol and other age-restricted products while offering new safety measures for younger users.

Until now, Instagram except for limited circumstances has required its 1 billion users only to say they are at least 13 years old.

Instagram said advertisers were not the driving force for the new requirement. Gambling and birth control are among other types of ads restricted to older audiences by Instagram policies and laws.

The policy change could help stave off passage of costly child safety and data privacy regulations as lawmakers and family safety groups in the United States, Britain and elsewhere criticize the app for exposing children to inappropriate material.

The birthdate requirement is the latest step Instagram has taken to move away from longstanding principles such as anonymity that had distinguished it from Facebook's namesake app.

"Understanding how old people are is quite important to the work we're doing, not only to create age-appropriate experiences but to live up to our longstanding rule to not allow access to young people," Instagram's head of product Vishal Shah said in an interview with Reuters.

He declined to specify age-based features in testing, but said age could be the basis for recommended privacy settings or in-app education about staying safe online. Birthdates will not be visible to other users.

In addition, Instagram will introduce in the coming weeks options for users to block messages from people they do not follow and for both businesses and popular users who are known as "creators" to more easily restrict minors from viewing their posts, Shah said.

Scrutiny of Instagram increased as it overtook Facebook's main app in popularity among teens and young adults and became a leading contributor to Facebook's revenue growth.

NO VERIFICATION

Instagram will not verify birthdates because teens often cannot prove their age, and it will still be left without birthdays of some existing users. Instagram expects most people will be honest about birthdates and said artificial intelligence could eventually aid verification.

Jeffrey Chester, who focuses on kids' safety issues at the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy, described Instagram's new policy as "long overdue" to come in step with U.S. laws aimed at preserving the online privacy of children under 13.

But the London-based National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said asking for "an unverifiable date of birth will do nothing in practice to protect children from harmful or age-inappropriate content."

Until now, Instagram required birthdates only in limited circumstances.

Users who had merged their Instagram profile and Facebook account, which requires a birthdate to create, turned over the data. Minors in the European Union over the last 18 months also had to submit birthdates so the company could comply with the region's new data privacy law, known commonly as GDPR.

The existing birthdays, along with some rough analysis by workers poring over posts mentioning "happy birthday" and other terms, has helped Instagram train machine learning software that predicts a user's age and gender.

The automated prediction also takes into account the variety of posts someone makes and the hashtags used.

Instagram employs its predictions to understand usage patterns by age and gender. But Shah said Instagram is reluctant to use predictions to personalize features or determine whether someone is lying about their age because of reliability and transparency concerns.

The forthcoming birthdate data will help improve accuracy, Shah said.

"It's important for us to use people's explicit (birthdate) input for now, but that might change," he said.

Current users who have not linked their Instagram and Facebook accounts will be able to add their birthdates starting Wednesday, but the company is still debating whether it would be too intrusive to make it mandatory, Shah said.

Instagram knows whether some of those users are adults, for instance, because it asks them to say so before looking at profiles of alcohol and sexually explicit businesses.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

TikTok sued in US over alleged China data transfer

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - A university student in California has filed a class-action lawsuit against video app TikTok, which she accuses of harvesting large amounts of user data and storing it in China.

"TikTok clandestinely has vacuumed up and transferred to servers in China vast quantities of private and personally-identifiable user data," the court filing said.

Misty Hong, a student in Palo Alto, California, filed the suit against the Chinese-based app in California federal court last week, according to a report in The Daily Beast on Monday.

The video platform, which is hugely popular with teenagers around the world, was launched by Chinese company ByteDance in September 2017.

"TikTok also has surreptitiously taken user content, such as draft videos never intended for publication, without user knowledge or consent," the lawsuit alleges.

"In short, TikTok's lighthearted fun comes at a heavy cost," it said.

The suit marks the latest legal battle for the app. In early November, the US government opened a national security investigation into TikTok, according to the New York Times, potentially looking into whether the app was sending data to China.

Hong alleges that the app retrieved her data without permission -- including videos that she had created but not shared online -- and transferred them to servers run by companies that cooperate with the Chinese government.

She filed the suit on behalf of the approximately 110 million US residents who have downloaded the app.

TikTok did not immediately reply to AFP's request for response.

In November, it said it could not comment on a possible US investigation but emphasized that the respect of US users and regulators was its highest priority.

TikTok has distanced itself from Chinese authorities, maintaining that its servers are located outside of the country and that its data is therefore not subject to Chinese law.

In November, the app hit 1.5 billion downloads worldwide, outperforming Instagram.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

EU to check how Facebook, Google use personal data

The European Commission said Monday it had begun a "preliminary investigation" into how Facebook and Google collect personal data and what they do with it.

"The Commission has sent out questionnaires as part of a preliminary investigation into Google’s and Facebook’s data practices," a Commission spokeswoman told AFP.

"These investigations concern the way data is gathered, processed, used and monetized including for advertising purposes," she added.

The Commission did not say who exactly the questionnaires were sent to. It is a step that could lead to a formal investigation.

Facebook vice president Nick Clegg was asked about the probe during a press conference in Brussels but did not answer directly.

Facebook faces investigations worldwide, he said.

Clegg nonetheless warned EU regulators not to let themselves get misled by faulty reasoning when it comes to data.

"This phrase you often hear that data is oil is deeply unhelpful because data is nothing like oil," Clegg said.

"It's not something that you suck out of the ground and burn in a vehicle engine and that's it. Data is infinitely divisible and infinitely sharable," he added.

"Data is something that you can both share and keep at the same time," Clegg noted.

"For a data intensive companies like FB we would urge regulators and legislators not to be trapped by analog parallels which don’t apply to the digital world," he said.

A Google spokesman said in an e-mail to AFP: "We use data to make our services more useful and to show relevant advertising, and we give people the controls to manage, delete or transfer their data. 

"We will continue to engage with the Commission and others on this important discussion for our industry."

In September 2016, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager warned that she would keep a close eye on companies that collect and use data such as Facebook, WhatsApp or Google.

Since she began working at the commission in November 2014, Vestager has hit Google with three major fines for abusing its dominant market position in different sectors.

Vestager has been promoted to vice president in the new European Commission and still holds the competition portfolio in addition to a new one on regulation of the digital sector.

Meanwhile on Monday, Facebook announced a new tool for Irish users to easily transfer photos and video footage towards Google Photos, which is owned by its competitor.

Facebook said it would extend the service at some point to other countries and internet platforms.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

EU antitrust regulators probes Google's data collection

BRUSSELS - EU antitrust regulators are investigating Google's collection of data, the European Commission told Reuters on Saturday, suggesting the world's most popular internet search engine remains in its sights despite record fines in recent years.

Competition enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic are now looking into how dominant tech companies use and monetize data.

The EU executive said it was seeking information on how and why Alphabet unit Google is collecting data, confirming a Reuters story on Friday.

"The Commission has sent out questionnaires as part of a preliminary investigation into Google's practices relating to Google's collection and use of data. The preliminary investigation is ongoing," the EU regulator told Reuters in an email.

A document seen by Reuters shows the EU's focus is on data related to local search services, online advertising, online ad targeting services, login services, web browsers and others.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has handed down fines totaling more than 8 billion euros to Google in the last two years and ordered it to change its business practices.

Google has said it uses data to better its services and that users can manage, delete and transfer their data at any time. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Web inventor Berners-Lee launches plan to stop internet abuse

BERLIN - World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee on Monday unveiled a "Contract for the Web" to halt "misuse" by governments, companies and individuals, bringing several capitals and tech titans like Google aboard.

"If we don't act now -- and act together -- to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering" its potential for good, Berners-Lee said in a statement from his World Wide Web Foundation.

Credited with laying the groundwork for the web -- the universe of multimedia webpages accessible via the internet -- in 1989, the computer scientist has since last year been developing the so-called Contract for the Web.

His unveiling of the final document Monday comes as government, business and civil society leaders gather in Berlin for the four-day UN Internet Governance Forum.

Berners-Lee said his contract, developed in cooperation with dozens of experts and members of the public, is "a roadmap to build a better web."

He called on governments to "strengthen laws and regulations" and companies "to ensure pursuit of profit is not at the expense of human rights and democracy."

"Citizens must hold those in power accountable, demand their digital rights be respected and help foster healthy conversation online," Berners-Lee added.

More than 150 organisations including companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Reddit and interest groups like Reporters Without Borders and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have backed the plan.

Meanwhile, the governments of France, Germany and Ghana are on board, as are thousands of individuals.

"I will stand up for the preservation of the free internet that we have grown to know and love in recent decades," German economy minister Peter Altmaier said in a statement ahead of the UN gathering.

Berners-Lee originally conceived the web while working at European particle physics lab CERN, as a way for scientists around the world to share information about their research.

But in recent years he has grown alarmed by abuse of the technology in society, business and politics.

The WWW Foundation highlighted rising cyber-bullying, growing use of the web by politicians to manipulate news media and widespread online scams.

It also noted that rates of web access in emerging economies lag far behind those in industrialized nations, with 46 percent of people worldwide not online.

"We need real and durable involvement of emerging and developing countries," Germany's Altmaier said. "Free access to the internet must be a fundamental, human right, valid for people around the world."

As well as his "Contract for the Web," Berners-Lee has looked to tackle the web's issues from a technical angle, in 2018 launching a development platform called "Solid" aimed at giving users control of their data.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Google, Facebook business models threat to human rights: Amnesty

SAN FRANCISCO -- The data-collection business model fueling Facebook and Google represents a threat to human rights around the world, Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday.

The organization argued that offering people free online services and then using information about them to target money-making ads imperils a gamut of rights including freedom of opinion and expression.

"Despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook's platforms come at a systemic cost," Amnesty said in its report, "Surveillance Giants."

"The companies' surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse."

With ubiquitous surveillance, the two online giants are able to collect massive amounts of data which may be used against their customers, according to the London-based human rights group.

The business model is "inherently incompatible with the right to privacy," Amnesty contended.

The report maintained that the two Silicon Valley firms have established "near-total dominance over the primary channels through which people connect and engage with the online world," giving them unprecedented power over people's lives.

"Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives -- amassing unparalleled power over the digital world by harvesting and monetizing the personal data of billions of people," said Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International's secretary general.

"Their insidious control of our digital lives undermines the very essence of privacy and is one of the defining human rights challenges of our era."

The report called for governments to implement policies that ensure access to online services while protecting user privacy.

"Governments have an obligation to protect people from human rights abuses by corporations," Amnesty maintained.

"But for the past two decades, technology companies have been largely left to self-regulate."

DISPUTE ON FINDINGS

Facebook pushed back against what it contended were inaccuracies in the report, saying it strongly disagreed with its business model being characterized as surveillance-based.

"Our business model is what allows us to offer an important service where people can exercise foundational human rights -- to have a voice (freedom of expression) and be able to connect (freedom of association and assembly)," said a letter from Facebook privacy and public policy director Steve Satterfield in an annex to the Amnesty report.

"Facebook's business model is not, as your summary suggests, driven by the collection of data about people."

Facebook spotlighted its measures implemented which limit data information used for ad targeting; controls provided to users regarding their data; and steps taken to restrict abuses by apps on the social network.

"As you correctly note, we do not sell data; we sell ads," Facebook said.

Facebook chief and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has called for governments to implement uniform rules regarding data-handling instead of leaving private companies to make crucial social decisions such as the limits of free speech.

Google did not offer a specific written response.

But the Amnesty report noted that Google announced this month it would limit data that it shares with advertisers through its ad auction platform, following the launch of an inquiry by the Irish data protection authority and had launched a new feature allowing users to delete location data.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

EXPLAINER: End-to-end encryption and chat privacy

SAN FRANCISCO — A Justice Department official hinted on Monday that a years-long fight over encrypted communications could become part of a sweeping investigation of big tech companies.

While a department spokesman declined to discuss specifics, a speech Monday by the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, pointed toward heightened interest in technology called end-to-end encryption, which makes it nearly impossible for law enforcement and spy agencies to access people’s digital communications.

Law enforcement and technologists have been arguing over encryption controls for more than two decades. On one side are privacy advocates and tech bosses like Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, who believe people should be able to have online communications free of snooping. On the other side are law enforcement and some lawmakers, who believe tough encryption makes it impossible to track child predators, terrorists and other criminals.

Attorney General William P. Barr, joined by his British and Australian counterparts, recently pressed Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to abandon plans to embed end-to-end encryption in services like Messenger and Instagram. WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, already provides that tougher encryption.

“Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes,” Barr wrote in a letter last month.

Here is an explanation of the technology and the stakes.

HOW DOES THE ENCRYPTION WORK?

End-to-end encryption scrambles messages in such a way that they can be deciphered only by the sender and the intended recipient. As the label implies, end-to-end encryption takes place on either end of a communication. A message is encrypted on a sender’s device, sent to the recipient’s device in an unreadable format, then decoded for the recipient.

There are several ways to do this, but the most popular works like this: A program on your device mathematically generates two cryptographic keys — a public key and a private key.

The public key can be shared with anyone who wants to encrypt a message to you. The private key, or secret key, decrypts messages sent to you and never leaves your device. Think of it like a locked mailbox. Anyone with a public key can put something in your box and lock it, but only you have the private key to unlock it.

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER FORMS OF ENCRYPTION?

A more common form of encryption, known as transport layer encryption, relies on a third party, like a tech company, to encrypt messages as they move across the web.

With this type of encryption, law enforcement and intelligence agencies can get access to encrypted messages by presenting technology companies with a warrant or national security letter. The sender and recipient would not have to know about it.

End-to-end encryption ensures that no one can eavesdrop on the contents of a message while it is in transit. It forces spies or snoops to go directly to the sender or recipient to read the content of the encrypted message. Or they must hack directly into the sender’s or recipient’s device, something that can be harder to do “at scale” and makes mass surveillance much more difficult.

Privacy activists, libertarians, security experts and human rights activists argue that end-to-end encryption steers governments away from mass surveillance and toward a more targeted, constitutional form of intelligence gathering. But intelligence and law enforcement agencies argue that end-to-end encryption makes it much harder to track terrorists, pedophiles and human traffickers.

When Zuckerberg announced in March that Facebook would move all three of its messaging services to end-to-end encryption, he acknowledged the risk it presented for “truly terrible things like child exploitation.”

“Encryption is a powerful tool for privacy, but that includes the privacy of people doing bad things,” he said.

HASN'T THIS DEBATE BEEN AROUND FOR DECADES?

The debate over end-to-end encryption has had several iterations, beginning in the 1990s with the spread of Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, software, an end-to-end encryption scheme designed by a programmer named Phil Zimmermann. As a result, the Clinton administration proposed a “Clipper Chip,” a back door for law enforcement and security agencies.

But the Clipper Chip provoked a backlash from a coalition of unlikely bedfellows, including the American Civil Liberties Union; televangelist Pat Robertson; and Sens. John Kerry, (Democrat, Massachusetts), and John Ashcroft, (Republican, Montana). The White House backed down in 1996.

End-to-end encryption gained more traction in 2013, after data leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden appeared to show the extent to which the NSA and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies were gaining access to users’ communications through companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Facebook without their knowledge.

Encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Wicker gained in popularity, and tech giants like Apple and Facebook started wrapping user data in end-to-end encryption.

Google, which pledged to add an end-to-end encryption option for Gmail users several years ago, has not made this the default option for email. But the company does offer a video-calling app, Duo, that is end-to-end encrypted.

As more communications moved to these end-to-end encrypted services, law enforcement and intelligence services around the world started to complain about data’s “going dark.”

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS DOING?

Government agencies have tried to force technology companies to roll back end-to-end encryption, or build back doors, like the Clipper Chip of the 1990s, into their encrypted products to facilitate government surveillance.

In the most aggressive of these efforts, the FBI tried in 2016 to compel Apple in federal court to unlock the iPhone of one of the attackers in the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Cook of Apple called the FBI’s effort “the software equivalent of cancer.” He said complying with the request would open the door to more invasive government interception down the road.

“Maybe it’s an operating system for surveillance, maybe the ability for the law enforcement to turn on the camera,” Cook told ABC News. “I don’t know where it stops.”

Privacy activists and security experts noted that any back door created for US law enforcement agencies would inevitably become a target for foreign adversaries, cybercriminals and terrorists.

Alex Stamos, chief security officer of Yahoo at the time, likened the creation of an encryption back door to “drilling a hole in the windshield.” By trying to provide an entry point for one government, you end up cracking the structural integrity of the entire encryption shield.

The FBI eventually backed down. Instead of forcing Apple to create a back door, the agency said it had paid an outside party to hack into the phone of the San Bernardino gunman.

SO WHAT NOW?

Governments have stepped up their calls for an encryption back door.

Last year, Australian lawmakers passed a bill requiring technology companies to provide law enforcement and security agencies with access to encrypted communications. The bill gave the government the ability to get a court order allowing it to secretly order technology companies and technologists to re-engineer software and hardware so that it can be used to spy on users.

Australia’s law is based on Britain’s 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, which compels British companies to hand over the keys to unscramble encrypted data to law enforcement agencies. The Australian law could apply to overseas companies like Facebook and Apple.

Australia’s new law applies to network administrators, developers and other tech employees, forcing them to comply with secret government demands without notifying their employers.

Other governments are also considering new encryption laws. In India, Facebook’s biggest market, officials told the country’s Supreme Court in October that Indian law requires Facebook to decrypt messages and supply them to law enforcement upon request.

“They can’t come into the country and say, ‘We will establish a non-decryptable system,’” India’s attorney general, K.K. Venugopal, told the court, referring to Facebook and other big tech platforms. India’s Supreme Court has said it will reconvene on the issue in January.


2019 The New York Times Company

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Facebook executives planned 'switcharoo' on data policy change - court filings

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc began cutting off access to user data for app developers from 2012 to squash potential rivals while presenting the move to the general public as a boon for user privacy, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters.

Some executives at the world's biggest social network appeared to refer to the strategy of promoting a privacy-focused explanation for the change as the "Switcharoo Plan," internal emails included in sealed California court filings show.

The emergence of nearly 7,000 pages of company emails and executive documents comes as Facebook faces multiple investigations into possible antitrust violations by regulators around the world.

The emails could supply valuable evidence to investigators, including a U.S. House of Representatives panel that sought company records in September on Facebook's decisions to bar apps from its social graph, which maps out relations between users.

The documents come from a lawsuit filed in 2015 by Six4Three, the developer of a now-shuttered bikini photo app that lost access to Facebook user data as a result of the changes, which were announced in 2014 and implemented the following year.

Six4Three alleges that Facebook's data policies were anticompetitive and that the company misrepresented those policies both to developers and the public.

Facebook has described the case as baseless. A company spokeswoman told Reuters the documents were "taken out of context by someone with an agenda against Facebook" and made public "with a total disregard for U.S. law."

Portions of the material have been released over the course of the past year, after a British lawmaker obtained them, but provided an incomplete picture of the period between 2012 and 2014 when policy changes were debated within the company.

The new documents contain exchanges between executives discussing cutting off access to user data for developers seen as potential competitors at a time when the company said publicly that it provided an open and neutral platform.

One executive, writing in 2013, described dividing apps into "three buckets: existing competitors, possible future competitors, developers that we have alignment with on business models" as part of the project to restrict access to user data, dubbed 'PS12N'.

Those in the last category were able to regain access by agreeing to make mobile advertising purchases or provide reciprocal user data to Facebook under "Private Extended API Agreements," according to the emails.

As thousands of developers lost access to user data, the executives decided to announce the changes publicly. They elected to link what they referred to as the "'bad stuff' of PS12N" to an unrelated update of the Facebook login system which gave people greater control over their privacy.

The "narrative" for the announcement "will focus on quality and the user experience which will potentially provide a good umbrella to fold in some of the API deprecations," one executive wrote in an email.

Another invited colleagues in a February 2014 email to review the "Switcharoo Plan," calling it "a good compromise" that will enable them "to tell a story that makes sense."

The month prior, the same executive wrote: "My concern is around the perception that we can't hold our story together."

When Facebook enacted the changes in 2015, executives told journalists the company had conducted research on user sentiment about Facebook apps and decided on policies that would help build confidence in data privacy, according to a report by tech publication TechCrunch. 

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US opens national security probe of Chinese-owned app TikTok: report

The US government has opened a national security investigation into the Chinese-owned video app TikTok, the New York Times reported Friday.

The report, citing anonymous sources, said the review by an intergovernmental panel may be looking into whether the app, popular for its music videos, was sending data to China.

The investigation is led by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government panel that reviews acquisitions in the United States by foreign companies, the report said.

The news comes after lawmakers called for a review of the national security risks of TikTok, warning it could be used for spying by Beijing.

A review could look into the acquisition in 2017 of TikTok, which at the time was known as Musical.ly, by Beijing-based ByteDance.

The deal gave the Chinese company the app, which has been popular with youth for homemade karaoke videos and which now has an estimated 500 million users worldwide.

Senator Marco Rubio welcomed news about the review.

"Last month I asked @USTreasury to conduct a CFIUS review of @tiktok_us," Rubio tweeted.

"Because any platform owned by a company in #China which collects massive amounts of data on Americans is a potential serious threat to our country."

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator Tom Cotton last week suggested that TikTok's owner ByteDance could be forced to share user information with Chinese intelligence.

"With over 110 million downloads in the US alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore," the two senators said in a letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.

The senators also warned that TikTok could potentially be used to influence voters in next year's election in the same way Russians manipulated US social media in the 2016 campaign.

Queried by AFP, TikTok said it could not comment on any regulatory matter but noted that it "has made clear that we have no higher priority than earning the trust of users and regulators in the US."

Last week, TikTok sought to distance itself from China, saying "we are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government."

The company's data centers are located outside China and "none of our data is subject to Chinese law," it said.

The US Treasury, which coordinates CFIUS reviews, said it could not comment on whether or not a review was in the works.

"By law, information filed with CFIUS may not be disclosed by CFIUS to the public," a Treasury spokesman said.

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Google wants safeguards for information in antitrust fight

SEATTLE — Google fired its opening salvo in what is expected to be a protracted antitrust fight with four dozen states, demanding more protections before it hands over confidential business documents sought by investigators.

In a petition filed Thursday in Texas state court of Travis County, Google, along with its parent company Alphabet, sought a protective order against Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, who is spearheading the multistate antitrust investigation into the company.

The petition said Paxton had not provided sufficient safeguards for how his office shares Google’s sensitive business documents with outside consultants to the investigation. Google said some of those outside consultants were also working for competitors or complainants.

It is first legal challenge made by Google since the attorneys general from 48 states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico said in September that they were starting an antitrust investigation into the market power and corporate behavior of Google, with Paxton taking the lead.

On the same day it announced the investigation, Paxton’s office served Google with a civil investigative demand, seeking what the company called “highly proprietary, competitively sensitive, and otherwise confidential business information” including internal planning memos, strategic documents and white papers. Google has until Nov. 9 to start producing documents related to the 233 requests made by the office.

“Given the breadth of confidential business information sought by the (attorney general’s office) and the heightened risks of leaks and disclosure to Google’s competitors and complainants in this and other regulatory proceedings, a protective order is appropriate and necessary,” Google wrote.

Google’s petition is largely a procedural move, but it offers insight both into who is helping the attorneys general and what Google is worried about as it enters what could be a long legal tussle. In addition to the state inquiries, House and Senate committees, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are also looking into the company’s business practices.

In a statement, the Texas attorney general’s office said it was caught off-guard by Google’s petition “challenging our right to employ many of the most knowledgeable in this complex field.” It said it had been working with Google to discuss “appropriate confidentiality provisions” to ensure that the information would not be used by the company’s competitors, but what Google wanted would compromise the investigation.

“Google’s petition is nothing more than an effort to hamstring the investigation. But Google is not entitled to choose the states’ expert or run the states’ investigation,” Marc Rylander, communications director for Paxton, said in a statement.

Google said it wanted to be notified in advance before the attorney general’s office shared its confidential company information with third parties such as consultants and sought limits on the ability of outside consultants with access to those documents from working with Google’s competitors.

Google also asked for a “cooling-off” period to prevent consultants from jumping into another job advising competitors based on what it learned during the course of the investigation.

Google pointed to the background of two of the three consultants to the investigation as particularly worrisome. One had served as a consultant to companies that have been vocal in their criticism of Google, including News Corp. and the Russian search engine Yandex. The other, a former lawyer for Microsoft, had also represented clients in other antitrust and other cases against Google.

“This is an extraordinarily irregular arrangement and it’s only fair to have assurances that our confidential business information won’t be shared with competitors or vocal complainants,” said Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesman.

It is not unusual for government investigations to coordinate antitrust arguments with competitors of the company it is investigating. This also happened in the monopoly case against Microsoft in the 1990s.

“This looks like a sideshow,” said David Segal, executive director at Demand Progress, an activist group focused on issues of corporate power and internet freedom. He called Google’s actions “standard delay and deflect tactics by which one of the most powerful corporations in the history of the world” was trying to avoid scrutiny.


2019 The New York Times Company

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Privacy group says tech giants not delivering on political ads pledges

Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet's Google have failed to provide adequate transparency for global users around political advertising on their services, a privacy advocacy group said on Tuesday.

A report from London-based charity Privacy International said that many users around the world lack meaningful insight into how ads are targeted on social media services.

The group called Google "especially deficient" in disclosure of information about targeting, which enables advertisers to deliver tailored messages to different groups of users.

Google spokeswoman Alex Krasov said "we know there is more work to be done and we’re looking at ways to bring more political ads transparency to more regions and more types of elections."

Big internet companies have been sharing more information around political advertising following scrutiny after US intelligence agencies found that Russia had targeted American voters with social media content, including ads, to try and influence the 2016 election. Russia has denied the allegations.

A Facebook spokesman said that the company had tightened its rules on political advertising in recent years and improved transparency on both Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter did not reply to Reuters requests for comment on the new report.

Privacy International's criticisms come ahead of the European Commission's own report, due by the end of the year, on the tech companies' commitments to its self-regulatory Code of Practice on Disinformation.

The companies and trade bodies for the advertising industry signed up to the European Commission's voluntary measures in October 2018 to ward off more heavy-handed legislation.

As part of recent transparency efforts, Facebook, Twitter and Google have all launched searchable online libraries of political ads on their platforms, but these have been criticized by researchers for being poorly maintained and failing to provide useful ad targeting information.

"Companies that rely on people's data to establish their market dominance should give all users heightened ad transparency, and transparency into the targeting and funding of ads should be meaningful," said Sara Nelson, a spokeswoman for Privacy International.

The new report singled out Google for not having defined what it considers to be "political issues," saying this rendered transparency into ads on such issues on the site less meaningful.

It also argued that as Twitter, outside of the United States, does not give the same level of transparency to "promoted tweets" as it does to political ads, these paid-for tweets run without the heightened transparency they warrant.

In the United States, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner have been pushing for the introduction of the Honest Ads Act, which would require platforms to disclose the purchasers of ads, applying the same rules that exist for TV and radio.

"A patchwork of voluntary measures from tech companies isn’t sufficient — we need to pass the Honest Ads Act," Klobuchar said in a statement last month when tech company Snap, which owns disappearing messaging app Snapchat, released its own political ad spending data last month.

Some platforms, such as Chinese company ByteDance's TikTok and photo-sharing site Pinterest, do not allow political ads on their platforms.

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