Month: September 2024

little rock, arkansas — Arkansas sued YouTube and parent company Alphabet on Monday, saying the video-sharing platform is made deliberately addictive and fueling a mental health crisis among youth in the state. Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office filed the lawsuit in state court, accusing them of violating the state’s deceptive trade practices and public nuisance laws. The lawsuit claims the site is addictive and has resulted in the state spending millions on expanded mental health and other services for young people. “YouTube amplifies harmful material, doses users with dopamine hits, and drives youth engagement and advertising revenue,” the lawsuit said. “As a result, youth mental health problems have advanced in lockstep with the growth of social media, and in particular, YouTube.” Alphabet’s Google, which owns the video service and is also named as a defendant in the case, denied the lawsuit’s claims. “Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work. In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement. “The allegations in this complaint are simply not true.” YouTube requires users under 17 to get their parent’s permission before using the site, while accounts for users younger than 13 must be linked to a parental account. But it is possible to watch YouTube without an account, and kids can easily lie about their age. The lawsuit is the latest …

Sacramento, California — California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a landmark bill aimed at establishing first-in-the-nation safety measures for large artificial intelligence models Sunday. The decision is a major blow to efforts attempting to rein in the homegrown industry that is rapidly evolving with little oversight. The bill would have established some of the first regulations on large-scale AI models in the nation and paved the way for AI safety regulations across the country, supporters said. Earlier in September, the Democratic governor told an audience at Dreamforce, an annual conference hosted by software giant Salesforce, that California must lead in regulating AI in the face of federal inaction but that the proposal “can have a chilling effect on the industry.” The proposal, which drew fierce opposition from startups, tech giants and several Democratic House members, could have hurt the homegrown industry by establishing rigid requirements, Newsom said. “While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data,” Newsom said in a statement. “Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.” Newsom on Sunday instead announced that the state will partner with several industry experts, including AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, to develop guardrails around powerful AI models. Li opposed the AI safety proposal. …

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA BRAZIL — Brazil’s Supreme Court said on Friday that social platform X still needs to pay just over $5 million in pending fines, including a new one, before it will be allowed to resume its service in the country, according to a court document.  Earlier this week, the Elon Musk-owned U.S. firm told the court it had complied with orders to stop the spread of misinformation and asked it to lift a ban on the platform.  But Judge Alexandre de Moraes responded on Friday with a ruling that X and its legal representative in Brazil must still agree to pay a total of $3.4 million in pending fines that were previously ordered by the court.  In his decision, the judge said that the court can use resources already frozen from X and Starlink accounts in Brazil, but to do so the satellite company, also owned by Musk, had to drop its pending appeal against the fund blockage.   The judge also demanded a new $1.8 million fine related to a brief period last week when X became available again for some users in Brazil.  X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  According to a person close to X, the tech firm will likely pay all the fines but will consider challenging the fine that was imposed by the court after the platform ban.   X has been suspended since late August in Brazil, one of its largest and most coveted markets, after …

WASHINGTON — An executive at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike apologized in testimony to Congress for sparking a global technology outage over the summer.  “We let our customers down,” said Adam Meyers, who leads CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence division, in a hearing before a U.S. House cybersecurity subcommittee Tuesday.  Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.  “Everywhere Americans turned, basic societal functions were unavailable,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green said. “We cannot allow a mistake of this magnitude to happen again.”  The Tennessee Republican likened the impact of the outage to an attack “we would expect to be carefully executed by a malicious and sophisticated nation-state actor.”  “We’re deeply sorry and we are determined to prevent this from ever happening again,” Meyers told lawmakers while laying out the technical missteps that led to the outage of about 8.5 million computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.  Meyers said he wanted to “underscore that this was not a cyberattack” but was, instead, caused by a faulty “rapid-response content update” focused on addressing new threats. The company has since bolstered its content update procedures, he said.  The company still faces a number of lawsuits from people and businesses that were caught up in July’s mass outage.  …

new york — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized repeatedly to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers.  U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison’s cooperation was “very, very substantial” and “remarkable.”  But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the “greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else” or at least close to it.  He said in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become “your kryptonite.”  “I’ve seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here,” he said. “I’ve never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison.” She was ordered to report to prison on November 7.  Ellison, 29, pleaded guilty nearly two years ago and testified against Bankman-Fried for nearly three days at a trial last November.  At sentencing, she emotionally apologized to anyone hurt by the fraud that stretched from 2017 through 2022.  “I’m deeply ashamed with what I’ve done,” she said, fighting through tears to say she was “so so sorry” to everyone she had harmed directly or indirectly.  She did not speak as she left Manhattan federal court, surrounded by lawyers.  In a court filing, prosecutors had called her testimony the “cornerstone of the trial” against Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty …

Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns — a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market. The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February. The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving cars on U.S. roads by Chinese automakers and extend to vehicle software and hardware produced by other U.S. foreign adversaries including Russia. “When foreign adversaries build software to make a vehicle that means it can be used for surveillance, can be remotely controlled, which threatens the privacy and safety of Americans on the road,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a briefing. “In an extreme situation, a foreign adversary could shut down or take control of all their vehicles operating in the United States all at the same time causing crashes, blocking roads.” The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Earlier this month, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff …

Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department is expected on Monday to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns, two sources told Reuters. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the decision had not been publicly disclosed. The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Last week, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles as well as new hikes on EV batteries and key minerals. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in May the risks of Chinese software or hardware in connected U.S. vehicles were significant. “You can imagine the most catastrophic outcome theoretically if you had a couple million cars on the road and the software were disabled,” she said. President Joe Biden in February ordered an investigation into whether Chinese vehicle imports pose national security risks over connected-car technology — and if that software and hardware should be banned in all vehicles on U.S. roads. “China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks …

…

SACRAMENTO, California — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Governor Gavin Newsom signed Friday.  California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform’s algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children’s access to social media, but those have faced challenges in court.  The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users’ personal information in ways that could harm children.  It is part of a growing push in states across the country to try to address the impact of social media on the well-being of children.  “Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement. “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits.”  The law bans platforms from sending notifications without permission from parents to minors between midnight and 6 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, when children are typically …

Washington — Based on the posts of an X account that bears the name of Dutch cartoonist Bart van Leeuwen, a profile picture of his face and short professional bio, one would think the Amsterdam-based artist is a staunch supporter of China and fierce critic of the United States. In one post, the account blasts what it calls Washington’s “fallacies against the Chinese economy,” accompanied by a cartoon from the Global Times — a Beijing-controlled media outlet — showing Uncle Sam aiming but failing to hit a target emblazoned with the words “China’s economy.” In another, the account reposts a Chinese propaganda video about the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, writing “today’s China is closely connected with the world, blending with each other, and achieving mutual success.” But Van Leeuwen didn’t make the posts. In fact, this account doesn’t even belong to him. It belongs to a China-connected network on X of “spamouflage” accounts, which pretend to be the work of real people but are in reality controlled by robots sending out messages designed to shape public opinion. China has repeatedly rejected reports that it seeks to influence U.S. presidential elections, describing such claims as “fabricated.” VOA Mandarin and DoubleThink Lab (DTL), a Taiwanese social media analytics firm, uncovered the fake Van Leeuwen account during a joint investigation into a network of spamouflage accounts working on behalf of the Chinese government. The network, consisting of at least nine accounts, propagated Beijing’s talking points on issues including human rights abuses in China’s western Xinjiang …

…

…

…

Washington — The United States has identified and taken down a botnet campaign by China-directed hackers to further infiltrate American infrastructure as well as a variety of internet-connected devices. FBI Director Christopher Wray announced the disruption of what he called Flax Typhoon during a cyber summit Wednesday in Washington, describing it as part of a much larger campaign by Beijing. “Flax Typhoon hijacked Internet-of-Things devices like cameras, video recorders and storage devices — things typically found across both big and small organizations,” Wray said. “And about half of those hijacked devices were located here in the U.S.” Wray said the hackers, working under the guise of an information security company called the Integrity Technology Group, collected information from corporations, media organizations, universities and government agencies. “They used internet-connected devices — this time, hundreds of thousands of them — to create a botnet that helped them compromise systems and exfiltrate confidential data,” he said. But Flax Typhoon’s operations were disrupted last week when the FBI, working with allies and under court orders, took control of the botnet and pursued the hackers when they tried to switch to a backup system. “We think the bad guys finally realized that it was the FBI and our partners that they were up against,” Wray said. “And with that realization, they essentially burned down their new infrastructure and abandoned their botnet.” Wray said Flax Typhoon appeared to build on the exploits and tactics of another China-linked hacking group, known as Volt Typhoon, which was identified by …

Ratcliffe on Soar, United Kingdom — Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station has dominated the landscape of the English East Midlands for nearly 60 years, looming over the small town of the same name and a landmark on the M1 motorway bisecting Derby and Nottingham.   At the mainline railway station serving the nearby East Midlands Airport, its giant cooling towers rise up seemingly within touching distance of the track and platform.   But at the end of this month, the site in central England will close its doors, signaling the end to polluting coal-powered electricity in the UK, in a landmark first for any G7 nation.    “It’ll seem very strange because it has always been there,” said David Reynolds, a 74-year-old retiree who saw the site being built as a child before it began operations in 1967.   “When I was younger you could go down certain parts and you saw nothing but coal pits,” he told AFP.    Energy transition  Coal has played a vital part in British economic history, powering the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that made the country a global superpower, and creating London’s infamous choking smog.   Even into the 1980s, it still represented 70% of the country’s electricity mix before its share declined in the 1990s.    In the last decade the fall has been even sharper, slumping to 38% in 2013, 5.0% in 2018 then just 1.0% last year.     In 2015, the then Conservative government said that it intended to shut all coal-fired …

brussels — Europe’s second-top court largely confirmed on Wednesday an EU antitrust fine imposed on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm, revising it down slightly to $265.5 million from an initial $2.7 million. The European Commission imposed the fine in 2019, saying that Qualcomm sold its chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011, in a practice known as predatory pricing, to thwart British phone software maker Icera, which is now part of Nvidia Corp. Qualcomm had argued that the 3G baseband chipsets singled out in the case accounted for just 0.7% of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) market and so it was not possible for it to exclude rivals from the chipset market. The Court made “a detailed examination of all the pleas put forward by Qualcomm, rejecting them all in their entirety, with the exception of a plea concerning the calculation of the amount of the fine, which it finds to be well founded in part,” the Luxembourg-based General Court said. Qualcomm can appeal on points of law to the EU Court of Justice, Europe’s highest. The chipmaker did not immediately reply to an emailed Reuters request for comment. The company convinced the same court two years ago to throw out a $1.1 billion antitrust fine handed down in 2018 for paying billions of dollars to Apple from 2011 to 2016 to use only its chips in all its iPhones and iPads in order to block out rivals such as Intel Corp. The EU watchdog subsequently declined to appeal the judgment. …

BRUSSELS — Alphabet unit Google won its challenge on Wednesday against a $1.66 billion antitrust fine imposed five years ago for hindering rivals in online search advertising, a week after it lost a much bigger case. The European Commission, in its 2019 decision, said Google had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search adverts. The practices it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016. The Luxembourg-based General Court mostly agreed with the European Union competition enforcer’s assessments of the case, but annulled the fine. “The court (…) upheld most of the commission’s assessments, but annulled the decision imposing a fine of almost 1.5 billion euros ($1.66 billion) on Google, on the grounds in particular that it had failed to take into account all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contractual clauses that it had found to be unfair,” the judges said. The AdSense fine, one of a trio of fines that have cost Google a total of some $9 billion, was triggered by a complaint from Microsoft in 2010. Google has said it changed the targeted contracts in 2016 before the Commission’s decision. The company last week lost its final fight against a $2.6 billion fine levied for using its price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals. …

Brussels — Teresa Ribera will have to square up to Big Tech, banks and airlines if confirmed as Europe’s new antitrust chief, while juggling calls for looser rules to help create EU champions. Nominated Tuesday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for the high-profile antitrust post, Ribera has been Spain’s minister for ecological transition since 2018. The 55-year-old Spanish socialist, one of Europe’s most ambitious policymakers on climate change, will have to secure European Parliament approval before taking up her post. As competition commissioner, she will be able to approve or veto multi-billion euro mergers or slap hefty fines on companies seeking to bolster their market power by throttling smaller rivals or illegally teaming up to fix prices. One of her biggest challenges will be to ensure that Amazon, Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and Meta comply with landmark rules aimed at reining in their power and giving consumers more choice. Apple, Google and Meta are firmly in outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s crosshairs for falling short of complying with the Digital Markets Act. Another challenge will be how to deal with the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence amid concerns about Big Tech leveraging its existing dominance. Ribera may ramp up a crackdown on non-EU state subsidies begun by Vestager aimed at preventing foreign companies from acquiring EU businesses or taking part in EU public tenders with unfair state support. Recent rulings from Europe’s highest court, which backed the Commission’s $14.5 billion tax order to Apple, and its $2.7 …

PARIS — When French prosecutors took aim at Telegram boss Pavel Durov, they had a trump card to wield – a tough new law with no international equivalent that criminalizes tech titans whose platforms allow illegal products or activities. The so-called LOPMI law, enacted in January 2023, has placed France at the forefront of a group of nations taking a sterner stance on crime-ridden websites. But the law is so recent that prosecutors have yet to secure a conviction. With the law still untested in court, France’s pioneering push to prosecute figures like Durov could backfire if its judges balk at penalizing tech bosses for alleged criminality on their platforms. A French judge placed Durov under formal investigation last month, charging him with various crimes, including the 2023 offence: “Complicity in the administration of an online platform to allow an illicit transaction, in an organized gang,” which carries a maximum 10-year sentence and a $556,300 fine. Being under formal investigation does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges think there’s enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped. Durov, out on bail, denies Telegram was an “anarchic paradise.” Telegram has said it “abides by EU laws,” and that it’s “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” In a radio interview last week, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau hailed the 2023 law as a powerful tool for battling organized crime …

WASHINGTON — “I love you, China. My dear mother,” former U.S. President Donald Trump, standing in front of a mic at a lectern, appears to sing in perfect Mandarin. “I cry for you, and I also feel proud for you,” Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in this year’s election, appears to respond, also in perfect Mandarin. Trump lets out a smile as he listens to the lyric. The video has received thousands of likes and tens of thousands of reposts on Douyin, China’s variation of TikTok. “These two are almost as Chinese as it gets,” one comment says. Neither Trump nor Harris knows Mandarin. And the duet shown in the video has never happened. But recently, deepfake videos, frequently featuring top U.S. leaders, including President Joe Biden, singing Chinese pop songs, have gone viral on the Chinese internet. Some of the videos have found their way to social media platforms not available in China, such as Instagram, TikTok and X. U.S. intelligence officials and experts have long warned about how China and other foreign adversaries have been implementing generative AI in their disinformation effort to disrupt and influence the 2024 presidential election. “There has been an increased use of Chinese AI-generated content in recent months, attempting to influence and sow division in the U.S. and elsewhere,” a Microsoft report on China’s disinformation threat said in April. Few of the people who saw the videos of the American leaders singing in Chinese, however, were convinced that they were real, based …