Archive by Author

Nuclear arsenals expected to grow for first time since Cold War: think tank

Nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the next decade after a “marginal decrease” in warheads in 2021, according to a new report.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report out Monday said that the world’s nuclear-armed states, which include the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, will likely increase their nuclear weapons over the next decade.

“If the nuclear-armed states take no immediate and concrete action on disarmament, then the global inventory of nuclear warheads could soon begin to increase for the first time since the Cold War,” Matt Korda, an associate researcher with the institute, said.

Numbers of total warhead inventories in countries like Russia and the U.S., which combined have over 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, have declined in recent years. But the report attributed that change “to the dismantling of warheads that had been retired from military service several years ago.”

“All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies,” Wilfred Wan, who directs the institute’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said, adding that “this is a very worrying trend.”

Nuclear weapons recently have become of increasing concern amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen warned last month that the U.S. should prepare for the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons during the war. 

“It’s very difficult to know what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is thinking at any particular time. He’s obviously spoken to this. I think we need to make sure that we consider it as a possibility,” Mullen said on ABC’s “This Week” at the time, adding that nuclear weapons are “the most devastating weapons ever created on Earth.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Why Russia blocked Western social media — but not YouTube

In his campaign to control what ordinary Russians can learn about the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has made a notable exception. 

He has blocked or restricted Facebook, Twitter, and most other Western-based social media sites, but one major platform — YouTube — remains available. Any Russian with an internet connection can click onto YouTube to see videos about Putin’s lawless aggression as depicted by CNN, the BBC, or even exiled allies of imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Why does YouTube get special dispensation? Part of the answer is that even before the war, it was the most popular social media site in Russia. Three-quarters of Russians active on the internet use YouTube and would resent it going dark. 

“When we restrict something, we should clearly understand that our users won’t suffer,” Maksut Shadaev, Putin’s minister for digital development, explained recently.

But there’s another likely reason Putin treats YouTube differently — namely, his recognition that for years before he ordered the invasion, YouTube enabled Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlets like RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik News to reach millions of viewers in the West. In 2013, YouTube even dispatched a company vice president to an RT studio to offer the network on-air congratulations for providing viewers with “authentic” content and tallying a landmark billion views on the platform.

YouTube’s duality — funneling factual news to ordinary Russians after years of facilitating Putin’s global falsehood machine — is a throughline in the platform’s influential role as the world’s dominant video-sharing venue. A new report that I coauthored for the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights illustrates that YouTube has taken laudable steps to reduce its tendency to radicalize some users while continuing to allow unscrupulous actors to spread election disinformation, religious hatred and anti-vaccine conspiracies.

The report argues that while YouTube has helped intensify partisan animosities in the United States, most of its ongoing malign effects take place outside of its home market, where the company’s content moderation system struggles to interpret foreign languages and cultures. In India, YouTube’s largest market, with 450 million users, Hindu nationalists use YouTube as a weapon in their persecution of Muslims. In Brazil, where 100 million people use YouTube, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters have deployed the platform to undermine trust in elections and COVID-19 vaccines.

Globally, YouTube has more than 2 billion users. The most popular social media site, not only in Russia and India but also in the U.S., it generated nearly $29 billion in revenue in 2021, primarily from selling advertising. Despite this enormous presence, YouTube historically has received less outside scrutiny than platforms like Facebook and Twitter. That’s partly because, compared to data sets of text posts, large volumes of long-form videos are difficult and expensive for outside researchers to assess empirically. Another reason is that YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, provides fewer application programming interfaces, which social scientists can use to obtain sizable amounts of data. And YouTube sometimes remains below the media radar simply by refusing to discuss controversial issues publicly.

In some instances, YouTube has responded to problems it had a hand in creating. By using “digital fingerprints” distinctive to terrorism-recruitment videos, it has diminished Islamist incitement. In reaction to reports that its recommendation algorithm guided unwitting users toward “rabbit holes” of extremism, the platform altered its technology to suppress false and conspiratorial content — changes that appear to be working.

But platform recommendations are not the only way that users encounter extremist material on YouTube. They also can seek it out via YouTube’s powerful search engine, which is second in heft only to Google Search. And research published in 2021 by the Anti-Defamation League shows that alarming levels of exposure to extremist and other harmful content continues.

The danger lies not in the average user experience but in the ability of people inclined toward extremism to easily find what they’re looking for. The white 18-year-old accused of killing 10 African-American shoppers in a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in May went to YouTube to watch videos about mass shootings, police gunfights and tips on firearm use. It wasn’t until after the Buffalo massacre that YouTube removed three of the gun-related videos the alleged shooter mentioned in a diary.

Our report offers a series of recommendations for addressing such issues. It urges YouTube to provide researchers, and in some cases the public, with more information about how its currently secret algorithms rank, recommend, and remove videos. Access to this kind of data could allow social scientists to make more refined suggestions about how to root out misinformation and incitements to violence.

At the same time, YouTube should vastly increase the number of human content moderators and hire all of them as direct platform employees, rather than following the common industry practice of outsourcing the vast majority of this critical corporate function. (Google told us that it has 20,000 people working on content moderation, but it declines to specify how many of them are full-time employees and how many are hands-on reviewers focusing on YouTube.)

In light of YouTube’s inadequate self-regulation, the government now needs to step in. While President Biden has a lot on his plate, he should push Congress to enhance the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection authority to provide systematic oversight of the social media industry. Specifically, the FTC ought to require greater platform transparency and assure that social media companies provide procedurally adequate content moderation. The latter obligation would entail the major platforms delivering on the promises they already make in their terms of service to protect users from a wide array of harmful content.

Given YouTube’s scale — users post more than 1 billion hours of video daily — and the unfortunate human appetite for incendiary, bigoted and conspiratorial material, the platform is never going to be free of troubling content. But it is high time that YouTube takes more responsibility for decreasing the negative side effects that its lucrative business imposes on the U.S. and societies around the world.

Paul M. Barrett, the senior research scholar and deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, writes about social media’s effects on democracy. Find him on Twitter @authorpmbarrett.

Source: TEST FEED1

Crypto firms Celsius, Binance halt withdrawals as bitcoin plummets

Cryptocurrency companies on Monday blocked users from withdrawing funds as the value of bitcoin and other prominent digital assets plunged. 

Crypto lending company Celsius Network announced late on Sunday night that it would freeze all withdrawals and transfers due to “extreme market conditions.” The move sparked an enormous selloff, with the price of Bitcoin falling 12 percent to its lowest level since December 2020. 

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, said Monday morning that it was freezing bitcoin withdrawals due to “due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog.”

Changpeng Zhao, the firm’s CEO, tweeted that the fix would only take 30 minutes but later said that the problem was “going to take a bit longer to fix” than his initial estimate. 

Celsius, which says it has 1.7 million customers, made its announcement after numerous cryptocurrencies tanked over the weekend. Ethereum, another popular digital coin, plunged nearly 32 percent from Friday to Monday morning. 

“We are taking this necessary action for the benefit of our entire community in order to stabilize liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets,” Celsius wrote in a blog post Sunday night. 

Red-hot inflation and subsequent interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve have driven investors away from risky assets like cryptocurrencies. Signs of trouble in the crypto market emerged last month when so-called “stablecoins” that are supposed to be pegged to the price of the dollar and other traditional currencies briefly lost value. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Google paying $118M to settle pay bias case

Google will pay $118 million to settle a case alleging the tech giant paid female employees less than men for similar work. 

A third party will also analyze Google’s pay practices as part of Friday’s settlement agreement ending a case first brought by former employees in 2017. 

A San Francisco Superior Court judge will now have to approve the agreement. 

The settlement covers about 15,500 female employees across 236 job titles in California since Sept. 14, 2013. 

“As a woman who’s spent her entire career in the tech industry, I’m optimistic that the actions Google has agreed to take as part of this settlement will ensure more equity for women,” said Holly Pease, a former google manager that sued the company. 

“Google, since its founding, has led the tech industry. They also have an opportunity to lead the charge to ensure inclusion and equity for women in tech.”

The lawsuit accused Google of discriminating against female employees by “systematically paying” them lower compensation than male employees, as well as by assigning and keeping women in job levels with lower compensation ceilings and advancement opportunities than they do for men with similar skills and experience. 

“While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone,” Google spokesperson Chris Pappas said in a statement to The New York Times. “We’re very pleased to reach this agreement.” 

The Hill has reached out to Google for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

Watch live: January 6th Committee hearing – Day 2

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will continue with day two of its hearings on Monday.

The event is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET.

Watch the live video above.

Source: TEST FEED1

‘Data Protection Review Court’ an idea worth expanding

In March 2022, the U.S. and EU announced an agreement “in principle” to replace the Trans-Atlantic data sharing agreement known as “Privacy Shield,” which was invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in July 2020 due, in part, to the lack of an adequate remedy under U.S. law for privacy harms suffered by EU citizens. 

Notably, the proposal for addressing this lack of redress is the creation of a “Data Protection Review Court,” through Executive Order (EO) of the president.  

It remains to be seen whether this agreement will stand up to the U.S. government’s interagency process and CJEU scrutiny — not to mention an inevitable challenge by Max Schrems; in a May 23 open letter, Schrems specifically argued that an Executive Branch-created Data Protection Review Court is inadequate to constitute true judicial redress.

Putting aside his concerns about the court — some of which are fair — the fact that we’re considering creation of such a mechanism in the first place highlights an issue that goes beyond just redress for non-U.S. citizens. Given the absence of a federal privacy law, coupled with the patchwork of state privacy laws, even U.S. citizens wrestle with redress for privacy harms incurred at the hands of the U.S. government or the private sector. Indeed, one of the recurring sticking points in state and federal debates about a privacy law has been whether to grant a private right of action to consumers.

According to a recent analysis of federal privacy bills by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, one of “the two most contentious issues” in such debates remains creating a private right of action. Of course, there’s good reason for concern about a private right of action, given the litigious nature of our society, the high cost of litigation and overly congested court dockets. But if there were an alternative to the massive, time-consuming discovery, voluminous motion practice, and years-long docket delays in traditional litigation, perhaps there’d be more openness.

Coincidentally, the answer to the Privacy Shield redress dilemma — a privacy-focused Data Protection Review Court — may also hold the answer to this problem. 

Admittedly, as Schrems pointed out, there are some significant shortcomings in the proposed Data Protection Review Court, not the least of which is that the Executive Branch cannot offer the redress of a judicial court, whether that be access to evidence, the option to appeal a decision, or having your case heard by an impartial judge (given the inherent conflict-of-interest of an Executive Branch-created court adjudicating challenges relating to Executive Branch agency actions).

But a Data Protection Review Court is an out-of-the-box solution meriting serious consideration, just in a slightly different form.

We already have precedent for creating specialized federal courts in the U.S. pursuant to Congress’s power under Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution, which authorizes the creation of “inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Examples of such courts include the U.S. Court of International Trade and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

If properly designed, such a court could address many of the concerns raised in opposition to a private right of action, permitting only limited discovery and motion practice, requiring aggressive timelines and expedited hearing schedules, and allowing only bench trials (i.e., a judge, not a jury).

To address oft-cited concerns about class action lawsuits — where plaintiffs end up with little and law firms rake in millions — this court could also limit fees recoverable, or even prohibit class actions altogether, ensuring narrowly tailored solutions for individual harms.

Interestingly, the creation of this court could also address another area of privacy harm wanting for a solution — namely, the privacy issues implicated by the U.S. Government’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the FISA Amendments Act (FAA).

As highlighted by the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) in its review of the U.S. Government’s Section 215 surveillance program in January 2014, the FISC — a secretive court providing review and oversight of national security matters — regularly issues orders allowing the government to surveil individuals and access their personal information, without their knowledge or an opportunity to refute the government’s case, raising the potential for undiscoverable/undiscovered privacy harms.

Notably, one of the PCLOB’s recommendations was for the FISC to hear “independent views, in addition to the government’s views, on novel and significant applications,” providing a counterpoint to the government’s one-sided arguments. But to date, this recommendation hasn’t been implemented.

Considering that the primary purpose of the Data Protection Review Court would be to address concerns about the government’s use of its intelligence authorities under EO 12333 and FISA/FAA — the very authorities of concern to the CJEU when invalidating Privacy Shield — individuals practicing before the Data Protection Review Court would have the precise credentials to also serve as third party advocates before the FISC.

Of course, there are still questions about information access in a Data Protection Review Court, with Schrems alleging that “EU data subjects would not be able to access information about potential surveillance operations concerning them during proceedings.” But even if data subjects themselves cannot access information, advocates before the FISC would be able to do so.

At the end of the day, the U.S.-EU proposal will likely evolve over the coming months, and whether or not one agrees with Schrems’s concerns about a Data Protection Review Court, this idea is precisely the type of bold thinking we need in today’s privacy-centric world.

But not just as part of a Privacy Shield replacement.

If we focus solely on EU citizen redress — admittedly, the current political imperative — foreigners end up with more robust redress options than U.S. citizens, creating further privacy inequities in the U.S.

As the age-old adage goes, a rising tide lifts all ships. To that point, we need a holistic approach to redress, establishing both a federal privacy law and the infrastructure to expeditiously hear cases under that law, for both U.S. citizens and foreigners alike.

Joel Schwarz is a senior principal at Global Cyber Risk, LLC and an adjunct professor at Albany Law School, teaching courses on cybercrime, cybersecurity and privacy. He previously served as the Civil Liberties and Privacy Officer (CLPO) for the National Counterterrorism Center and was a cybercrime prosecutor for the Justice Dept. and N.Y. State Attorney General’s Office.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump makes last-minute pitch for Arrington in challenge to Mace in SC

Former President Trump on Sunday called former South Carolina state Rep. Katie Arrington’s (R) policies “perfect” in a last-minute pitch for her primary challenge this week to Rep. Nancy Mace (R), who has blamed Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Trump endorsed Arrington in February one day after she announced her now-closely watched primary challenge in the coastal district, which will on Tuesday test the influence of Trump and debunked claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

“Katie Arrington’s policies are perfect, she’s a hard worker and she loves the great state of South Carolina, where she has the tremendous backing of almost all who know her — especially when she is compared to Nancy Mace!” Trump said in the statement released through his Save America PAC.

Mace has the backing of Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations who previously served as South Carolina’s governor, and Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff and a former House lawmaker from the Palmetto State.

Haley was slated to stump for Mace on Sunday with another appearance scheduled for Monday afternoon.

“Nancy fights Republicans all the time and is not at all nice about it,” Trump said on Sunday. “Frankly, she is despised by almost everyone, and who needs that in Congress, or in the Republican Party?”

The Hill has reached out to the Mace campaign for comment.

Arrington defeated incumbent Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) in a 2018 House primary but lost to former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) in the general election. 

Mace beat Cunningham two years later and is now running her first reelection campaign in a redrawn district.

Mace has drawn criticism from Trump after blaming him for the Capitol riot. 

Mace did not vote to impeach the former president, but she also did not object to certifying the 2020 election results and later voted to refer a criminal contempt case against Trump ally Stephen Bannon to the Justice Department as part of the House select committee investigation into the Capitol riot.

Trump on Sunday also teased the possibility of mounting a third presidential campaign in 2024.

“Vote for Katie Arrington on Tuesday, and thank you for the great support I’ve had in South Carolina — two landslide victories, and who knows, maybe another one soon coming!” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Zelensky: 287 children killed in Russian invasions

Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky on Monday said 287 children have been killed since Russia invaded his country in late February.

Speaking in a video address at the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in New York City, Zelensky, who is Jewish, said he learned 24 children alone had died while he was recording the address.

“The Russian troops have occupied part of our country, and we do not have complete information about what is happening in the occupied areas,” the Ukrainian president said. “But gradually we learn about it. And that’s how the list of killed children became twenty-four points longer at once — these are the children who died because of Russian strikes at Mariupol, now we know about them.”

On June 1, Zelensky reported about 243 children had died, 446 had been wounded and 139 are missing, according to the Associated Press.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has spoken out against the war, reporting that at least two million children have been displaced from their homes.

Russia has been accused of bombing civilian shelters and hideouts indiscriminately. Over the spring, they are accused of bombing a maternity hospital in the battered port city of Mariupol and a theater where hundreds of people were hiding out.

Zelensky on Monday named some of the children who lost their lives in the war, including two infants named Maksym and Darya.

“Maksym and Darya did not live even three months,” Zelensky said. “They died with their parents when they were all buried in the basement of an ordinary apartment building on which a Russian aircraft dropped a bomb.”

Russian forces are continuing to assault Ukraine in a concentrated attack in the eastern region of the country.

Zelensky said Ukraine would continue to fight to defend their country and save their children.

“In the name of children killed by the Russian army,” the Ukrainian president said on Monday. “And for the future of millions of children in Ukraine and in various European countries who deserve to live in security and peace. To just live.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The Jan. 6 hearings are exposing just how divided America has become

Last Thursday, the first of seven televised hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack mesmerized many, mortified most and probably made no impact on hardline supporters of former President Trump. Whether Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) or Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) channeled Henry II in thinking “Will no one rid me of this turbulent [president]?” a convincing case was made as to Trump’s disgraceful conduct on that fateful day.  

Perhaps most importantly, in this era, when Massive Attacks of Disruption (MAD) have become the looming existential danger to a divided nation, several consequences of this hearing are sadly clear.

First, this and future hearings will further divide, disrupt and alienate Americans over the former president’s behavior. Based on all the evidence in the form of 81 million popular and 302 electoral votes and the sworn testimony of Trump’s Attorney General William Barr and daughter Ivanka, the White House knew the president lost the 2020 election. Yet, Trump continued to insist that he had won.

Whether Trump was using that as an excuse to remain president is unknowable and unprovable. But that leads to the second consequence.  This assault on American democracy and the peaceful transition of power has conflicting and explosive legal and political aspects. Will the committee provide sufficient evidence that, if taken to a jury, would  prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed a crime? Or, at a minimum, will the commission’s hearings compel the Justice Department to file charges?

But what about the more sensational and volatile political consequences of the hearings? In Watergate, there was the absolute and agreed upon fact of a crime — the cover-up of the break in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel that even President Nixon’s most ardent supporters could not deny. So far, what was Trump’s crime? And if there was one, Trump has already been impeached and acquitted of high crimes and misdemeanors over Jan. 6. Double jeopardy is thus an issue.  

The first hearing also ironically answered the question of whether the nation’s political divisions are overstated. Is the nation as divided as it was in 1861 or even 1776, when most American colonists favored remaining part of Great Britain? Or is this phenomenon a consequence of social media and the ubiquitous coverage and sensationalism of the news cycle?

The answer is chilling. Not only is the nation divided on virtually every issue. Every issue has become a single massive attack of disruption. Jan. 6 is just one example. 

Consider the past eight decades. In December 1941, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor rallied a highly divided nation over the ongoing war in Europe. More Americans have died of COVID-19 than were killed in battle in every war America fought since 1775. Yet COVID didn’t unite the nation but disrupted and divided it over lock downs, masks, vaccines and super spreader events.

The same divisive effects apply to inflation; immigration; the price of gasoline; mass shootings and guns; gestation periods; and transgender rights.  This sheer number of divisive issues is unique. Historically, divisions have been dominated by single issues such as states’ rights in 1860 or Vietnam and race a century later. The critical question is whether the Constitution and a system of government based on checks and balances can survive this onslaught of massive attacks of disruption.

Assume Trump truly believed the election was stolen and he was the legitimate president. Does that then give him the authority and reason to use all means, fair or foul, to prove his case and reverse the results? What are the legal and constitutional restraints on a president under these circumstances, if any, despite the unanimous body of evidence and court cases proving well beyond a reasonable doubt that Joe Biden was the duly elected president? If Trump’s actions are allowed to stand, will it mean that there is no rule of law and that the Constitution has been permanently revoked?

The implications are frightening to consider. Yet this is the dangerous state of America today. The Jan. 6 commission opened a Pandora’s box. That will not rid the nation of an ex-president. But it will release all the harpies from a political hell.

Harlan Ullman, Ph.D, is senior adviser at Washington, D.C.’s Atlantic Council and the primary author of “shock and awe.” His latest book is, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and that World at Large.” Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

Source: TEST FEED1