Twitter says the hack that compromised the accounts of some of its most high-profile users targeted 130 people. The hackers were able to reset the passwords of 45 of those accounts.  
 
The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post Saturday that for up to eight of these accounts the attackers also downloaded the account’s information through the “Your Twitter Data” tool. None of the eight were verified accounts, Twitter said, adding that it is contacting the owners of the affected accounts.  
“We’re embarrassed, we’re disappointed, and more than anything, we’re sorry. We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Twitter said in the blog post.  
 
The July 17 attack broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls in one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years. The attackers sent out tweets from the accounts of the public figures, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
 
It highlighted a major flaw with the service millions of people have come to rely on as an essential communications tool.
 
Allison Nixon, chief research officer at cybersecurity firm 221B said in an email Sunday that the people behind the attack appear to have come from the “OG” community, a group interested in original, short Twitter handles such as @a, @b or @c, for instance.  
 
“Based upon what we have seen, the motivation for the most recent Twitter attack is similar to previous incidents we have observed in the OG community — a combination of financial incentive, technical bragging rights, challenge, and disruption,” Nixon wrote.
 
“The OG community is not known to be tied to any nation state. Rather they are a disorganized crime community with a basic skillset and are a loosely organized group of serial fraudsters.”
 
While this attack did not appear go further than the Bitcoin ruse — at least for now — it raises questions about Twitter’s ability to secure its service against election interference and misinformation ahead of the U.S. presidential election.  
 
“Entire markets and potentially elections may be manipulated or altered in this way,” Nixon said. “Victims of account takeovers generally do not know that the fraud has occurred, and generally cannot take security precautions to prevent it.”
 
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Google, the behemoth technology company that has become a verb for online search, is offering financial aid to students who take their certificate programs in data analysis, project management and user experience.Calling it “a digital jobs program to help America’s economic recovery,” the offering comes during record-high joblessness in the U.S. because of quarantines and shutdowns implemented to help stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.  “College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have economic security,” wrote Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google, in a blogpost.In addition to workplaces, many college and university campuses shut down in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. While 60% of campuses say they will hold classes in person this fall, 9% say they will be online only, and 24% say they will offer a hybrid of online and in-person classes.  “We need new, accessible job-training solutions – from enhanced vocational programs to online education – to help America recover and rebuild,” Walker wrote.Google considers the certificates equivalent to a four-year degree, but they take only six months to complete. No college degree is required.  The courses normally cost $49 a month, but the company stated that it will make available 100,000 need-based scholarships, funded by Google.The certificates teach proficiency in data analysis, project management and user experience design.  Data analysts “prepare, process, and analyze data for key insights,” Google stated. The certificate helps learners navigate “the data lifecycle using tools and platforms to process, analyze, visualize and gain insights from data.” The median average wage for data analysts is $66,000, it stated.  Project managers “are responsible for planning and overseeing projects to ensure they are completed efficiently with maximum quality and value added to the business.” Google’s certificate adds “insight into agile project management.” The median average wage is $93,000, according to Google.  User experience – or UX designers – “make technology easier and more enjoyable to use. They create or refine products and interfaces to make them useful, usable, and accessible to users,” the company’s announcement stated. Those certificates include lessons in design, wireframes and prototypes. The median annual wage for UX designers is about $75,000, Google said.The studies will be hosted on Coursera, an online learning platform founded by Daphne Koller, who studied at Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley, and Andrew Ng, who studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UC-Berkeley. Koller and Ng are professors at Stanford University.Students worldwide, forced into online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, have lamented the quality of online classes. They point to inadequate internet connectivity and poor delivery of instruction. Educators, too, have complained about being unprepared to teach over the internet.Students Give Online Learning Low MarksMany call on universities to end the semester earlyGoogle did not respond to emails sent by VOA Student Union.
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A person is in custody in connection with the killing of a 33-year-old tech entrepreneur found dismembered inside his luxury Manhattan condo.
A law enforcement official said Friday the person in custody has been working as Fahim Saleh’s personal assistant.
Saleh was found at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday inside his luxury seventh floor apartment on the Lower East Side.  
He was found dead in a gruesome scene Tuesday afternoon. Saleh was the CEO of a ride-hailing motorcycle startup called Gokada that began operating in Nigeria in 2018. Authorities say a relative called police after going to check on Saleh and making the gruesome discovery.
Investigators had recovered security video showing Saleh exiting an elevator that leads directly into the full-floor, two-bedroom apartment earlier Tuesday afternoon, closely followed by a masked person dressed entirely in black according to another law enforcement official who was briefed on the case.
 
It also shows a struggle between the two that ensued at the entrance to the apartment, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Police believe that the relative may have interrupted the intruder before that person fled out a back exit.
The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide after an autopsy found the cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the body.
Saleh’s LinkedIn biography described him as a self-taught businessman who founded Gokada, building on his experience of first “seeing an opportunity in his parent’s native country of Bangladesh” and starting that country’s largest ride-sharing company. It said he also invested in a similar venture in Colombia.  
Investigators had been exploring whether the killing could have been related to Saleh’s business dealings.  
Apartments in the 10-story building where Saleh’s remains were found sell for more than $2 million. The building was completed in 2017 as part of a wave of gentrification in the neighborhood.
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The baseless conspiracy theory took off after an anonymous user posed a bizarre question in an internet chatroom: What if retail giant Wayfair is using pricey storage cabinets to traffic children? Self-proclaimed internet sleuths quickly responded by matching up the names of Wayfair products to those of missing children, producing social media posts that have since overrun Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The result: A national human trafficking hotline suddenly began taking a number of calls about the imagined Wayfair scheme, stretching its resources. A woman said she posted a video of herself on Facebook to counter false claims that she was missing. One mother’s pleas to Facebook and YouTube to remove a video of her young daughter that was being used to suggest she was a Wayfair victim went unanswered for days.  Wayfair was forced to respond to the accusations in a recent statement: “There is, of course, no truth to these claims.”  Yet internet users continue to weave a complex web around Wayfair’s furniture and decor, spun from falsehoods and conjecture. Social media influencers, fringe online communities and even political candidates have also now seized on the conspiracy theory as evidence of an even grander one, known as QAnon, that centers on the baseless belief that President Donald Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the “deep state” and a child sex trafficking ring. “Conspiracy theorists always managed to spread their theories in the past, but the internet has made this much easier,” said Kathryn Olmsted, a history professor who studies conspiracy theories at University of California, Davis. “If you believe in one, you believe in another. You start collecting them.”  Mentions of Wayfair and “trafficking” have exploded on Facebook and Instagram over the past week. And on TikTok, the hashtags #Wayfairconspiracy and #WayfairGate together amassed nearly 4.5 million views even as several strands of the conspiracy theory have been debunked. Some social media posts pointed to the high cost of the storage cabinets — which sell for about $13,000 each — as suspect. Wayfair, however, said the steel structures were priced correctly for industrial use. A pillow listed for $9,999 also fueled suspicion, but was an error, the company said. ‘Why am I mad? Because I’m not missing’Other posts shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter connected the name of one of Wayfair’s cabinets, Samiyah, to an outdated missing person report for an Ohio girl named Samiyah Mumin, claiming it was proof that the company is trafficking young girls. A woman who identified herself as Mumin filmed a Facebook video to set the record straight. “Why am I mad? Because I’m not missing,” she said. Mumin did not respond to The Associated Press’ requests for comment. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office confirmed Mumin was found after being reported missing for a four-day period in May 2019 and has not been reported missing since.  A Maryland boy who briefly went missing in April also was identified by internet conspiracy theorists as a possible Wayfair victim because his last name matched the name of a pillow. He was found in less than 24 hours, with no signs that he had been trafficked or kidnapped, according to the sheriff’s office in St. Mary’s County. The burst of attention for the Wayfair claims also renewed interest in the QAnon conspiracy theory. In recent days, three conservative congressional candidates in Florida, Georgia and California who have expressed support for QAnon have also pushed unfounded allegations about Wayfair on Twitter. Thousands of tweets promoted the QAnon hashtag with claims that Wayfair is trafficking. A network of popular QAnon Facebook groups shared a video with a mashup of claims about human trafficking, including the Wayfair conspiracy theory.  The term QAnon skyrocketed on Instagram and Facebook, receiving more interactions last week than any other week over the last year, according to data from CrowdTangle, which tracks more than 4 million public pages, profiles and accounts. Surge in hotline callsThe attention created by the Wayfair conspiracy theory has, in some cases, been damaging for the very people social media users say they’re trying to help.  An increase in calls prompted by the conspiracy theory is straining the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which provides emergency help to victims. The line was already seeing a surge in requests for emergency shelter assistance because of the coronavirus, said Robert Beiser, of Polaris, a nonprofit organization that runs the hotline. “There’s a very real possibility that if there’s a conspiracy theory that comes out on the internet and it generates thousands of signals into our hotline, that could get in the way for us providing timely service to survivors who are in crisis,” Beiser said.  YouTube video Meanwhile, a YouTube video of a young London girl sitting on a couch to audition for a Wayfair commercial was used by some pro-Trump YouTube accounts to claim that she was a victim in the alleged trafficking scheme.  The video was taken from the girl’s mother’s YouTube account and spread across the internet, said Carleen McCarthy, a senior agent for the talent agency Alphabet Agency, which represents the girl. The agency and the girl’s mother repeatedly flagged the videos to YouTube and Facebook, as they continued to rake in thousands of views online. YouTube removed the video after the AP inquired about it, although new versions remain on the site. Facebook said in a statement that it’s reduced circulation of false claims around the Wayfair conspiracy theory.  One YouTube influencer — who posted a video, viewed 155,000 times, that accused Wayfair of trafficking children through their products — walked back the comments a few days later. “I didn’t really have all the facts for that video, I just kind of made it on impulse because I was so scared,” said Jeremiah Willis in a later video. “I personally have no knowledge, no evidence, nothing.” 
 
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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating Wednesday’s major Twitter hack, in which scammers tapped into high-profile accounts to scam users out of over $100,000 in Bitcoin, the agency confirmed Thursday.  “The FBI is investigating the incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals that occurred on July 15, 2020. At this time, the accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud,” said the FBI’s San Francisco division in a statement. “We advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident.”New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement Thursday that the state’s Department of Financial Services would also conduct a “full investigation into this massive hack.” On Wednesday, hackers targeted accounts from celebrities and politicians, including Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian and Barack Obama, with tweets that promised to send users back double the money they paid to an anonymous Bitcoin address. The hackers received over $100,000 in cryptocurrency off the brazen attack, according to Bitcoin’s public blockchain records.  Twitter called the breach a “coordinated social engineering attack” in which scammers “successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”Our investigation is still ongoing but here’s what we know so far:
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020One notable exception to the hack was U.S. President Donald Trump, whose verified personal and presidential accounts were unaffected Wednesday, which White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed in a press briefing Thursday. She said Trump would stay on Twitter despite the attack.”The president will remain on @Twitter” per @PressSec, asked about yesterday’s Twitter hack targeting verified accounts
“His account was secure & not jeopardized” she says, adding White House has been in touch w/Twitter “to keep Twitter secure, the president’s twitter feed”
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) July 16, 2020In a thread, Twitter said it had taken “significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools” as its own investigation continues.Internally, we’ve taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing. More updates to come as our investigation continues.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 16, 2020Twitter locked down all verified accounts after the news broke, preventing them from tweeting and resetting passwords. The company also removed the fake tweets from compromised accounts and said it would “restore access to the original account owner only when we are certain we can do so securely.”  Twitter’s blue check mark system, which indicates verified accounts, is supposed to show that a user is authentic.   
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U.S., British and Canadian officials accused the Kremlin Thursday of being behind a massive and ongoing cyber hack aimed at stealing from Western pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions doing research into coronavirus vaccines and treatment therapies.
 
In a joint statement, the governments of all three countries said the hacking operation started in February and has been unrelenting since.
 
Britain’s National Cybersecurity Center, part of the country’s eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, issued the statement, which was coordinated with counterparts in the U.S. and Canada. Officials identified the Russian hacking group APT29, also nicknamed Cozy Bear, as being behind the hacks.
 
“APT29 has a long history of targeting governmental, diplomatic, think tank, health care and energy organizations for intelligence gain, so we encourage everyone to take this threat seriously and apply the mitigations issued in the advisory,” Anne Neuberger, cybersecurity director at the U.S.’s National Security Agency, said in a statement.
 
Paul Chichester, the National Cybersecurity Center’s director of operations, said, “We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic.”  
 
Chichester said the Cozy Bear group “almost certainly operates as part of Russian intelligence services.”  
 
All three Western allies are working to try to protect coronavirus-related research and are issuing new cybersecurity advice to pharmaceutical firms, universities and other research institutes.
 
“We would urge organizations to familiarize themselves with the advice we have published to help defend their networks,” Chichester added.
 
The three Western allies first warned in May that state-backed cyber spies were trying to steal coronavirus data, but they did not at that time identify who was behind the assault. Officials briefed reporters off the record that China, Russia and Iran were involved.
 
Cozy Bear, along with a cyber hacking group called Fancy Bear, have been accused by U.S. officials and private cybersecurity companies of hacking the U.S. Democratic Party in 2016 in the run-up to the presidential election.
 
The accusation about the Kremlin-sponsored cyberattacks came just minutes after Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told lawmakers in the House of Commons that Russia had sought to meddle in last year’s British general election.  
 
Raab said it was “almost certain” that Russia attempted to influence the outcome of the election, after documents detailing Anglo-American free trade talks were “illicitly acquired.”FILE – Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab leaves the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in central London, July 1, 2020.The trade documents were placed online and were noticed by Britain’s main opposition Labor Party and used in the election campaign to suggest the Conservatives would sign a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S. that would be more favorable for U.S. businesses.
 
“On the basis of extensive analysis, the government has concluded that it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election through the online amplification of illicitly acquired and leaked government documents,” Raab said.
 
He added, “Sensitive government documents relating to the U.K.-U.S. free trade agreement were illicitly acquired before the 2019 general election and disseminated online via the social media platform Reddit. When these gained no traction, further attempts were made to promote the illicitly acquired material online in the run-up to the general election.”
 
Raab said the British government “reserves the right to respond with appropriate measures in the future” — a sign that London is considering imposing additional sanctions on Russia, adding to those already introduced for Russia’s annexation in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimea region and for a nerve agent attack in England targeting a Russian defector.
 
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Raab’s allegations about election meddling were vague.  
 
“The statement is so foggy and contradictory that it’s practically impossible to understand,” she told reporters in Moscow.FILE – Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova speaks to the media in Moscow, March 29, 2018.Russian officials deny any involvement by the Russian state in coronavirus cyber hacking, saying Moscow’s own vaccine plans are far advanced and claiming Russia could be the first country to roll out mass immunization.
 
Raab’s accusations Thursday come ahead of the scheduled publication next week of a House of Commons report on alleged Russian interference in the general workings of British democracy. That report was completed in May 2018 but was delayed by the government, despite pressure from opposition parties that it be released ahead of last year’s general election, in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won in a landslide victory.
 
U.S. authorities recently accused Chinese spies of trying to steal vaccine information. FBI Director Chris Wray last week said, “At this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research.”
 
British officials say that the ongoing and highly targeted hacking operation by Cozy Bear has focused on facilities known to be working on coronavirus vaccines and treatments to overcome COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. British-based researchers at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London are believed to be among those targeted.
 
Britain’s spy chiefs say the Russian hackers have been using several techniques to try to gain access to information, including spear-phishing and custom malware.
 
An official Downing Street spokesman said, “The attacks which are taking place against scientists and others doing vital work to combat coronavirus are despicable. Working with our allies, we will call out those who seek to do us harm in cyberspace and hold them to account.”
 
Russian officials announced Thursday that Phase 2 trials of a Russian-made coronavirus vaccine will end on Aug. 3, to be followed immediately by a third phase.
 
“The third phase will not only take place in Russia, but also in a number of other countries,” Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, told reporters during an online press conference.  
 
“We expect to receive regulatory approval to start using the Russian vaccine in August-September,” he added.  
The vaccine was developed by Moscow’s Gamalei Institute of Epidemiology, working with the country’s Ministry of Defense.VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
 
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Britain, Canada and the United States have accused Russia of trying to steal COVID-19 information from academic and pharmaceutical institutions.Britain’s National Cyber Security Center announced Thursday in coordination with the U.S. and Canada the attempts to steal vaccine and treatment research is being conducted by the hacking group APT29, which is said to be part of the Russian intelligence community.The NCSC said the hacking group, also known as Cozy Bear, is continuing its attacks with spear-phishing, custom malware and a variety of other tools and techniques.The U.S. and Britain said two months ago that networks of hackers were targeting organizations worldwide that were responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but did not explicitly link the efforts to Russia.U.S. intelligence agencies widely suspect that Cozy Bear hacked Democratic Party computers before the 2016 election, with the intent of helping President Donald Trump win the election. 
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A breach in Twitter’s security that allowed hackers to break into the accounts of leaders and technology moguls is one of the worst attacks in recent years and may shake trust in a platform politicians and CEOs use to communicate with the public, experts said Thursday.  The ruse discovered Wednesday included bogus tweets from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Celebrities Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were also hacked.  Hackers used social engineering to target some of Twitter’s employees and then gained access to the high-profile accounts. The attackers sent out tweets from the accounts of the public figures, offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.Cybersecurity experts say such a breach could have dire consequences since the attackers were tweeting from verified, globally influential accounts with millions of followers.”If you receive a tweet from a verified account, belonging to a well-known and therefore trusted person, you can no longer assume it’s really from them,” said Michael Gazeley, managing director of cybersecurity firm Network Box.Reacting to the breach, Twitter swiftly deleted the tweets and locked down the accounts to investigate. In the process it prevented verified users from sending out tweets for several hours.
The company said Thursday it has taken “significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools.”Many celebrities, politicians and business leaders often use Twitter as a public platform to make statements. U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, regularly uses Twitter to post about national and geopolitical matters, and his account is closely followed by media, analysts and governments around the world.Twitter faces an uphill battle in regaining people’s confidence, Gazeley said. For a start, it needs to figure out exactly the accounts were hacked and show the vulnerabilities have been fixed, he said.”If key employees at Twitter were tricked, that’s actually a serious cybersecurity problem in itself,” he said. “How can one of the world’s most used social media platforms have such weak security, from a human perspective?”Rachel Tobac, CEO of Socialproof Security, said that the breach appeared to be largely financially motivated. But such an attack could cause more serious consequences.”Can you imagine if they had taken over a world leader’s account, and tweeted out a threat of violence to another country’s leader?” asked Tobac, a social engineering hacker who specializes in providing training for companies to protect themselves from such breaches.Social engineering attacks typically target human weaknesses to exploit networks and online platforms. Companies can guard themselves against such attacks by beefing up multi-factor authentication -– where users have to present multiple pieces of evidence as authentication before being allowed to log into a system, Tobac said.Such a process could include having a physical token that an employee must have with them, on top of a password, before they can log into a corporate or other private system. Other methods include installing technical tools to monitor for suspicious insider activities and reducing the number of people who have access to an administrative panel, Tobac said.  U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley called on Twitter to co-operate with authorities including the Department of Justice and the FBI to secure the site.”I am concerned that this event may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself,” he said.He added that millions of users relied on Twitter not just to send tweets but also communicate privately via direct messaging.”A successful attack on your system’s servers represents a threat to all of your users’ privacy and data security,” said Hawley.
  
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A wave of tweets in apparent hacking swept through Twitter on Wednesday, with more than half a dozen high-profile accounts – belonging to U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, billionaire Bill Gates, and rapper Kanye West, among others – used to solicit bitcoin donations.The cause of the breach was not immediately clear, but the scale and the scope of the problem suggested that it was not limited to a single account or service.Shares of Twitter tumbled nearly 4% in trading after the market close.Twitter said in an email that it was looking into the matter and would issue a statement shortly.Some of the tweets were swiftly deleted but there appeared to be a struggle to regain control of the accounts. In the case of billionaire Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, for example, one tweet soliciting cryptocurrency was removed and, sometime later, another one appeared.Among the others affected: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the corporate accounts for Uber and Apple.A spokesman for Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Tesla was not immediately available for comment.Publicly available blockchain records show that the apparent scammers have already received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
 
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Britain announced a ban Tuesday on equipment from the firm Huawei in the rollout of its 5G super-fast mobile networks – reversing a decision made just six months ago. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the move appears to have been forced by U.S. sanctions on Huawei – and China is warning of possible consequences in future trade relations with Britain
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A European Union court on Wednesday delivered a hammer blow to the bloc’s attempts to rein in sweetheart tax deals between multinationals and individual member countries when it ruled that technology giant Apple does not have to pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.
 
The EU Commission had claimed in 2016 that Apple had an illegal tax deal with Irish authorities that allowed it to pay extremely low rates. But the EU’s General Court said Wednesday that “the Commission did not succeed in showing to the requisite legal standard that there was an advantage.”
 
“The Commission was wrong to declare” that Apple “had been granted a selective economic advantage and, by extension, state aid,” said the Luxembourg-based court, which is the second-highest in the EU. The ruling can only be appealed on points of law.
 
The EU Commission had ordered Apple to pay for gross underpayment of tax on profits across the European bloc from 2003 to 2014. The commission said Apple used two shell companies in Ireland to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1%.
 
In many cases, multinationals can pay taxes on the bulk of their revenue across the EU’s 27 countries in the one EU country where they have their regional headquarters. For Apple and many other big tech companies, that is Ireland. For small EU countries like Ireland, that helps attract international business and even a small amount of tax revenue is helpful for them. The net result, however, is that the companies often end up paying very low tax.
 
The Irish government welcomed the ruling. “Ireland has always been clear that there was no special treatment provided” to the U.S. company, it said in a statement. “Ireland appealed the Commission Decision on the basis that Ireland granted no state aid and the decision today from the Court supports that view.”
 
Apple CEO Tim Cook has called the EU demand for back taxes “total political crap.”
 
The defeat is especially stinging for EU Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, who has campaigned for years to root out special tax deals. Trump has referred to her as the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.”
 
The Eurodad network of 49 civil society organisations said that the ruling showed how tough any tax policy remains. “”If we had a proper corporate tax system, we wouldn’t need long court cases to find out whether it is legal for multinational corporations to pay less than 1% in taxes,” said Tove Maria Ryding of Eurodad.
 
Even though taxation remains under the authority of its member countries, the EU is seeking to create a level playing field among the 27 nations by making sure special deals including ultra-low tax rates with multinationals are weeded out.
 
The ruling comes at a time when tax income for EU nations is especially welcome because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. At a time when cash-strapped households are suffering, the EU wants to make sure multinationals making profits on the continent pay their fair share, too.
 
Meanwhile, the EU Commission was to unveil new plans to combat tax fraud only hours after the ruling in Luxembourg.
 
“In times like these when we are passing multibillion-euro economic stimulus packages, we cannot afford to waste a single cent in tax revenue”, said EU legislator Markus Ferber of the Christian Democrat EPP Group.
  
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The British government has banned China’s Huawei telecommunications equipment company from playing a limited role in Britain’s new high-speed mobile phone network.Britain’s Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, said the country’s telecommunications operators have until 2027 to remove Huawei’s equipment that is currently used in Britain’s 5G network.Britain’s decision could have wide-ranging implications for relations between the two countries and signals that Huawei may be losing support in the West. Dowden said the ban was imposed after the U.S. threatened to cancel an information-sharing deal due to concerns Huawei’s equipment could allow the Chinese government to penetrate British networks.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed in January to give Huawei a limited role in Britain’s high-speed network, but the decision sparked a diplomatic disagreement with the U.S. 
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Google announced it will invest $10 billion in India in an effort to make the internet more “affordable and useful” to the more than one billion people living there. “This is a reflection of our confidence in the future of India and its digital economy,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement Monday. The money, to be spent through a new Google for India Digitization Fund over the next five to seven years, will invest in India’s technology sector.  FILE – Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during a visit to El Centro College in Dallas, Oct. 3, 2019.”We’ll do this through a mix of equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments,” said Pichai. This new investment represents Google’s biggest commitment to India yet. These investments focus on increasing access to the internet throughout India, as well as aiding businesses with the transition to online operations.  Much of this will be accomplished through a focus on using apps and new software platforms. Google aims to use this move to enlarge internet access beyond English and into more local languages throughout India. Google also hopes to use its investments for the public good, working to improve areas as broad as education, agriculture and health. “As we make these investments we look forward to working alongside Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi and the Indian government, as well as Indian businesses of all sizes to realize a shared vision for a Digital India,” Pichai said. “Our goal is to ensure that India not only benefits from the next wave of innovation but leads it.” 
 
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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday he expected President Donald Trump to act firmly against the TikTok and WeChat applications, amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.Trump last week had said he is considering banning the wildly-popular TikTok app as a way to punish China over the coronavirus pandemic.In an interview with Fox News, Navarro argued that “what the American people have to understand is all of the data that goes into those mobile apps that kids have so much fun with… goes right to servers in China, right to the Chinese military, the Chinese Communist Party.”He said these apps can be used to steal intellectual property. “So expect strong actions on that” by Trump, Navarro warned.Fast-growing video-sharing app TikTok belongs to the Chinese group ByteDance and has nearly one billion users worldwide.TikTok has sought to distance itself from its Chinese owners, pointing out it has an American CEO and consistently denying allegations that it shares data with Beijing.WeChat, owned by Tencent, is the main messaging application in China with more than one billion users.
 Navarro also accused TikTok’s new boss Kevin Mayer, former head of Disney’s streaming platforms, of being an American puppet.On Friday Amazon said it mistakenly sent workers an email telling them to dump the TikTok mobile application from their cell phones because of security concerns.An Amazon spokesperson later told AFP “there is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok.”Democratic campaign teams for the U.S. presidential election have been asked to avoid using TikTok on personal devices and, if they do, to keep it on a non-work phone.The research firm eMarketer estimates TikTok has more than 52 million U.S. users, having gained about 12 million since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. TikTok is especially popular with young smartphone users. 
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With COVID-19 ravaging the aviation industry, airlines and airports worldwide are reining in costs and halting new spending, except in one area: reassuring pandemic-wary passengers about travel.”Whatever the new normal (…) it’s going to be more and more around self-service,” Sean Donohue, chief executive of Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport (DFW), told Reuters in an interview.The airport is working with American Airlines – whose home base is DFW – to roll out a self-check-in for luggage, and all of its restrooms will be entirely touchless by the end of July with technology developed by Infax Inc. They will have hands-free sinks, soap, flushing toilets, and paper towel dispensers, which will be equipped with sensors to alert workers when supplies are low.”One of the biggest complaints airports receive are restrooms,” Donohue said.Dallas is piloting three technology options for luggage check-ins: Amadeus’s ICM, SITA, and Materna IPS.DFW has become the world’s busiest airport, according to figures from travel analytics firm Cirium, thanks in part to a strategy by large global carrier American to concentrate much of its pandemic flying through its Texas hub.Last year DFW rolled out biometric boarding — where your face is your boarding pass — for international flights and is taking advantage of the lull in international traffic to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use the VeriScan technology for arriving passengers too, he said.Delta Air Lines opened the first U.S. biometric terminal in Atlanta in 2018, and some airports in Europe and Asia also use facial recognition technology. It has spurred some concerns, however, with a U.S. government study finding racial bias in the technology and the European Union earlier this year considered banning it in public places over privacy concerns.The Dallas airport is also testing new technology around better sanitization, beginning with ultraviolet technology that can kill germs before they circulate into the HVAC system.But it has also deployed electrostatic foggers and hired a “hit team” of 150 people who are going through the terminals physically sanitizing high-touch areas.”Technology is critical because it can be very efficient,” Donohue said, but customers “being able to visualize what’s happening is reassuring as well.” DFW has invested millions of dollars above its cleaning and sanitation budget since the pandemic broke out, while suspending about $100 million of capital programs and reducing its second-half operating costs by about 20% as it addresses COVID-19’s steep hit to the industry, which only months ago was preparing for growth.Nearly 114,000 customers went through DFW on July 11, an improvement from a 10,000 per day trough in April, but still just about half of last year’s volumes.The airport has also been testing touchless technology for employee temperature checks, but is not currently planning hotly-debated checks for passengers, barring a federal mandate for which there has yet to be any inclination by the U.S. government.Michael Davies, who runs the New Technology Ventures program at London Business School, said technology will be one of many changes to the airport experience going forward, with fewer overall travelers who will be seeking more space and spending less time dining and shopping.”You put these things together and this feels in some interesting ways very much like back to the golden age of air travel,” said Davies. 
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A jury in San Francisco convicted Russian citizen Yevgeny Nikulin after a series of hacks and cyberthefts eight years ago that targeted major U.S. social-media companies such as LinkedIn and Dropbox.The District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday said Nikulin would be sentenced September 29.Nikulin, 32, faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of selling stolen usernames and passwords, installing malware on protected computers, as well as up to five years for each count of conspiracy and computer hacking.According to U.S. prosecutors, Nikulin in 2012 stole the usernames and passwords of tens of millions of social media users to access their accounts. Some of that data was put up for sale on a Russian hacker forum.Nikulin, who last year was examined by court-ordered psychologists amid concerns about his mental health, had pleaded not guilty to the charges.His lawyer, Arkady Bukh, vowed to appeal the verdict, which he called a “huge injustice.”    Nikulin was detained in the Czech Republic in October 2016 and extradited to the U.S. 17 months later.The move angered Moscow, which had asked Czech authorities to extradite Nikulin to his home country, citing him as a suspect in a $2,000 online theft in 2009.Nikulin’s trial started in California in early March but was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic a week later, when nearly all in-person court hearings were postponed across the United States.
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Roughly five hours after an internal email went out to employees telling them to delete the popular video app TikTok from their phones, Amazon appeared to backtrack, calling the ban a mistake. “This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error. There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok,” Amazon emailed reporters just before 5 p.m. Eastern time. Spokeswoman Jaci Anderson declined to answer questions about what happened. The initial internal email, which was disseminated widely online, told employees to delete TikTok, a video app increasingly popular with young people but also the focus of intensifying national-security and geopolitical concerns because of its Chinese ownership. The email cited “security risks” of the app.  An Amazon employee who confirmed receipt of the initial email but was not authorized to speak publicly had not seen a retraction at the time of Amazon’s backtrack.  Amazon is the second-largest U.S. private employer after Walmart, with more than 840,000 employees worldwide, and moving against TikTok would have escalated pressure on the app. It is banned on employee phones by the U.S. military and the company is subject to a national-security review of its merger history. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that the government was “certainly looking” at banning the app.  FILE – This Feb. 25, 2020, file photo, shows the icon for TikTok in New York.Chinese internet giant ByteDance owns TikTok, which is designed for users outside of China; it also makes a Chinese version called Douyin. Like YouTube, TikTok relies on its users for the videos that populate its app. It has a reputation for fun, goofy videos and is popular with young people, including millions of American users. But it has racked up concerns such as censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government; the threat of sharing user data with Chinese officials; and violating kids’ privacy. TikTok said earlier in the day that Amazon did not notify it before sending the initial email around midday Eastern. That email read, “The TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email.” To retain mobile access to company email, employees had to delete the TikTok app by the end of the day. “We still do not understand their concerns,” TikTok said at the time, adding that the company would welcome a dialogue to address Amazon’s issues. A spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment Friday evening. TikTok has been trying to appease critics in the U.S. and distance itself from its Chinese roots, but finds itself caught in an increasingly sticky geopolitical web. It recently named a new CEO, former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, which experts said could help it navigate U.S. regulators. And it is stopping operations in Hong Kong because of a new Chinese national security law that led Facebook, Google and Twitter to also stop providing user data to Hong Kong authorities.  Pompeo said the government remained concerned about TikTok and referred to the administration’s crackdown on Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE. The government has tried to convince allies to root Huawei out of telecom networks, saying the company is a national-security threat, with mixed success; Trump has also said he was willing to use Huawei as a bargaining chip in trade talks. Huawei has denied that it enables spying for the Chinese government. “With respect to Chinese apps on people’s cell phones, I can assure you the United States will get this one right too,” Pompeo said, and added that if users downloaded the app their private information would be “in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” A U.S. national-security agency has been reviewing ByteDance’s purchase of TikTok’s precursor, Musical.ly. Meanwhile, privacy groups say TikTok has been violating children’s privacy, even after the Federal Trade Commission fined the company in 2019 for collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent. Amazon may have been concerned about a Chinese-owned app’s access to employee data, said Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor at George Washington University and a data governance and national-security expert. China, according to the U.S. government, regularly steals U.S. intellectual property. Part of Amazon’s motivation with the ban, now apparently reversed, may also have been political, Aaronson said, since Amazon “doesn’t want to alienate the Trump administration.” Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, are frequent targets of President Donald Trump. Bezos personally owns The Washington Post, which Trump has referred to as “fake news” whenever it publishes unfavorable stories about him. Last year, Amazon sued the U.S. government, saying that Trump’s “personal vendetta” against Amazon, Bezos and the Post, led it to lose a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to rival Microsoft. Meanwhile, federal regulators as well as Congress are pursuing antitrust investigations at Amazon as well as other tech giants. TikTok has content-moderation policies, like any social network, but says its moderation team for the U.S. is led out of California and it doesn’t censor videos based on topics sensitive to China and would not, even if the Chinese government asked it to. As for sharing U.S. user data with the Chinese government, the company says it stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore, not China; that its data centers are outside of China; and it would not give the government access to U.S. user data even if asked. Concerns about China are not limited to the U.S. India this month banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, because of tensions between the countries. India cited privacy concerns that threatened India’s sovereignty and security for the ban. India is one of TikTok’s largest markets and had previously briefly banned the app in 2019 because of worries about children and sexual content.   
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Amazon.com Inc has requested employees remove the TikTok video sharing app from their mobile devices by July 10 over “security risks,” according to a memo to employees seen by Reuters. “Due to security risk, the TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email. If you have TikTok on your device, you must remove it by 10-Jul to retain mobile access to Amazon email. At this time, using TikTok from your Amazon laptop browser is allowed,” according to the email. Amazon.com representatives did not immediately return requests for comment. “While Amazon did not communicate to us before sending their email, and we still do not understand their concerns, we welcome a dialog so we can address any issues they may have and enable their team to continue participating in our community,” TikTok responded in a statement. Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, among the fastest growing digital platforms in history, is facing heavy scrutiny outside China. India banned TikTok and other Chinese apps in June. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this week Washington was considering banning TikTok in the United States. Asked if Americans should download it, he told Fox News: “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.” Two Republican senators in March introduced a bill aimed at banning federal employees from using TikTok on their government-issued phones, amid growing national security concerns around the collection and sharing of data on U.S. users with China’s government. Last year the United States Navy banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, saying the short video app represented a “cybersecurity threat.” Last November, the U.S. government launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly, Reuters first reported last year.  
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After more than 20 years of effort, China completed its satellite navigation system last Tuesday when the last of BeiDou’s 35 satellites reached geostationary orbit.China’s domestically developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, designed to rival the U.S.-owned Global Positioning System (GPS), is now offering worldwide coverage, allowing global users to access its high-accuracy positioning, navigation and timing services, which are vital to the modern economy.China’s state media claims the system, formally initiated in 1994, is now being used by more than half of the world’s countries, and that its navigation products have been exported to more than 120 countries.FILE – A GPS station is seen in the Inyo Mountains of California. (Shawn Lawrence/UNAVCO)Like GPS, the services are offered free of charge using public protocols. But technical experts say the differences between the two systems have profound security implications.Security risksAll other global navigation satellite systems — GPS, GLONASS (Russia) and Galileo (EU) — mainly act as beacons, beaming out signals picked up by billions of devices using them to determine their precise position on Earth.BeiDou is a two-way communication system, allowing it to identify the locations of receivers. BeiDou-compatible devices can transmit data back to the satellites, even in text messages of up to 1,200 Chinese characters.”In layman’s terms, you can not only know where you are through BeiDou but also tell others where you are through the system,” China’s state broadcaster CCTV said last month.Such a capability has raised serious security concerns. “All cellular devices, as I understand their function, can be tracked because they continually communicate with towers or satellites,” Dr. Larry Wortzel, a commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), told VOA.”So just as here in the U.S., there are concerns that police or federal agencies can track people by their cellphones. That can happen. The same is true of a cellphone relying on BeiDou, Glonass and Galileo. The question is: Who are you concerned about being tracked by?”FILE – A Long March-3B rocket carrying the Beidou-3 satellite, the last satellite of China’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System, takes off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, China, June 23, 2020.Legislation passed in Taiwan in 2016 also noted that two-way communication capabilities could be used in cyberattacks. It recommended that government employees should avoid using smartphones that rely on BeiDou for their phone navigation system.In a public report, Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology said that Taiwanese using mobile phones made in the mainland might be providing Beijing with information via embedded malware. “Because the Chinese BeiDou satellite positioning system has two-way information sending and receiving function and malicious programs could be hidden in the navigation chip of the mobile phone, operating system or apps, the use of BeiDou-enabled smartphones could face security risks,” the report stated.The ministry recommended that national defense agencies monitor signals transmitted by BeiDou and warn of any anomalies as soon as possible.A Staff members walk at Xichang Satellite Launch Center, the day before the Beidou-3 satellite, the last satellite of China’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System, was set to launch, in Sichuan province, China, June 15, 2020.Almost 25 years later, BeiDou is now trying to rival GPS’s dominant positions. It has overtaken its U.S. rival in size. At the end of June, there were 35 BeiDou satellites in operation, compared with 31 for GPS.”It brings full autonomy to China in matters of position and navigation services for ground, sea and air transportation means on a global scale,” said Dr. Emmanuel Meneut in a recent report published by a French think tank, the Institute of International Relations.According to a report released last month by a Chinese research firm Qianxun SI, BeiDou’s satellites were observed more frequently than GPS satellites in most parts of the world. The state media Xinhua reported last Friday that BeiDou now has 500 million subscribers for its high-precision positioning services.As an integral part of everyday life, GPS is nearly ubiquitous in the modern economy. The system is also an indispensable asset to U.S. forces at home and deployed around the globe. It provides a substantial military advantage and has been integrated into virtually every facet of military operations. Being overtaken by BeiDou could have potentially enormous implications for both high-tech industry and national security.To promote greater use of the technology, China has sought to incentivize other countries with loans and free services. Beijing signed a roughly 2 billion yuan ($297 million) agreement with Thailand in 2013, making the country the first overseas client of BeiDou. According to a report released last month by a Shanghai-based market research firm, SWS Research, by the end of 2020, at least 1,000 base stations will be built in the 10 ASEAN countries.”Widespread integration of BeiDou across the Belt and Road [a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013] will ostensibly end a member nation’s reliance on the American military-run GPS network,” Heath Sloane, a scholar at the Yenching Academy of Peking University, wrote in The Diplomat in April. “Torn between rival networks, the world may soon be bifurcated into GPS or BeiDou camps.”FILE – A GPS navigation device is held by a U.S. soldier in Kuwait, in this image taken from video.Ironically, the American military says it sometimes uses BeiDou as a backup to GPS.According to General James Holmes, the head of the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command, pilots of the elite U-2 spy plane wear watches that receive satellite navigation coordinates from BeiDou when GPS is jammed. “My U-2 guys fly with a watch now that ties into GPS, but also BeiDou and the Russian [GLONASS] system and the European [Galileo] system so that if somebody jams GPS, they still get the others,” Holmes said March 4 at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington.While China’s 5G networking technology has long been considered a security threat, BeiDou receives little criticism from the U.S. Moreover, the system received much-needed help from Washington in 2017.  As Beijing was rapidly developing the system, it faced a problem that only the U.S. could solve: No frequency bands were available.Under the “first come, first served” principle, GPS had occupied most of the spectrum that a global positioning system needs, since the U.S. was the first nation to start broadcasting in those frequencies.China had to obtain permission from Washington before using this limited resource. After three years of negotiations, the two countries agreed in December 2017 to allow BeiDou’s civil signals to be interoperable with GPS. As a result, the three frequency bands that BeiDou satellites use to transmit navigation signals are located adjacent to or even inside GPS frequency bands.’Biggest’ aerospace projectOfficially started in 1994, BeiDou is consistently referenced as “the biggest” aerospace program that China ever undertaken. For the past 2½ years alone, there have been more than 300,000 scientists and engineers from more than 400 research institutions and corporations involved in the program. Along with 5G, BeiDou is called by Beijing “The Two Pillars of a Great Power.”Yang Changfeng, a chief designer of BeiDou, told China’s state broadcaster CCTV last month that China was now “moving from being a major nation in space to becoming a true space power.””The rise of the Chinese GPS BeiDou system is not simply one more positioning service in competition with the U.S. One is a strategic challenge,” Meneut said.
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Social media giant Facebook said Wednesday that it had removed dozens of accounts linked to supporters or employees of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as part of an investigation into the spread of false news online.Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a statement that 73 Facebook and Instagram accounts, 14 pages and one group had been removed. Brazilian courts have been investigating the spread of false news in connection with Bolsonaro.There was no immediate comment from the presidential office about Facebook’s action.Facebook’s executive said the accounts were linked to the Social Liberal Party, which Bolsonaro left last year after winning the 2018 presidential election, and to employees of the president; two of his sons, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro; and two other lawmakers.”This network consisted of several clusters of connected activity that relied on a combination of duplicate and fake accounts — some of which had been detected and disabled by our automated systems — to evade enforcement, create fictitious personas posing as reporters, post content, and manage pages masquerading as news outlets,” Gleicher said in the statement.He added that some of the content posted by the accounts had already been taken down for community standards violations, including hate speech.Gleicher said about 883,000 accounts followed one or more of the Bolsonaro linked pages and an additional 917,000 followed one of more of the Instagram accounts that were removed.
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A two-year audit of Facebook’s civil rights record found “serious setbacks” that have marred the social network’s progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias.
 
Facebook hired the audit’s leader, former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. Its 100-page report released Wednesday outlines a “seesaw of progress and setbacks” at the company on everything from bias in Facebook’s algorithms to its content moderation, advertising practices and treatment of voter suppression.
 
The audit recommends that Facebook build a “civil rights infrastructure” into every aspect of the company, as well as a “stronger interpretation” of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias. Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in place to hold Facebook accountable for any of the audit’s findings.
 
“While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights,” the audit report states.
 
Those include Facebook’s decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking, even when President Donald Trump posted false information about voting by mail. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cited a commitment to free speech as a reason for allowing such posts to remain on the platform, even though the company has rules in place against voter suppression it could have used to take down — or at least add warning labels to — Trump’s posts.
 
Last month, Facebook announced it would begin labeling rule-breaking posts — even from politicians — going forward. But it is not clear if Trump’s previous controversial posts would have gotten the alert. The problem, critics have long said, is not so much about Facebook’s rules as how it enforces them.
 
“When you elevate free expression as your highest value, other values take a back seat,” Murphy told The Associated Press. The politician exemption, she said, “elevates the speech of people who are already powerful and disadvantages people who are not.”
 
More than 900 companies have joined an advertising boycott of Facebook to protest its handling of hate speech and misinformation.
 
Civil rights leaders who met virtually with Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders Tuesday expressed skepticism that recommendations from the audit would ever be implemented, noting that past suggestions in previous reports had gone overlooked.
 
“What we get is recommendations that they end up not implementing,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color for Change, one of several civil rights nonprofits leading an organized boycott of Facebook advertising. 
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A new type of doctor’s office claims to use the latest tech and wearables to provide cutting-edge preventative health. Deana Mitchell gets a tour.Camera: Deana Mitchell
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TikTok, the popular short-form video app, says it will exit the Hong Kong market in response to the new national security law for the semi-autonomous city recently enacted by Beijing. A spokesman for the company issued a statement Tuesday saying it was ending operations in Hong Kong “in light of recent events.”   TikTok’s announcement it would cease operating in Hong Kong coincides with the decisions by U.S. tech giants Facebook, Google and Twitter that they will suspend processing requests by the central government in Beijing for user data in Hong Kong following passage of the new law.  The companies are blocked in mainland China due to the autocratic government’s so-called “Great Firewall,” but operate freely in semi-autonomous Hong Kong.  TikTok is owned and operated by China-based ByteDance.  ByteDance owns a similar app called Douyin which is available on mainland China, where TikTok is unavailable.  TikTok has long denied that its data can be accessed by the Chinese government, as its servers are located entirely outside of China. But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday the United States is considering banning TikTok and other Chinese social media apps due to privacy concerns. The law, which went into effect last week, calls for the central government to establish a national security office in Hong Kong aimed at confronting subversion of state power, terrorism, separatism and collusion with foreign forces.  The new law was a response to the massive and often violent pro-democracy demonstrations that engulfed the financial hub in the latter half of 2019.   Critics say the measure effectively ends the “One Country, Two Systems” policy under which Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy after the handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997. Hong Kong is a former British colony.     
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Social media platforms and messaging apps including Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Google and Twitter will deny law enforcement requests for user data in Hong Kong as they assess the effect of a new national security law enacted last week.Facebook and its messaging app WhatsApp said in separate statements Monday that they would freeze the review of government requests for user data in Hong Kong, “pending further assessment of the National Security Law, including formal human rights due diligence and consultations with international human rights experts.”The policy changes follow the rollout last week of laws that prohibit what Beijing views as secessionist, subversive or terrorist activities, as well as foreign intervention in the city’s internal affairs. The legislation criminalizes some pro-democracy slogans like the widely used “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time,” which the Hong Kong government has deemed has separatist connotations.The fear is that the new law erodes the freedoms of the semi-autonomous city, which operates under a “one country, two systems” framework after Britain handed it over to China in 1997. That framework gives Hong Kong and its people freedoms not found in mainland China, such as unrestricted internet access.Spokesman Mike Ravdonikas said Monday that Telegram understands “the importance of protecting the right to privacy of our Hong Kong users.” Telegram has been used broadly to spread pro-democracy messages and information about the protests in Hong Kong.”Telegram has never shared any data with the Hong Kong authorities in the past and does not intend to process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city,” he said.Twitter also paused all data and information requests from Hong Kong authorities after the law went into effect last week, the company said. It is reviewing the national security law to assess its implications.”Like many public interest organizations, civil society leaders and entities, and industry peers, we have grave concerns regarding both the developing process and the full intention of this law,” the company said in a statement.Twitter emphasized that it was “committed to protecting the people using our service and their freedom of expression.” Likewise, Google said in a statement that it too had “paused production on any new data requests from Hong Kong authorities” and will continue reviewing details of the new law.Social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp have operated freely in Hong Kong, while they are blocked in the mainland under China’s “Great Firewall.” Though social platforms have yet to be blocked in Hong Kong, users have begun scrubbing their accounts and deleting pro-democracy posts out of fear of retribution. That retreat has extended to the streets of Hong Kong as well. Many of the shops and stores that publicly stood in solidarity with protesters have removed the pro-democracy sticky notes and artwork that adorned their walls. Hong Kong’s government late Monday issued implementation rules of Article 43 of the national security law, which give the city’s police force sweeping powers in enforcing the legislation and come into effect Tuesday.Under the rules, platforms and publishers, as well as internet service providers, may be ordered to take down electronic messages published that are “likely to constitute an offence endangering national security or is likely to cause the occurrence of an offence endangering national security.”Service providers who do not comply with such requests could face fines of up to 100,000 Hong Kong dollars ($12,903) and receive jail terms of six months.
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