Community first, eh?
A New York Times report published Wednesday is full of bombshells about how Facebook has handled (and mishandled) its last two years of turmoil. Amidst allegations of pettiness and tales of public relations coups, the report reve…
Category: Russia
Zuckerberg rejects facetime call for answers from five parliaments
Facebook has declined once again to send its CEO to the UK parliament — this time turning down an invitation to face questions from a grand committee comprised of representatives from five international parliaments. MPs from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the UK have joined forces to try to pile pressure on the company’s founder, Mark […]
View More Zuckerberg rejects facetime call for answers from five parliamentsRussian hackers apparently left the midterms alone
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The call is coming from inside the house.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and security experts say that Russian operatives did not significantly meddle in or hack the US midterm elections, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“At this time, we have no indication of compromise to our nation’s election infrastructure that would prevent voting, change vote counts or distrust the ability to tally votes,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reportedly said at a press conference.
In 2016, Russian hackers waged a multi-front war to sow discord in America and disparage Hillary Clinton: they hacked Democrat campaign emails, used social media to spread disinformation and inflame the public, and even attacked the election infrastructure of 20 states, successfully penetrating the Illinois voter roll. Read more…
More about Russia, Trump, Internet Research Agency, Midterm Elections 2018, and Tech
View More Russian hackers apparently left the midterms aloneKaspersky starts processing threat data in Europe as part of trust reboot
Security firm Kaspersky Labs has opened its first self-styled ‘Transparency Center’ and begun processing threat-related data from European users in data centers located in Switzerland — flipping the switch on the start of a relocation commitment it announced late last year in the face of suspicion that its antivirus software had been compromised by the Russian government […]
View More Kaspersky starts processing threat data in Europe as part of trust rebootWhite House shares manipulated Infowars video to justify CNN press ban
Read this slowly: The White House’s press secretary has tweeted a manipulated video shared by the editor-at-large of conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars to attempt to justify its decision to suspend the press credentials of CNN’s chief white house correspondent. CNN’s Jim Acosta had his press pass pulled by the White House earlier today after press secretary […]
View More White House shares manipulated Infowars video to justify CNN press banFacebook must change and policymakers must act on data, warns UK watchdog
The UK’s data watchdog has warned that Facebook must overhaul its privacy-hostile business model or risk burning user trust for good. Comments she made today have also raised questions over the legality of so-called lookalike audiences to target political ads at users of its platform. Information commissioner Elizabeth Denham was giving evidence to the Digital, […]
View More Facebook must change and policymakers must act on data, warns UK watchdogTrump has two ‘secure’ iPhones, but the Chinese are still listening
President Trump has three iPhones — two of them are “secure” and his third is a regular personal device. But whenever the commander-in-chief takes a call, his adversaries are said to be listening. That’s according to a new report by The New York Times, which put a spotlight on the president’s array of devices — […]
View More Trump has two ‘secure’ iPhones, but the Chinese are still listeningYahoo agrees $50M settlement package for users hit by massive security breach
One of the largest consumer internet hacks has bred one of the largest class action settlements after Yahoo agreed to pay $50 million to victims of a security breach that’s said to have affected up to 200 million U.S. consumers and some three billion email accounts worldwide. In what appears to be the closing move to […]
View More Yahoo agrees $50M settlement package for users hit by massive security breachIn its first cyberoperation against Russian trolls, U.S. takes a gentle approach
Russia has been blamed for shutting down power grids, hacking into critical systems, and more recently launching a massive misinformation campaign aimed at meddling with past and upcoming elections. Now, the U.S. is striking back ahead of the midterm elections in an unconventionally gentle way. U.S. Cyber Command, the military wing tasked with offensive cyberoperations, […]
View More In its first cyberoperation against Russian trolls, U.S. takes a gentle approachFake news ‘threat to democracy’ report gets back-burner response from UK gov’t
The UK government has rejected a parliamentary committee’s call for a levy on social media firms to fund digital literacy lessons to combat the impact of disinformation online. The recommendation of a levy on social media platforms was made by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee three months ago, in a preliminary report following […]
View More Fake news ‘threat to democracy’ report gets back-burner response from UK gov’tKhashoggi’s fate shows the flip side of the surveillance state
It’s been over five years since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden lifted the lid on government mass surveillance programs, revealing, in unprecedented detail, quite how deep the rabbit hole goes thanks to the spread of commercial software and connectivity enabling a bottomless intelligence-gathering philosophy of ‘bag it all’. Yet technology’s onward march has hardly broken its stride. […]
View More Khashoggi’s fate shows the flip side of the surveillance stateTwitter releases trove of 10 million tweets by foreign bad actors
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Twitter has brought the foreign election-interfering trolls out from under their bridges.
On Wednesday, Twitter announced in a blog post that it was releasing the complete cache of data and content by foreign entities including Russia and Iran created to interfere with American politics and information. The amount of content is staggering: 4,611 accounts from foreign bad actors published over 10 million tweets to manipulate American discourse since 2009.
Twitter is publishing the data in compliance with promises it made to the US government, and to enable independent research of the information campaigns. Read more…
More about Twitter, Russia, Iran, Elections, and Tech
View More Twitter releases trove of 10 million tweets by foreign bad actors