Social media giants Facebook and Twitter could face sanctions in Britain if they fail to be more forthcoming in providing details about Russian disinformation campaigns that used their platforms in the run-up to last year’s Brexit referendum, the chairman of a British parliamentary inquiry committee warned.

The companies have been given until January 18 to hand over information.

Damian Collins, chairman of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport committee in the British parliament, which is looking into Russian fake news’ efforts, criticized both companies earlier this month, accusing them of stonewalling the parliamentary investigation. But he has now warned they risk being punished and he says his committee is exploring what sanctions could be imposed on Facebook and Twitter.

“What there has to be then is some mechanism of saying: if you fail to do that, if you ignore requests to act, if you fail to police the site effectively and deal with highly problematic content, then there has to be some sort of sanction against you,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

He dubbed the lack of cooperation by the social media firms as “extraordinary.”

“They don’t believe that they have any obligation at all to initiate their own investigation into what may or may not have been happening, he said. “They’ve not done any of that work at all.”

Parliamentary committees do not have the power in their own right to impose sanctions on erring companies. But British officials have expressed interest in punishing social media companies for failing to take action to stop their platforms from being exploited by agitators, whether they are working for foreign powers or non-state actors such as the Islamic State terror group.

In September in New York at the annual general assembly meeting of the United Nations, British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed frustration with social media companies, saying they must go “further and faster” in removing extremist content and should aim to do so within two hours of it appearing on their sites.

“This is a major step in reclaiming the internet from those who would use it to do us harm,” she said.

The prime minister has repeatedly called for an end to “safe spaces” on social media for terrorists. And British ministers have called for limits to end-to-end encryption, which prevents messages from being read by third parties if they are intercepted.

British lawmakers and ministers aren’t the only ones considering ways to sanction social media firms that fail to police their sites to avoid them from being used to spread fake news or being exploited by militants. This month, Germany’s competition authority accused Facebook of violating European data protection regulations by merging information collected through WhatsApp and Instagram with Facebook user accounts.

Collins has written twice to the social media firms requesting information about suspected Russian fake news campaigns in the weeks and months before Britons voted in June 2016 on whether to retain membership in the European Union, Britain’s largest trading partner.

In a letter to Twitter, he wrote: “The information you have now shared with us is completely inadequate. … It seems odd that so far we have received more information about activities that have taken place on your platform from journalists and academics than from you.”

In response to parliamentary requests for information about Russian interference in the EU referendum, including details of accounts operated by Russian misinformation actors, the social media firms passed on copies of the details they provided to Britain’s Electoral Commission, which is probing advertising originating from Russian actors during the lead up to the Brexit vote.

Facebook said only $0.97 had been spent on Brexit-related ads seen by British viewers. Twitter claimed the only Russian spending it received was $1,000 from the Russian state-owned broadcaster RT.

Russia has been accused of meddling in recent elections in America, France and elsewhere and of running disinformation campaigns aimed at poisoning political discourse in the West and sowing discord with fake news.

In November, Prime Minister May accused Vladimir Putin’s government of trying to “undermine free societies” and “planting fake stories” to “sow discord in the West. “Russia has denied the allegations.

Three days before Christmas, Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, sparred with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, over the issue of alleged Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum.

During his trip to Moscow, the first visit by a British foreign secretary to the Russian capital for five years, Lavrov denied at a joint press conference that the Kremlin had sought to meddle, saying Johnson himself had previously said there was “no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.” Johnson corrected Lavrov, saying: “Not successfully, is what I said.”

So far the evidence of a major Russian social media effort during the Brexit referendum remains thin, and at least not on the alleged scale seen, according to investigators, during the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

An investigation by the New York Times found that “Russian agents … disseminated inflammatory posts that reached 126 million users on Facebook, published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Google’s YouTube service” ahead of the U.S. presidential vote.

In January 2017, the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence concluded: “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.”

In October 2017, researchers at the City University of London found a “13,500-strong [Russian] Twitter bot army,” was present on the social media site around the time of the referendum.

Bot accounts post content automatically. Those accounts in the month prior to the Brexit vote posted a total of 65,000 tweets about the referendum with a slant towards the leave campaign, according to City University researchers.

But a subsequent study by the University of California, Berkeley, and Swansea University in Wales unearthed more pro-Brexit Russian bot accounts, tracking over 150,000 of them.
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Autism is on the rise in many developed countries, and the reasons why are still unclear. But more autistic children mean that, one day, more autistic adults will be entering the workforce. A new robot is trying to help these workers navigate the emotional elements on the job. VOA’s Bronwyn Benito narrates this report by Kevin Enochs.
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Facing lawsuits and consumer outrage  after it said it slowed older iPhones with flagging batteries, Apple Inc is slashing prices for battery replacements and will change its software to show users whether their phone battery is good.

In a posting on its website Thursday, Apple apologized over its handling of the battery issue and said it would make a number of changes for customers “to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions.”

Apple made the move to address concerns about the quality and durability of its products at a time when it is charging $999 for its newest flagship model, the iPhone X.

Battery prices lowered

The company said it would cut the price of an out-of-warranty battery replacement from $79 to $29 for an iPhone 6 or later, starting next month.

The company also will update its iOS operating system to let users see whether their battery is in poor health and is affecting the phone’s performance.

“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” Apple said in its posting. “We apologize.”

On Dec. 20, Apple acknowledged that iPhone software has the effect of slowing down some phones with battery problems. Apple said the problem was that aging lithium batteries delivered power unevenly, which could cause iPhones to shutdown unexpectedly to protect the delicate circuits inside.

Lawsuits filed

That disclosure played on a common belief among consumers that Apple purposely slows down older phones to encourage customers to buy newer iPhone models.

While no credible evidence has ever emerged that Apple engaged in such conduct, the battery disclosure struck a nerve on social media and elsewhere. Apple on Thursday denied that it has ever done anything to intentionally shorten the life of a product.

At least eight lawsuits have been filed in California, New York and Illinois alleging that the company defrauded users by slowing devices down without warning them. The company also faces a legal complaint in France, where so called “planned obsolesce” is against the law.
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The Justice Department on Thursday unsealed details of its case against two Romanians who allegedly hacked computers tied to Washington, D.C., police surveillance cameras.

Police in Bucharest arrested Mihai Alexandru Isvanca and Eveline Cismaru on December 15. U.S. attorneys have charged them with conspiracy to commit computer and wire fraud.

They allegedly hacked into more than 120 computers tied to Washington police surveillance cameras last January. It was part of an alleged scheme to infect personal computers with ransomware.

Ransomware restricts users from accessing their own computers and demands a payment to the ramsomware operator to unlock it.

The Justice Department said the investigation was of the highest priority because the alleged hacking of the surveillance camera computers came just weeks before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.

However, it says there is no evidence anyone’s personal security was threatened or harmed.

If tried in the U.S. and convicted, the Romanian defendants could face up to 20 years in prison.
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In years past, demand for Apple Inc.’s latest flagship phone was critical to the company’s results over the holiday shopping quarter. That dynamic might be changing, however, as Apple’s widening lineup of devices and services more than makes up for any tepidness in demand this quarter for its lead product, the $999 iPhone X.

On Tuesday, Apple’s stock fell 2.5 percent to $170.57 after Taiwan’s Economic Daily and several analysts suggested iPhone X sales in the fiscal first quarter would be 30 million units, 20 million fewer than initially planned by the company.

The cut in the forecast was not confirmed, and the stock regained ground Thursday, hitting $171.82 by midday. The mean revenue estimate for the holiday quarter among 30 analysts remains at $86.2 billion, near the high end of Apple’s forecast of $84 billion to $87 billion.

Apple declined to comment.

Part of the support for Apple may reflect a change in its business strategy.

Releasing two new models and keeping older ones have made

Apple less dependent on its flagship product. Apple shareholder Ross Gerber, chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and

Investment Management in Santa Monica, California, said the higher price and better margins on the iPhone X would reduce fears of a sales decline.

Eye on combined sales

“We know that Apple’s strategy was different this quarter by releasing two phones, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, and I think combined sales will be in line with what people expect,” Gerber said.

Apple also has fattened its portfolio of accessories and other devices, from its AirPods wireless headphones to a new Apple Watch with cellular data features.

While none is a runaway hit, collectively they are an important contributor, with Apple’s “other products” segment growing 16 percent to $12.8 billion last year. Customers who buy those add-ons are also likely to buy services from the App Store and Apple Music, part of Apple’s services segment, which grew 23 percent to $29.9 billion last year.

“Ultimately, it will be this multidevice ownership” that will generate further revenue, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

IPhone X sales still matter. Each unit generates nearly twice the revenue of an iPhone 7 and contains technologies like facial recognition that burnish Apple’s brand.

Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research said “hit products” still represent “an enormous amount of the company’s overall value.”

“Will it take hold in the mainstream? That’s the question that still remains,” he said.
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While the attention of much of the world was occupied with earthly happenings, space scientists had some notable achievements during the past year, ranging from new projects to the spectacular end of at least one program. VOA’s George Putic reviews the highlights of the year in space.
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When it comes to autonomous vehicles, putting them in the relatively open skies may be easier than putting them on crowded roads. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports on how one branch of the military is investigating the use of autonomous helicopters.
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In this digital age, meals are now shared over the internet. With social media users looking for dishes that are both ready to snap and to eat, restaurateurs across the globe are taking advantage, styling their creations to be camera ready. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
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Vietnam has unveiled a new, 10,000-strong military cyberwarfare unit to counter “wrong” views on the Internet, media reported, amid a widening crackdown on critics of the one-party state.

The cyber unit, named Force 47, is already in operation in several sectors, Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted Lieutenant General Nguyen Trong Nghia, deputy head of the military’s political department, as saying at a conference of the Central Propaganda Department on Monday in the commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

“In every hour, minute and second we must be ready to fight proactively against the wrong views,” the paper quoted the general as saying.

Communist-ruled Vietnam has stepped up attempts to tame the internet, calling for closer watch over social networks and for the removal of content that it deems offensive, but there has been little sign of it silencing criticism when the companies providing the platforms are global.

Its neighbor China, in contrast, allows only local internet companies operating under strict rules.

The number of staff compares with the 6,000 reportedly employed by North Korea. However, the general’s comments suggest its force may be focused largely on domestic internet users, whereas North Korea is internationally focused because the internet is not available to the public at large.

‘Bad and dangerous content’

In August, Vietnam’s president said the country needed to pay greater attention to controlling “news sites and blogs with bad and dangerous content.”

Vietnam, one of the top 10 countries for Facebook users by numbers, has also drafted an internet security bill asking for local placement of Facebook and Google servers, but the bill has been the subject of heated debate at the National Assembly and is still pending assembly approval.

Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. said Vietnam had “built up considerable cyberespionage capabilities in a region with relatively weak defenses.”

“Vietnam is certainly not alone. FireEye has observed a proliferation in offensive capabilities. … This proliferation has implications for many parties, including governments, journalists, activists and even multinational firms,” a spokesman at FireEye, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

“Cyberespionage is increasingly attractive to nation states, in part because it can provide access to a significant amount of information with a modest investment, plausible deniability and limited risk,” he added.

Vietnam denies such charges.

Vietnam has in recent months stepped up measures to silence critics. A court last month jailed a blogger for seven years for “conducting propaganda against the state.”

In a separate, similar case last month, a court upheld a 10-year jail sentence for a prominent blogger.
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Saving digital files in commercial memory banks called cloud storage is a cheap and convenient way for long-term storage of documents, photos, music and video. Private users as well as businesses can access them from anywhere and share them with whomever they give the password to. Providers, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3, claim almost absolute security. But computer scientists say the protection should be in the users’ hands. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Silicon Valley has long inspired Chinese business and tech ventures. But now that a Chinese dockless bike share company has landed in the Valley, is the tide turning? VOA’s Calla Yu has more.
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There is an entire industry of add-ons that are designed to keep your cellphone screen from cracking. And yet broken screens are the main reason cellphones fail. But one Japanese researcher may have solved the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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What’s a bitcoin worth? Lately nobody knows for sure, but after a wild ride Friday, it’s worth a good deal less than it was Thursday.

After losses over the last few days, the digital currency fell as much as 30 percent overnight in Asia, and the action became so frenzied that the website Coinbase suspended trading. It later made up much of that ground, and slumped 9.5 percent to $14,042 Friday, according to the tracking site CoinDesk.

Experts are warning that bitcoin is a bubble about to burst, but things might get crazier before it does: A lot of people have heard of bitcoin by now, but very few people own it.

“Bubbles burst when the last buyers are in,” said Brett Ewing, chief market strategist for First Franklin. “Who are the last buyers? The general public, unfortunately.”

1,000 people own 40 percent

Ewing said 40 percent of bitcoin belongs to just 1,000 people, and hedge funds and other major investors are going to start buying it soon. But those funds may buy bitcoin and also protect themselves by placing bets that it will fall. Retail investors may just buy it only to see it fall.

“I think investors should approach it with caution and I think many people will dive into it not understanding what it is,” he said.

As bitcoin skyrocketed this month, the volume of trading was unprecedented as investors hoping to catch a ride up piled in. Prices have risen so fast, the fall on Friday returned the price of bitcoin only to where it was trading two weeks ago.

From tea to blockchain overnight

The volatility has created a circuslike atmosphere. Some companies that have added the word “bitcoin” or related terms to their names to get in on the action. The craziest thing is, it’s worked.

Long Island Iced Tea Corp. until this week had been known for its peach-, raspberry-, guava-, lemon- and mango-flavored drinks. Then, on Thursday, the company announced a radical rebranding. It’s changing its name to Long Blockchain Corp., shifting its primary focus from iced tea to “the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.”

Blockchain is a ledger where transactions of digital currencies, like bitcoin, are recorded.

Shares in Long Island Iced Tea soared 200 percent in one day.

The Hicksville, New York, company did what investors are doing, hitching a ride on a currency that raced from less than $10,000 at the end of November to almost $20,000 on Sunday. And it cost less than $1,000 at the beginning of the year.

Crash every three months

The rise of price of bitcoin, which is still difficult to use if you actually want to buy something, has led to heated speculation about when the bubble might burst.

The currency has been, if nothing else, highly elastic, bouncing back every time it crashes, which occurs about once every quarter.

It fell 11.5 percent over two days in early December and 21.5 percent over five days in November.

Curiosity has now driven bitcoin to the futures market, where investors bet on which direction it will go.

Bitcoin futures started trading on two major exchanges, the Cboe and CME, this month. Those futures fell about 8 percent Friday.

Investor beware

If people get burned, it won’t be because they were not warned.

The Securities and Exchange Commission put out a statement last week warning investors to be careful with bitcoin and other digital currencies. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission has proposed regulating bitcoin like a commodity, similar to gold or oil.

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a financial watchdog, issued a similar warning recently.
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A reused SpaceX rocket carried 10 satellites into orbit from California on Friday, leaving behind a trail of mystery and wonder as it soared into space.

The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying the latest batch of satellites for Iridium Communications.

The launch in the setting sun created a shining, billowing streak that was widely seen throughout Southern California and as far away as Phoenix.

Calls came in to TV stations as far afield as San Diego, more than 200 miles south of the launch site.

Cars stopped on freeways in Los Angeles so drivers and passengers could take pictures and video.

The Los Angeles Fire Department issued an advisory that the “mysterious light in the sky” was from the rocket launch.

Jimmy Golen, a sports writer for The Associated Press in Boston who was in Southern California for the holidays, said he and other tourists saw the long, glowing contrail while touring Warner Bros. studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.

“People were wondering if it had something to do with movies, or TV or a UFO,” he said. “It was very cool.”

The same rocket carried Iridium satellites into orbit in June. That time, the first stage landed on a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean. This time, the rocket was allowed to plunge into the sea.

It was the 18th and final launch of 2017 for SpaceX, which has contracted to replace Iridium’s system with 75 updated satellites. SpaceX has made four launches and expects to make several more to complete the job by mid-2018.

The satellites also carry payloads for global real-time aircraft tracking and a ship-tracking service.
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Over the next month, Christians of all kinds will celebrate the birth of Jesus. The world has been wondering about the reality of his existence, his life, death, and the question of his divinity for thousands of years. But the place considered to be his tomb has been dated to the time he is believed to have walked the earth. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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IPhone owners from several states sued Apple Inc. for not disclosing sooner that it issued software updates deliberately slowing older-model phones so aging batteries lasted longer, saying Apple’s silence led them to wrongly conclude that their only option was to buy newer, pricier iPhones.

The allegations were in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Chicago federal court on behalf of five iPhone owners from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina, all of whom say they never would have bought new iPhones had Apple told them that simply replacing the batteries would have sped up their old ones. The suit alleges Apple violated consumer fraud laws.

A similar lawsuit was filed Thursday in Los Angeles. Both suits came a day after Apple confirmed what high-tech sleuths outside the company already observed: The company had deployed software to slow some phones. Apple said it was intended as a fix to deal with degraded lithium-ion batteries that could otherwise suddenly die.

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices,” an Apple statement said. It said it released the fix for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE and later extended it to iPhone 7. Apple didn’t respond to a message Friday seeking comment.

The Chicago lawsuit suggests Apple’s motive may have been sinister, though it offers no evidence in the filing.

“Apple’s decision to purposefully … throttle down these devices,” it says, “was undertaken to fraudulently induce consumers to purchase the latest” iPhone.

Plaintiff Kirk Pedelty, of North Carolina, contacted Apple as his frustration grew. However, the lawsuit says: “Nobody from Apple customer support suggested that he replace his battery to improve the performance of his iPhone. … Frustrated by slowdowns and intermittent shutdowns of his iPhone 7, Pedelty purchased an iPhone 8.”

The lawsuit seeks class-action status to represent thousands of iPhone owners nationwide.

Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said she believes the tech giant was seeking to help consumers extend the lives of the older phones — though it would have been better to disclose what it was doing and why right away.

“Even if you are trying to do something good for your customers, it is going to be perceived as you are sneaking around behind their backs if you don’t tell them about it first,” she said.
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Russian television anchor Pavel Lobkov was in the studio getting ready for his show when jarring news flashed across his phone: Some of his most intimate messages had just been published to the web.

Days earlier, the veteran journalist had come out live on air as HIV-positive, a taboo-breaking revelation that drew responses from hundreds of Russians fighting their own lonely struggles with the virus. Now he’d been hacked.

“These were very personal messages,” Lobkov said in a recent interview, describing a frantic call to his lawyer in an abortive effort to stop the spread of nearly 300 pages of Facebook correspondence, including sexually explicit messages. Even two years later, he said, “it’s a very traumatic story.”

The Associated Press found that Lobkov was targeted by the hacking group known as Fancy Bear in March 2015, nine months before his messages were leaked. He was one of at least 200 journalists, publishers and bloggers targeted by the group as early as mid-2014 and as recently as a few months ago.

The AP identified journalists as the third-largest group on a hacking hit list obtained from cybersecurity firm Secureworks, after diplomatic personnel and U.S. Democrats. About 50 of the journalists worked at The New York Times. Another 50 were either foreign correspondents based in Moscow or Russian reporters like Lobkov who worked for independent news outlets. Others were prominent media figures in Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics or Washington.

The list of journalists provides new evidence for the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Fancy Bear acted on behalf of the Russian government when it intervened in the U.S. presidential election. Spy agencies say the hackers were working to help Republican Donald Trump. The Russian government has denied interfering in the American election.

Previous AP reporting has shown how Fancy Bear — which Secureworks nicknamed Iron Twilight — used phishing emails to try to compromise Russian opposition leaders, Ukrainian politicians and U.S. intelligence figures, along with Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and more than 130 other Democrats.

Lobkov, 50, said he saw hacks like the one that turned his day upside-down in December 2015 as dress rehearsals for the email leaks that struck the Democrats in the United States the following year.

“I think the hackers in the service of the Fatherland were long getting their training on our lot before venturing outside.”

‘Classic KGB tactic’

New Yorker writer Masha Gessen said it was also in 2015 — when Secureworks first detected attempts to break into her Gmail — that she began noticing people who seemed to materialize next to her in public places in New York and speak loudly in Russian into their phones, as if trying to be overheard. She said this only happened when she put appointments into the online calendar linked to her Google account.

Gessen, the author of a book about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, said she saw the incidents as threats.

“It was really obvious,” she said. “It was a classic KGB intimidation tactic.”

Other U.S.-based journalists targeted include Josh Rogin, a Washington Post columnist, and Shane Harris, who was covering the intelligence community for The Daily Beast in 2015. Harris said he dodged the phishing attempt, forwarding the email to a source in the security industry who told him almost immediately that Fancy Bear was involved.

In Russia, the majority of journalists targeted by the hackers worked for independent news outlets like Novaya Gazeta or Vedomosti, though a few — such as Tina Kandelaki and Ksenia Sobchak — are more mainstream. Sobchak has even launched an improbable bid for the Russian presidency.

Investigative reporter Roman Shleynov noted that the Gmail hackers targeted was the one he used while working on the Panama Papers, the expose of international tax avoidance that implicated members of Putin’s inner circle.

Fancy Bear also pursued more than 30 media targets in Ukraine, including many journalists at the Kyiv Post and others who have reported from the front lines of the Russia-backed war in the country’s east.

Nataliya Gumenyuk, co-founder of Ukrainian internet news site Hromadske, said the hackers were hunting for compromising information.

“The idea was to discredit the independent Ukrainian voices,” she said.

The hackers also tried to break into the personal Gmail account of Ellen Barry, The New York Times’ former Moscow bureau chief.

Her newspaper appears to have been a favorite target. Fancy Bear sent phishing emails to roughly 50 of Barry’s colleagues at The Times in late 2014, according to two people familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential data.

The Times confirmed in a brief statement that its employees received the malicious messages, but the newspaper declined to comment further.

Some journalists saw their presence on the hackers’ hit list as vindication. Among them were CNN security analyst Michael Weiss and Brookings Institution visiting fellow Jamie Kirchick, who took the news as a badge of honor.

“I’m very proud to hear that,” Kirchick said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said the wide net cast by Fancy Bear underscores efforts by governments worldwide to use hacking against journalists.

“It’s about gaining access to sources and intimidating those journalists,” said Courtney C. Radsch, the group’s advocacy director.

In Russia, the stakes are particularly high. The committee has counted 38 murders of journalists there since 1992.

Many journalists told the AP they knew they were under threat, explaining that they had added a second layer of password protection to their emails and only chatted over encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp or Signal.

Fancy Bear target Ekaterina Vinokurova, who works for regional media outlet Znak, said she routinely deletes her emails.

“I understand that my accounts may be hacked at any time,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m ready for them.” 

‘I’ve seen what they could do’

It’s not just whom the hackers tried to spy on that points to the Russian government.

It’s when.

Maria Titizian, an Armenian journalist, immediately found significance in the date she was targeted: June 26, 2015.

“It was Electric Yerevan,” she said, referring to protests over rising energy bills that she reported on. The protests that rocked Armenia’s capital that summer were initially seen by some in Moscow as a threat to Russian influence.

Titizian said her outspoken criticism of the Kremlin’s “colonial attitude” toward Armenia could have made her a target.

Eliot Higgins, whose open source journalism site Bellingcat repeatedly crops up on the target list, said the phishing attempts seemed to begin “once we started really making strong statements about MH17,” the Malaysian airliner shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people. Bellingcat played a key role in marshaling the evidence that the plane was destroyed by a Russian missile — Moscow’s denials notwithstanding.

The clearest timing for a hacking attempt may have been that of Adrian Chen.

On June 2, 2015, Chen published a prescient expose of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian “troll factory” that won fresh infamy in October over revelations that it had manufactured make-believe Americans to pollute social media with toxic rhetoric.

Eight days after Chen published his big story, Fancy Bear tried to break into his account.

Chen, who has regularly written about the darker recesses of the internet, said having a lifetime of private messages exposed to the internet could be devastating.

“I’ve covered a lot of these leaks,” he said. “I’ve seen what they could do.”
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The toys your kids unwrap this Christmas could invite hackers into your home.

That Grinch-like warning comes from the FBI, which said earlier this year that toys connected to the internet could be a target for crooks who may listen in on conversations or use them to steal a child’s personal information.

The bureau did not name any specific toys or brands, but it said any internet-connected toys with microphones, cameras or location tracking might put a child’s privacy or safety at risk. That could be a talking doll or a tablet designed for kids. And because some of the toys are being rushed to be made and sold, the FBI said, security safeguards might be overlooked.

Security experts say the only way to prevent a hack is to not keep the toy. But if you decide to let a kid play with it, there are ways to reduce the risks:  

Do your research

Before opening a toy, search for it online and read reviews to see whether there are any complaints or past security problems. If there have been previous issues, you may want to rethink keeping it.

Reputable companies will also explain how information is collected from the toy or device, how the data are stored and who has access to the data. Usually that type of information is found on the company’s website, typically under its privacy policy. If you can’t find it, call the company. If there isn’t a policy, that’s a bad sign.

“You shouldn’t use it,” said Behnam Dayanim, a partner at the Paul Hastings law office in Washington and co-chair of its privacy and cybersecurity practice.

Companies can change their privacy policies, so read them again if you’re notified of a change. 

Use secure Wi-Fi

Make sure the Wi-Fi the toy will be connected to is secure and has a hard-to-guess password. Weak passwords make it easier for hackers to access devices that use the network. Never connect the toy to free Wi-Fi that’s open to the public. And if the toy itself allows you to create a password, do it. 

Power it off

When the toy is not being used, shut it off or unplug it so it stops collecting data. 

“They become less of an attractive target,” said Alan Brill, who is a cybersecurity and investigations managing director at consulting firm Kroll in Secaucus, New Jersey. 

If the item has a camera, face it toward a wall or cover it with a piece of tape when it’s not being used. Toys with microphones can be thrown in a chest or drawer where it’s harder to hear conversations, Brill said.

Register, but don’t give away info

A software update may fix security holes, and you don’t want to miss that fix, Brill said.

But when registering, be stingy with the information you hand over; all they need is contact information to let you know about the update. If they require other information, such as a child’s birthday, make one up. “You’re not under oath,” said Brill. “You can lie.”

Be vigilant

If the toy or device allows kids to chat with other people playing with the same toy or game, explain to children that they can’t give out personal information, said Liz Brown, a business law professor at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, who focuses on technology and privacy law.

Discussions are not enough; check the chat section to make sure children aren’t sending things they shouldn’t be, Brown said. People could be pretending to be kids to get personal information. “It can get creepy pretty fast,” said Brown.

Reputable companies that make toys with microphones will offer ways for parents to review and delete stored information. Take advantage of that.

Report breaches

If a toy was compromised by a hacker, the FBI recommends reporting it online through its internet crime complaint center at IC3.gov.
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If you are a driver you know how frustrating it feels when traffic lights seem to make traffic worse.  According to a recent study done at Texas A&M University, each year average Americans spend 38 hours sitting in traffic jams. But scientists who study traffic patterns say the situation can be improved with smart stop lights. VOA’s George Putic talked with one of them.
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For every person who just loves James Bond, it’s the perfect gift. A very nice, stylish pair of shoes, that just happen to be full of high-tech hidden compartments. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The European Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that ride-hailing company Uber should be regulated like a taxi service instead of a technology firm, a decision that limits its business operations in Europe.

The decision was handed down in response to a complaint from a Barcelona taxi drivers association, which tried to prevent Uber from expanding into the Spanish city. The drivers maintained that Uber drivers should be subject to authorizations and license requirements and accused the company of engaging in unfair competition.

The San Francisco-based Uber contends it should be regulated as an information services provider because it is based on a mobile application that links passengers to drivers.

The European Union’s highest court said services provided by Uber and similar companies are “inherently linked to a transport service” and therefore must be classified as “a service in the field of transport” under EU law.

The decision will impact ride-hailing companies in the 28-nation EU, where national governments can now regulate them as transportation services.

Uber attempted to downplay the decision, saying it only affects its operations in four countries and that it will move forward with plans to expand in Europe. But the company was previously forced to abandon its peer-to-peer service in several EU countries that connect freelance drivers with riders.
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Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it would begin using facial recognition technology to tell people on the social network when others upload photos of

them, if they agree to let the company keep a facial template on file.

The company said in a statement it was making the feature optional to allow people to protect their privacy, but that it thought some people would want to be notified of pictures they might not otherwise know about.

The feature would not immediately be available in Canada and the European Union, Facebook said. Privacy laws are generally stricter in those jurisdictions, though the company said it was hopeful about implementing the feature there in the future.

Tech companies are putting in place a variety of functions using facial recognition technology, despite fears about how the facial data could be used. In September, Apple Inc revealed that users of its new iPhone X would be able to unlock the device using their face.

Facial recognition technology has been a part of Facebook since at least 2010, when the social network began offering suggestions for whom to tag in a photo. That feature also is optional.

For those who have opted in, Facebook creates what it calls a template of a person’s face by analyzing pixels from photos where the person is already tagged. It then compares newly uploaded images to the template.

Facebook deletes the template of anyone who then opts out, Rob Sherman, Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer, said in a statement.

Under the new feature, people who have opted in would get a notification from Facebook if a photo of them has been uploaded, although only if the photo is one they have access to.

The company plans to add an “on/off” switch to allow users to control all Facebook features related to facial recognition, Sherman said. “We thought it was important to have a really straightforward way of controlling facial recognition technology,” he said.

Facebook said it also plans to use facial recognition technology to notify users if someone else uploads a photo of them as their profile picture, which the company said may help reduce impersonations, as well as in software that describes photos in words for people who have vision loss, so that they

can tell who is in a photo.

Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Leslie Adler.
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CryptoKitties, an online game and marketplace featuring virtual kittens, has become an entry point for curious outsiders looking to dabble in cryptocurrencies – decentralized digital monies that rely on blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer transactions.
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The United States is publicly blaming North Korea for unleashing a cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe earlier this year.

In an op-ed piece posted on the Wall Street Journal website Monday night, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert said that North Korea was “directly responsible” for the WannaCry ransomware attack, and that Pyongyang will be held accountable for it.

“The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Bossert writes. “North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious.”

Bossert says President Donald Trump’s administration will continue to use its “maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang’s ability to mount attacks, cyber or otherwise.”

Pyongyang has previously denied being responsible for the attack.

But, the U.S. government has assessed with a “very high level of confidence” that a hacking entity known as Lazarus Group, which works on behalf of the North Korean government, carried out the WannaCry attack, senior officials told Reuters.
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