Tag Archives: Politics & Government

Bangladesh is experiencing a ‘near-total’ internet shutdown amid student protests

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Bangladesh is experiencing a complete internet shutdown as its government attempts to clamp down on widespread student protests that have resulted in the deaths of at least 32 people, according to AFP. The unrest is centered around the country’s quota system that requires a third of government jobs to be reserved for relatives of veterans who had fought for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.

On Thursday, several thousand protestors in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, had reportedly stormed state broadcaster BTV, smashed windows and furniture and set offices on fire, trapping “many” people inside, according to a post on BTV’s official Facebook page. 17 people died on Thursday amid clashes with police, reported Al Jazeera. To control the situation, Bangladeshi authorities shut down internet and phone access throughout the country, a common practice in South Asia to prevent the spread of rumors and misinformation and exercise state control. NetBlocks, a global internet monitor that works on digital rights analyzed live network data that showed that Bangladesh was in the middle of a “near-total national internet shutdown.”

Internet shutdowns are a popular way to crack down on conflict in countries around the world. According to internet watchdog Access Now, the number of shutdowns around the world continues to rise each year. In 2023, 39 countries collectively shutdown internet access more than 160 times for a variety of reasons including protests, exams and elections.

Bangladesh has frequently blacked out the internet to crack down on political opposition and activists. At the end of 2023, research tool CIVICUS Monitor, which provides data on the state of civil society and freedoms in nearly 200 countries, downgraded Bangladesh’s civic space to “closed,” its lowest possible rating, after the country imposed six internet shutdowns the previous year. That made Bangladesh the fifth-largest perpetrator of internet shutdowns in 2022, Access Now said.

The country’s telecom regulator had pledged to keep internet access on through Bangladesh’s general elections at the beginning of 2024, but that electoral period is now over. Despite the pledge, Bangladesh blocked access to news websites during its elections.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bangladesh-is-experiencing-a-near-total-internet-shutdown-amid-student-protests-235907085.html?src=rss

Meta rolls back restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts

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Meta, the parent company of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, has decided to remove restrictions placed on former President Donald Trump’s accounts.

Meta updated its original statement announcing the end of Trump’s suspension on Facebook and Instagram in January of 2023 to reflect the Republican presumptive presidential nominee’s new online status. Axios first reported on the news.

Meta removed Trump from all of its platforms following the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 amid “extreme and highly unusual circumstances,” according to Meta’s original statement. 

Seven people were killed as a result of violence on or collateral damage as a result of the attack on the Capitol building.

The following May, the Oversight Board ruled that Facebook failed to apply an appropriate penalty with its indefinite suspension of Trump’s accounts for “severely” violating Facebook and Instagram’s community guidelines and standards. Trump said in a video statement released less than three hours after the violence began “We love you. You’re very special” and called the insurrectionists “great patriots.” Those and other statements made in the wake of the US Capitol attack convinced the board that Trump violated its standard against praising or supporting people engaging in violence on its platforms.

Two years later, Meta restored Trump’s accounts following a time-bound suspension with stricter penalties for violating its terms of service, a standard that was higher than any other user on Facebook and Instagram. Meta noted in its latest update that the ex-president will be subject to the same standard as everyone else.

“With the party conventions taking place shortly, including the Republican convention next week, the candidates for President of the United States will soon be formally nominated,” according to Meta’s statement. “In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis.”

Twitter, now X, also took action against President Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol for three tweets he posted that were labeled for inciting violence. It started with a 12-hour suspension on Jan. 6, 2021. Two days later, Twitter banned him completely after determining that subsequent posts also violated its community standards. The following year, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk conducted an informal poll on his account asking if he should remove President Trump’s ban and reinstated his account a few days later.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-rolls-back-restrictions-on-trumps-facebook-and-instagram-accounts-220203014.html?src=rss

Three senators introduce bill to protect artists and journalists from unauthorized AI use

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Three US Senators introduced a bill that aims to rein in the rise and use of AI generated content and deepfakes by protecting the work of artists, songwriters and journalists.

The Content Original Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media (COPIED) Act was introduced to the Senate Friday morning. The bill is a bipartisan effort authorized by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), according to a press alert issued by Blackburn’s office.

The COPIED ACT would, if enacted, create transparency standards through the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set guidelines for “content provenance information, watermarking, and synthetic content detection,” according to the press release.

The bill would also prohibit the unauthorized use of creative or journalistic content to train AI models or created AI content. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would also gain the authority to enforce these guidelines and individuals who had their legally created content used by AI to create new content without their consent or proper compensation would also have the right to take those companies or entities to court.

The bill would even expand the prohibition of tampering or removing content provenance information by internet platforms, search engines and social media companies.

A slew of content and journalism advocacy groups are already voicing their support for the COPIED Act to become law. They include groups like SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Songwriters Guild of America and the National Newspaper Association.

This is not the Senate’s first attempt to create guidelines and laws for the rising use of AI content and it certainly won’t be the last. In April, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) submitted a bill called the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act that would force AI companies to list their copyrighted sources in their datasets. The bill has not moved out of the House Committee on the Judiciary since its introduction, according to Senate records.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/three-senators-introduce-bill-to-protect-artists-and-journalists-from-unauthorized-ai-use-205603263.html?src=rss

Biden administration awards car factories $1.7 billion so they can build EVs

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The US Energy Department has revealed that it's awarding car and auto parts factories in eight states a total of $1.7 billion in funding, so that they can be retooled to build electric vehicles and their components. According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the money will come from President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies to EV and battery plants, as well as the $7,500 tax credits consumers can get if they buy an electric vehicle.

One of the 11 recipients is a Jeep factory in Belvidere, Illinois that closed last year. The $334.8 million it will get from the initiative will allow it to reopen to produce electric vehicles and restore 1,450 jobs. GM, which will be awarded $500 million, will convert a plant in Lansing, Michigan to produce EVs instead of gasoline cars. The US subsidiary of Korean auto parts maker Hyundai Mobis will also get $32.6 million to refit a plant in Toledo, Ohio for the production of plug-in vehicle components. 

Government officials said they chose communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution or lack of investment. In addition, employees in all of the selected companies are represented by unions. The grants aren't set in stone — the companies still have to negotiate terms with the Department of Energy. They have to commit to retaining their current workers despite the shift to EVs, and they have to meet employment targets. The companies also have to promise to provide their workers with certain benefits, such as child care, pensions and training to further their careers. 

As The Times notes, several factories selected for the initiative are located in "battleground states" for the upcoming presidential elections. "This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more — from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia — by helping auto companies retool, reboot and rehire in the same factories and communities," Biden said in a statement. "This delivers on my commitment to never give up on the manufacturing communities and workers that were left behind by my predecessor."

Jennifer Granholm, the US Energy secretary, believes the fund will retain 15,000 jobs and create 3,000 new ones. Granholm also said that it will help the US "compete with other countries who were subsidizing their auto industries." While the secretary didn't mention China specifically, the country is known for subsidizing its EV manufacturers. Earlier this year, the US government quadrupled import tariff for Chinese EVs, while the European Union announced that it was going to impose additional tariffs of up to 38 percent on Chinese-made electric vehicles to protect local manufacturers. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/biden-administration-awards-car-factories-17-billion-so-they-can-build-evs-133008903.html?src=rss

US officials announce the takedown of an AI-powered Russian bot farm

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US officials and their allies have identified and taken down an artificial intelligence-powered Russian bot farm comprised of almost 1,000 accounts, which spread disinformation and pro-Russian sentiments on X. The Justice Department has revealed the the scheme that was made possible by software was created by a digital media department within RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet. Its development was apparently led by RT's deputy editor-in-chief back in 2022 and was approved and funded by an officer at Russia's Federal Security Service, the main successor of the KGB. 

In a cybersecurity advisory issued by the FBI, intelligence officers from the Netherlands and cybersecurity authorities from Canada, they specifically mentioned a tool called "Meliorator," which can create "authentic appearing social media personas en masse," generate text messages as well as images and mirror disinformation from other bot personas. Authorities have seized two domains that the operation used to create email addresses that were necessary to sign up for accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, which served as home to the bots. 

The Justice Department, however, is still in the midst of finding all 968 accounts used by the Russian actors to disseminate false information. X has shared information with authorities on all the identified accounts so far and has already suspended them. As The Washington Post has noted, the bots slipped through X's safeguards, because they can copy-paste OTPs from their email accounts to log in. The operations' use of US-based domain names violates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Justice Department said. Meanwhile, paying for them violates federal money laundering laws in the US.

A lot of profiles created by the tool impersonated Americans by using American-sounding names and setting their locations on X to various places in the US. The examples presented by the Justice Department used headshots against gray backgrounds as their profile photos, which are a pretty good indicator that they were created using AI. One account with the name Ricardo Abbott, which claimed to be from Minneapolis, posted a video of Russian president Vladimir Putin justifying Russia's actions in Ukraine. Another account with the name Sue Williamson posted a video of Putin saying that the war in Ukraine isn't about territorial conflict and is a matter of "principles on which the New World Order will be based.” These posts were then liked and reposted by other bots in the network. 

It's worth noting that while this particular bot farm was confined to X, the people behind it had plans to expand to other platforms, based on the authorities' analysis of the Meliorator software. Foreign actors that spread political disinformation have been using social media to disseminate false news for years. But now they've added AI to their arsenal. Back in May, OpenAI reported that it dismantled five covert influence operations originating from Russia, China, Israel and Iran that were using its models to influence political outcomes.

"Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government," FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. "The FBI is committed to working with our partners and deploying joint, sequenced operations to strategically disrupt our most dangerous adversaries and their use of cutting-edge technology for nefarious purposes."

As for RT, the media organization told Bloomberg: "Farming is a beloved pastime for millions of Russians." 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-officials-announce-the-takedown-of-an-ai-powered-russian-bot-farm-054034912.html?src=rss

Texas court blocks the FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements

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The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) ban on noncompete agreements was supposed to take effect on September 4, but a Texan court has postponed its implementation by siding with the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that seeks to block the rule. Back in April, the FTC banned noncompetes, which have been widely used in the tech industry for years, to drive innovation and protect workers' rights and wages. A lot of companies are unsurprisingly unhappy with the agency's rule — as NPR notes, Dallas tax services firm Ryan LLC sued the FTC hours after its announcement. The US Chamber of Commerce and other groups of American businesses eventually joined the lawsuit. 

"Noncompete clauses keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism," FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said when the rule was announced. They prevent employees from moving to another company or from building businesses of their own in the same industry, so they may be stuck working in a job with lower pay or in an environment they don't like. But the Chamber of Commerce’s chief counsel Daryl Joseffer called the ban an attempt by the government to micromanage business decisions in a statement sent to Bloomberg. 

"The FTC’s blanket ban on noncompetes is an unlawful power grab that defies the agency’s constitutional and statutory authority and sets a dangerous precedent where the government knows better than the markets," Joseffer said. The FTC disagrees and told NPR that its "authority is supported by both statute and precedent."

US District Judge Ada Brown, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in her decision that "the text, structure, and history of the FTC Act reveal that the FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition." Brown also said that the plaintiffs are "likely to succeed" in getting the rule struck down and that it's in the public's best interest to grant the plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction. The judge added that the court will make a decision "on the ultimate merits of this action on or before August 30."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/texas-court-blocks-the-ftcs-ban-on-noncompete-agreements-150020601.html?src=rss

Japan’s government says goodbye to floppy disks

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Floppy disks may seem like a relic from an ancient time of computers but there are still places and even governments in the world that still use them to run its most basic functions. Japan is no longer one of those countries.

Japan’s Digital Agency announced on Wednesday it has rid its use of outdated floppy disks to operate its government computer systems. The only system still in place that requires the use of floppy disks is an environmental system that monitors vehicle recycling, according to Reuters.

Digital Minister Taro Kono declared in a statement to the news agency, “We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!” Presumably, the statement wasn’t printed on that annoying dot matrix printer paper with the edges that never tear straight.

Kono’s agency started his crusade against ‘90s era computer technology in 2022 shortly after his appointment to the Digital Agency. Around 1,900 of Japan’s government procedures used floppy disks and other outdated technology such as fax machines, CDs and MiniDiscs. He famously declared “a war on floppy discs [sic]” to his 2.5 million followers on X.

Of course, Japan isn’t the only country that used to rely on floppy disks long after the rest of the world moved on to more efficient forms of data storage. The US military was still using 8-inch floppy disks to operate its Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS), a 1970s computer system that received nuclear launch codes and sent emergency messages to military centers and field sources. The world learned the scary truth about SACCS thanks to CBS’s 60 Minutes and reporter Lesley Stahl. The Defense Department finally phased out the system in 2019. Let’s hope they also removed the shag carpeting and velvet upholstery.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/japans-government-says-goodbye-to-floppy-disks-214449682.html?src=rss

Texas age-verification law for pornography websites is going to the Supreme Court

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Texas will be the main battleground for a case about porn websites that is now headed to the Supreme Court. The Free Speech Coalition, a nonprofit group that represents the adult industry, petitioned the top court in April to review a state law that requires websites with explicit material to collect proof of users' ages. SCOTUS today agreed to take on the case challenging a previous ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit as a part of its next term beginning in October.

Texas was one of many states over the last year to pass this type of age-verification legislation aimed at porn websites. While supporters of these bills have said they are intended to protect minors from seeing inappropriate content, their critics have called the laws an overreach that could create new privacy risks. In response to the laws, Pornhub ended its operation in those states, a move that attracted public attention to the situation.

"While purportedly seeking to limit minors' access to online sexual content, the Act imposes significant burdens on adults' access to constitutionally protected expression," the FSC petition says. "Of central relevance here, it requires every user, including adults, to submit personally identifying information to access sensitive, intimate content over a medium — the internet — that poses unique security and privacy concerns."

This case is one of the latest First Amendment rights questions to go before the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the court remanded a case about social media content moderation back to lower courts and passed judgment on how closely social media companies can engage with federal officials about misinformation.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/texas-age-verification-law-for-pornography-websites-is-going-to-the-supreme-court-233511418.html?src=rss

The Morning After: Supreme Court rejects rulings on social media moderation

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Two state laws from Texas and Florida, that could upend the way social media companies handle content moderation are still up in the air. The Supreme Court sent the challenges back to lower courts, which vacates previous rulings. In a 9 - 0 decision in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the Supreme Court said that earlier rulings in lower courts had not properly evaluated the laws’ impact on the First Amendment. Never heard of NetChoice? It’s an industry group representing Meta, Google, X and other large tech companies. So it’s incredibly well-funded. NetChoice argued that the laws were unconstitutional.

The Texas law, passed in 2021, allows users to sue large social media companies over alleged “censorship” of their political views. The Supreme Court suspended the law in 2022 following a legal challenge. The Florida measure, also passed in 2021, attempted to impose fines on social media companies for banning politicians – that’s also on hold.

Justice Elena Kagan said that lower court rulings in both cases “concentrated” on the issue of “whether a state law can regulate the content-moderation practices used in Facebook’s News Feed (or near equivalents).” However, she writes, “they did not address the full range of activities the laws cover, and measure the constitutional against the unconstitutional applications.” It seems the lower courts need to do their homework.

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Midjourney

Midjourney, a popular AI-powered image generator, is creating images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden despite saying that it would block users from doing so ahead of the upcoming US presidential election. Engadget managed to get the tool to create images of Trump multiple times. The only time Midjourney refused to create an image of Trump or Biden was when it was asked to do so explicitly. “The Midjourney community voted to prevent using ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Joe Biden’ during election season,” the service said in that instance. Midjourney did not respond to a request for comment from Engadget.

Continue reading.

You can request the removal of AI-generated content using your likeness on YouTube

Talking of AI-generated fakes, YouTube quietly added a new policy last month that lets you request the removal of AI-generated content that features your likeness. YouTube says several factors will determine whether it considers a removal, including whether the content is altered or synthetic (and whether it’s disclosed as such), easily identifiable as the person in question or realistic.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-supreme-court-rejects-rulings-on-social-media-moderation-111527524.html?src=rss

Midjourney is creating Donald Trump pictures when asked for images of ‘the president of the United States’

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Midjourney, a popular AI-powered image generator, is creating images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden despite saying that it would block users from doing so ahead of the upcoming US presidential election.

When Engadget prompted the service to create an image of “the president of the United States,” Midjourney generated four images in various styles of former president Donald Trump.

Midjourney created an image of Trump despite saying it wouldn't.
Midjourney

When asked to create an image of “the next president of the United States,” the tool generated four images of Trump as well.

Midjourney generated Donald Trump images despite saying it wouldn't.
Midjourney

When Engadget prompted Midjourney to create an image of “the current president of the United States,” the service generated three images of Trump and one image of former president Barack Obama.

Midjourney also created an image of former President Obama
Midjourney

The only time Midjourney refused to create an image of Trump or Biden was when it was asked to do so explicitly. “The Midjourney community voted to prevent using ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Joe Biden’ during election season,” the service said in that instance. Other users on X were able to get Midjourney to generate Trump’s images too.

The tests show that Midjourney’s guardrails to prevent users from generating images of Trump and Biden ahead of the upcoming US presidential election aren’t enough — in fact, it’s really easy for people to get around them. Other chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini and Meta AI did not create images of Trump or Biden despite multiple prompts.

Midjourney did not respond to a request for comment from Engadget.

Midjourney was one the first AI-powered image generators to explicitly ban users from generating images of Trump and Biden. “I know it’s fun to make Trump pictures — I make Trump pictures,” the company’s CEO, David Holz, told users in a chat session on Discord, earlier this year. “However, probably better to just not — better to pull out a little bit during this election. We’ll see.” A month later, Holz reportedly told users that it was time to “put some foots down on election-related stuff for a bit” and admitted that “this moderation stuff is kind of hard.” The company’s existing content rules prohibit the creation of “misleading public figures” and “events portrayals” with the “potential to mislead.”

Last year, Midjourney was used to create a fake image of Pope Francis wearing a puffy white Balenciaga jacket that went viral. It was also used to create fake images of Trump being arrested ahead of his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court last year for his involvement in a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Shortly afterwards, the company halted free trials of the service and, instead, required people to pay at least $10 a month to use it.

Last month, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit organization that aims to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech online, found that Midjourney’s guardrails against generating misleading images of popular politicians including Trump and Biden failed 40% of its tests. The CCDH was able to use Midjourney to create an image of president Biden being arrested and Trump appearing next to a body double. The CCDH was also able to bypass Midjourney’s guardrails by using descriptions of each candidate’s physical appearance rather than their names to generate misleading images.

“Midjourney is far too easy to manipulate in practice – in some cases it’s completely evaded just by adding punctuation to slip through the net,” wrote CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed in a statement at the time. “Bad actors who want to subvert elections and sow division, confusion and chaos will have a field day, to the detriment of everyone who relies on healthy, functioning democracies.

Earlier this year, a coalition of 20 tech companies including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, Adobe and X signed an agreement to help prevent deepfakes in elections taking place in 2024 around the world by preventing their services from generating images and other media that would influence voters. Midjourney was absent from that list.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/midjourney-is-creating-donald-trump-pictures-when-asked-for-images-of-the-president-of-the-united-states-212427937.html?src=rss