Microsoft disclosed today that Iranian state-sponsored hackers tried to hack into email accounts belonging to current and former US government officials, and members of a 2020 US presidential campaign. From a report: The attacks have taken place "in a 30-day period between August and September," Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security & Trust at Microsoft, said today. Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) linked the attacks to a group the company calls Phosphorous (other names are APT35, Charming Kitten, and the Ajax Security Team). The group has been linked to Iran's government in reports from multiple cyber-security vendors. Burt said the group operated in different stages. It first made more than 2,700 probes to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers. Once the group had a list of high-value targets, it went after 241 of those accounts, which included "accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former US government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran."

The FBI is investigating after someone allegedly tried to hack into West Virginia's mobile voting app during the 2018 midterm elections. From a report: One or more people allegedly attempted to hack into Voatz, an experimental app that lets voters who are active military or registered to vote abroad cast their votes from their phones, Mike Stuart, the US attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, announced Tuesday. Stuart said in a statement that "there was no intrusion and the integrity of votes and the election system was not compromised," but that an investigation had begun, was "ongoing and no legal conclusions whatsoever have been made regarding the conduct of the activity or whether any federal laws were violated." West Virginia is the only state that currently allows for the system, though it's been used and is being considered in several cities and counties across the country.

"We just noticed a certain group of people from a certain part of the country tried to access the system. We stopped them, caught them and reported them to the authorities," Voatz co-founder and CEO Nimit Sawhney told CNN. "Somebody downloaded, registered and then tried to tamper with it, do something. We caught unauthorized activity, and they immediately got stopped," Sawhney said. He said he did not think the culprit was a sophisticated nation-state hacker looking to disrupt the election. Because Sawhney caught the activity last October, and elections are considered critical infrastructure, he felt he needed to report the incident to the FBI.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The voting machines that the U.S. will use in the 2020 election are still vulnerable to hacks. A group of ethical hackers tested a bunch of those voting machines and election systems (most of which they bought on eBay). They were able to crack into every machine, The Washington Post reports. Their tests took place this summer at a Def Con cybersecurity conference, but the group visited Washington to share their findings yesterday. A number of flaws allowed the hackers to access the machines, including weak default passwords and shoddy encryption. The group says the machines could be hacked by anyone with access to them, and if poll workers make mistakes or take shortcuts, the machines could be infiltrated by remote hackers.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday proposed reinstating a congressional office dedicated to improving tech expertise in order to beat back the growing power of technology companies' lobbying efforts. From a report: In a plan posted to her website, Warren -- one of the top Democratic presidential contenders -- said she wants to bring back the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which was set up in the 1970s and dissolved in 1995 under former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Congress stood up the OTA to deliver technology expertise to staffers and lawmakers, who often struggle to keep abreast with the latest developments in an advanced and complex industry. Since the OTA was defunded, the country's top tech companies, including Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook, have invested millions in lobbying efforts, filling the knowledge gap, Warren said, with the message, "Trust us because we understand it and you don't." "Members of Congress should have the resources they need to make decisions without relying on corporate lobbyists," Warren said. There's been a recent spike in interest around the OTA, with lawmakers in the House and Senate proposing legislation that would reinstate the tech office to help lawmakers navigate the pressing regulatory concerns around Big Tech.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said this week that content by politicians would stay up on the video-sharing website even if it violates the company's standards, echoing a position staked out by Facebook this week. From a report: "When you have a political officer that is making information that is really important for their constituents to see, or for other global leaders to see, that is content that we would leave up because we think it's important for other people to see," Wojcicki told an audience at The Atlantic Festival this morning. Wojcicki said the news media is likely to cover controversial content regardless of whether it's taken down, giving context to understand it. YouTube is owned by Google. A YouTube spokesperson later told POLITICO that politicians are not treated differently than other users and must abide by its community guidelines. The company grants exemptions to some political speech if the company considers it to be educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic in nature.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facebook this week finally put into writing what users -- especially politically powerful users -- have known for years: its community "standards" do not, in fact, apply across the whole community. Speech from politicians is officially exempt from the platform's fact checking and decency standards, the company has clarified, with a few exceptions. Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg, himself a former member of the UK Parliament, outlined the policy in a speech and company blog post Tuesday. Facebook has had a "newsworthiness exemption" to its content guidelines since 2016. That policy was formalized in late October of that year amid a contentious and chaotic US political season and three weeks before the presidential election that would land Donald Trump the White House.

Facebook at the time was uncertain how to handle posts from the Trump campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources told the paper that Facebook employees were sharply divided over the candidate's rhetoric about Muslim immigrants and his stated desire for a Muslim travel ban, which several felt were in violation of the service's hate speech standards. Eventually, the sources said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in directly and said it would be inappropriate to intervene. Months later, Facebook finally issued its policy. "We're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest -- even if they might otherwise violate our standards," Facebook wrote at the time. Facebook by default "will treat speech from politicians as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard." It won't be subject to fact-checking because the company does not believe that it is appropriate for it to "referee political debates" or prevent a politician's speech from both reaching its intended audience and "being subject to public debate and scrutiny."

Newsworthiness, Clegg added, will be determined by weighing the "public interest value of the piece of speech" against the risk of harm. The exception to all of this is advertising. "Standards are different for content for which the company receives payment, so if someone -- even a politician or political candidate -- posts ads to Facebook, those ads in theory must still meet both the community standards and Facebook's advertising policies," reports Ars.

The White House released a transcript that showed President Trump urged Ukraine's leader to contact Attorney General William Barr about opening an inquiry tied to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Two intelligence officials referred Mr. Trump's activity to the Justice Dept. for a possible criminal inquiry. It declined to open one. The New York Times: President Trump released the transcript on Wednesday of a July 25 call he had with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, in which he encouraged his Ukrainian counterpart to contact Attorney General William P. Barr about investigating a political rival. Mr. Trump has defiantly denied saying anything inappropriate on the call, but the transcript shows he clearly referred by name to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and encouraged Mr. Zelensky to reach out to Mr. Barr. Before the release, he declared on Twitter that Democrats had fallen into his trap, and that the release of the transcript would exonerate him -- and make them look foolish.

The transcript's release and content ensured a day of intense scrutiny. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, marveled that the attorney general has now been pulled in. Republicans stuck to their position that Mr. Trump did not offer Mr. Zelensky any inducements nor did he threaten him, so his demand for a Biden inquiry was not improper. "From a quid pro quo aspect, there's nothing there," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. The release did not go far enough for many Democrats, who have demanded to see the full complaint about Mr. Trump's actions lodged by a whistle-blower, which has not been shared with Congress. On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi announced formal Trump impeachment inquiry. From a report: "Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I'm directing our 6 committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella ... The president must be held accountable," she said.

On Thursday, you'll be able to make campaign donations to 2020 presidential candidates through your Amazon Alexa devices -- or at least to those candidates whom Amazon deems eligible to set up an account. From a report: If a campaign chooses to sign up for Alexa donations, you'll be able to donate to it by merely saying, "Alexa, I want to make a political contribution," or "Alexa, donate [amount] to [candidate name]." All donations will be processed through Amazon Pay, and users will receive email receipts for their contributions as well. Strangely, the feature is only available to 2020 presidential candidates Amazon defines as "principal campaign committees." It's not apparent who Amazon considers "principal" and for what reasons. The contribution will be limited between $5 to $200.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration is expected on Wednesday to formally revoke California's legal authority to set tailpipe pollution rules that are stricter than federal rules, in a move designed by the White House to strike twin blows against both the liberal-leaning state that President Trump has long antagonized and the environmental legacy of President Barack Obama. The announcement that the White House will revoke one of California's signature environmental policies will come while Mr. Trump is traveling in the state, where he is scheduled to attend fund-raisers in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. The formal revocation of California's authority to set its own rules on tailpipe pollution -- the United States' largest source of greenhouse emissions -- will be announced Wednesday afternoon at a private event at the Washington headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The move has been widely expected since last summer, when the Trump administration unveiled its draft plan to roll back the strict federal fuel economy standards put in place by the Obama administration. That draft Trump rule also included a plan to revoke a legal waiver, granted to the state of California under the 1970 Clean Air Act, allowing it to set tougher state-level standards than those put forth by the federal government. The revocation of the waiver would also affect 13 other states that follow California's clean air rules. In recent months, the administration's broader weakening of nationwide auto-emissions standards has become plagued with delays as staff members struggled to prepare adequate legal, technical or scientific justifications for the move. As a result, the White House decided to proceed with just one piece of its overall plan -- the move to strip California of its legal authority to set tougher standards -- while delaying the release of its broader rollback, according to these people. The plan comes less than a week after the Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era policy that expanded federal oversight and the threat of steep fines for polluting the country's smaller waterways.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: President Trump's administration has rescinded an Obama-era policy that expanded federal oversight and the threat of steep fines for polluting the country's smaller waterways (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), furthering his deregulatory efforts in the 14 months that remain before the next election. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Thursday signed a final rule that limits the scope of federal clean-water regulations in an effort to clear up confusion for landowners whose property sits near water sources that feed into the country's network of major rivers. The Obama administration in 2015 had expanded federal oversight upstream, it said, to better protect wildlife and the country's drinking-water supply from industrial runoff and pollution.

Mr. Wheeler called that expansion an overreach, saying it grew to cover dry land in some cases. Farmers, property developers, chemical manufacturers and oil-and-gas producers -- some of whom are key voter groups for the 2020 election -- have voiced opposition to it, with many saying it overreached by intruding on property owners' rights. Court battles following the Obama-era rule have led to fractured rules across the country. Amid the legal challenges, the regulation is in place only in 22 states, though the Trump administration's decision could spark its own series of court fights. Thursday's rule "restores regulatory text that existed before the 2015," the report notes. "Property that is no longer covered by the 1972 Clean Water Act remains protected by state rules. Major waterways, such as most rivers and lakes, were already under protection of the Clean Water Act and still will be after the rollback."

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced at Thursday's primary debate that his campaign will use funds raised from his supporters for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. The Hill reports: Under the Freedom Dividend Pilot Program, at least 10 American families will receive $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year. Participants can enter the giveaway on Yang's campaign website. Three people are already receiving the dividend, and his campaign said in a news release that they are "already noting the benefits of having an extra $1,000 per month -- from being able to make home improvements, to fixing a car needed for work, to affording medical care for family members." "The campaign is excited to work together with our supporters to help create more stories about what the Freedom Dividend means for American families. It will enable and empower citizens to pay their bills, switch jobs, take care of loved ones, and plan for the future," campaign manager Zach Graumann said in the Thursday night release.

Longtime Slashdot reader cccc828 shares a report from The Economist, which poses the question: Is Microsoft a digital nation and does it have a secretary of state? "The answer of Brad Smith, the software giant's top lawyer, is, well, diplomatic," the report says. "Nation states are run by governments and firms need to be accountable to them, he says. But yes, he admits, he worries a lot about geopolitics these days." Here's an excerpt from the report: Mr Smith presides over an operation comparable in size to the foreign office of a mid-sized country. Its 1,500 employees work in departments like "Law Enforcement and National Security" or "Digital Diplomacy Group." It has outposts in 56 countries, sending regular cables to headquarters in Redmond, near Seattle. Mr Smith is as itinerant as a foreign minister. In one year he visited 22 countries and met representatives of 40 governments. [...] Mr Smith says a coherent corporate foreign policy is simply good business: it creates trust, which attracts customers. His doctrine indeed sits well with Microsoft's business model, based on sales of services and software. It can afford to be more of a purist on privacy and the spread of disinformation, the most politically contentious tech issues of the day, than giants whose profits come from targeted advertising on social networks. Acknowledging Microsoft's mixed record in the past, the article concludes: A dose of hypocrisy is perhaps inevitable in an organization the size of Microsoft. Critics level a more fundamental charge against its foreign policy, however. Where, they ask, does it -- and fellow tech giants -- derive the legitimacy to be independent actors on the international stage? This is the wrong question to pose. As businesses, they have every right to defend the interests of shareholders, employees and customers. As global ones, their priorities may differ from those of their home country's elected officials. And as entities which control much of the world's digital infrastructure, they should have a say in designing the international norms which govern it. At a time when many governments refuse to lead, why should the firms not be allowed to? Especially if, like Microsoft's, their efforts blend principles with pragmatism. How does your company deal with the ever more complex realities of world politics?

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he fired national security advisor John Bolton, saying on Twitter he had "disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions." From a report: But minutes later, Bolton in his own tweet said that he "offered to resign" Monday night -- and that Trump told him, "Let's talk about it tomorrow." Either way, Bolton's departure shocked Washington, D.C., and oil crude futures fell. Bolton, who was named national security advisor in March 2018, is a harsh critic of Iran, and has advocated military strikes against that oil-rich nation. "I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning," Trump said in a tweet. "I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week." Earlier this month, Bolton had accused China of stealing US technology to make a stealth fighter. On a visit to Ukraine last month, Bolton said an unnamed fifth-generation aircraft "looks a lot like the F-35, that's because it is the F-35. They just stole it."

In an opinion article published last week on Wired, New York City Mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bill de Blasio said as president he would issue a robot tax for corporations displacing humans and would create a federal agency to oversee automation. CNET reports: "The scale of automation in our economy is increasing far faster than most people realize, and its impact on working people in America and across the world, unless corralled, will be devastating," de Blasio wrote. De Blasio would call the new regulator the Federal Automation and Worker Protection Agency, which would safeguard jobs and communities. In addition, his proposed "robot tax" would be imposed on large companies that eliminate jobs as they become more automated. The tax would be equal to five years of payroll taxes for each employee eliminated, according to De Blasio.

Attorneys general for 50 U.S. states and territories today officially announced an antitrust investigation of Google, embarking on a wide-ranging review of a company that Democrats and Republicans said may threaten competition and consumers. From a report: The bipartisan group, led by Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, referred to Google as an "online search juggernaut," on the steps of the Supreme Court. State regulators from California, where Google is based, and Alabama did not join the probe. In a blog post published on Friday, Google senior vice president of global affairs Kent Walker wrote, "We have always worked constructively with regulators and we will continue to do so."States have the ability to levy fines or receive damages from companies found to be engaging in anticompetitive practices but, according to Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, the most important aspect of the investigation is that it will reveal how exactly Google works. "The trial is the remedy. Exposing the deals and how the companies use customer data, etc, will have a salutary effect," Stoller told BuzzFeed News.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've spent much time thinking about the political divide in the United States, you've hopefully noted how bloody weird it is. Somehow, just about every topic that people want to argue about splits into two camps. If you visualize the vast array of topics you could have an opinion about as a switchboard full of toggles, it seems improbable that so many people in each camp should have nearly identical switchboards, but they do. This can even extend to factual issues, like science -- one camp typically does not accept that climate change is real and human-caused. How in the world do we end up with these opinion sets? And why does something like climate change start an inter-camp argument, while other things like the physics behind airplane design enjoy universal acceptance?

One obvious way to explain these opinions is to look for underlying principles that connect them. Maybe it's ideologically consistent to oppose both tax increases and extensive government oversight of pesticide products. But can you really draw a straight line from small-government philosophy to immigration attitudes? Or military funding? A new study by a Cornell team led by Michael Macy approaches these questions with inspiration from an experiment involving, of all things, downloading indie music. That study set up separate "worlds" in which participants checked out new music with the aid of information about which songs other people in their experimental world were choosing. It showed that the songs that were "hits" weren't always the same -- there was a significant role for chance, as a song that got trending early in the experiment had a leg up.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Last week, the Washington Post reported that the White House had been briefed on a plan to create an agency called HARPA, a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon's research and development arm DARPA. Among other initiatives, this new agency would reportedly collect volunteer data from a suite of smart devices, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echos, and Google Homes in order to identify "neurobehavioral signs" of "someone headed toward a violent explosive act." The project would then use artificial intelligence to create a "sensor suite" to flag mental changes that make violence more likely. According to the Post, the HARPA proposal was discussed with senior White House officials as early as June 2017, but has "gained momentum" after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The latest version of the plan, reportedly submitted to the Trump administration this month, outlined the biometric project called "SAFE HOME," an acronym for "Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes." A source told the newspaper that every time HARPA has been discussed in the White House "even up to the presidential level, it's been very well-received."

A copy of the plan obtained by the Post characterizes HARPA as pursuing "breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence" and claims that "a multi-modality solution, along with real-time data analytics, is needed to achieve such an accurate diagnosis." That's a lot of vague buzzwords, but the general idea is clear: collect a wealth of personal data in order to flag mental status changes in individuals and determine whether those changes can predict mass violence. It's an approach that strikes George David Annas, deputy director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Program at SUNY Upstate Medical University, as ridiculous. "The proposed data collection goes beyond absurdity when they mention the desire to collect FitBit data," Annas told Gizmodo. "I am unaware of any study linking walking too much and committing mass murder. As for the other technologies, what are these people expecting? 'Alexa, tell me the best way to kill a lot of people really quickly'? Really?" "Creating a watchlist of citizens who most likely will never act violently based on their mental health is a very dangerous proposal with major ethical considerations," Emma Fridel, a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University specializing in mass murder, told Gizmodo. "Doing so to predict the unpredictable is utterly absurd."

Former FBI Director James Comey violated official policy in the way he handled his memos describing his exchanges with President Trump, an investigation concluded -- but Comey won't be charged. . An anonymous reader shares a report: Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz conducted the investigation into Comey's actions and then referred his results to prosecutors. "After reviewing the matter, the DOJ declined prosecution," the IG's office said in a statement on Thursday. Investigators concluded that Comey broke several rules. One involved the former director's decision to arrange for a friend to disclose the contents of a memo to a reporter with The New York Times. Another involved Comey's decision to keep memos at home and discuss them with his lawyers but not reveal their contents or what he was doing to the FBI. FBI officials have since assessed that some of the material in Comey's memos deserved to be classified as "confidential," the lowest level of classification. But investigators didn't establish that Comey revealed any secret information to the press. The former FBI director responded on Twitter on Thursday morning by quoting a section of the IG report and pointing out what he called all the untruthful things said about him and other matters by Trump and the president's supporters.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has ruled out accepting a G7 offer of aid to fight fires in the Amazon rainforest unless he gets an apology from his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. From a report: Hours after leaders of some of the world's wealthiest countries pledged more than $22 million to help combat fires in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil's government angrily rejected the offer, in effect telling the other nations to mind their own business -- only to later lay out potential terms for the aid's acceptance. President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil expressed his ire in a series of Twitter posts on Monday, and specifically criticized and taunted President Emmanuel Macron of France, who had announced the aid package at the Group of 7 summit meeting. Their comments extended a verbal feud between the two leaders.

But early the next day, Mr. Bolsonaro offered possible terms for the acceptance of the aid package when he spoke to reporters in the capital, Brasilia. He said that if Mr. Macron withdrew "insults made to my person," and what Mr. Bolsonaro interpreted as insinuations that Brazil does not have sovereignty over the Amazon, he would reconsider. "To talk or accept anything from France, even with their very best intentions, he will have to withdraw his words, and then we can talk," Mr. Bolsonaro said. "First he withdraws them, then he makes the offer, and then I'll answer."

Mr. Bolsonaro, who has suggested earlier that Mr. Macron's real motive is to shield France's agriculture from Brazilian competition, had tweeted on Monday that the president "disguises his intentions behind the idea of an 'alliance' of the G7 countries to 'save' the Amazon, as if we were a colony or a no-man's land." His chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, told the Globo broadcast network that the administration would be turning down the offer, and insulted Mr. Macron with a reference to the fire that gutted the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris in April. The Brazilian government later confirmed his comments, Globo reported.

Bernie Sanders may not love how the media covers him, but he wants to save it anyway. His plan involves blocking future media mergers and a possible tax on Silicon Valley to support newsrooms. From a report: The proposal, rolled out in the Columbia Journalism Review on Monday, comes as Sanders and the Washington press corps are at each other's throats. Campaign aides have lambasted reporters for what they see as selective coverage of polling data and unfair treatment of policy proposals like Medicare for All. Political journalists also cried foul after the senator suggested earlier this month that Jeff Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post influenced its coverage of his campaign. On Monday, the Democratic hopeful echoed long-standing left-wing complaints of a rapidly consolidating industry, separating "real journalism" from "the gossip, punditry, and clickbait that dominates today's news." He warned of the hollowing-out of local outlets and laid blame for the perverse pressures now reshaping media at the feet of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and President Donald Trump. "One reason we do not have enough real journalism in America right now is because many outlets are being gutted by the same forces of greed that are pillaging our economy," Sanders wrote.