The bankruptcy of one of America's largest coal producers revealed that the company was helping to fund "think tanks that have attacked the link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change, as well as to several conservative advocacy groups that have attempted to undermine policies intended to shift the economy toward renewable energy," reports the Intercept. The document shows that Cloud Peak Energy helped fund the Institute of Energy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based group that has dismissed the "so-called scientific consensus" on climate change and regularly criticizes investments in renewable energy as a "waste" of resources. Several of the groups that receive funding from Cloud Peak Energy have used aggressive tactics to attempt to discredit environmentalists.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, one of the groups listed in the coal company's filing, is part of a sprawling network of front groups set up by a lobbyist named Rick Berman geared toward attacking green groups such as the Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch as dangerous radicals. Other organizations quietly bankrolled by Cloud Peak Energy have directly shaped state policy... The Montana Policy Institute -- a local libertarian think tank that promotes a discredited claim that world temperatures are falling, not rising, and questions whether humans cause climate change -- also received funding from the firm....

Four years ago, falling coal prices led to a series of bankruptcies of the largest coal companies in America. The filings, first reported by The Intercept, similarly revealed that the coal industry had financed a range of activists and organizations dedicated to spreading doubt about the science underpinning climate change...

In 2016, Greg Zimmerman, an environmental activist, stumbled upon a presentation titled "Survival Is Victory: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars." The slide deck was the creation of Richard Reavey, a vice president for government and public affairs at Cloud Peak Energy, and a former executive at Phillip Morris. Reavey argued that fossil fuel firms, particularly coal, should emulate the tactics of big tobacco, which similarly spent decades battling scientists and regulators over claims that its product harmed public health. In the New York Times coverage of the episode, Reavey told the paper that his firm "has never fought climate change -- never fought it, never denied it or funded anyone who does." The bankruptcy filing from last week, however, suggests otherwise.

Facebook today said it detected dozens of Facebook accounts that were engaging in election interference and other forms of public manipulation via news and social media, directed primarily at West African countries. What's especially noteworthy about this announcement is the source. Israeli commercial entity Archimedes Group was behind the behavior. The Verge reports: The goal ostensibly was to have some type of effect on local elections and the political atmosphere, although Facebook says it can't divine the exact intentions of the group and there is no indication that it was in any way linked to the Israeli government. Although it was centered on West African countries like Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, and Niger, Facebook also detected activity aimed at users in Angola, Tunisia, and parts of Southeast Asia and South America.

As a result, Facebook says it's shut down 65 Facebook accounts, 161 pages, 23 groups, and 12 events. It also detected and shut down four Instagram accounts related to the effort. It's also banned Archimedes Group and all of its subsidiaries, and Facebook sent a cease and desist letter to the company. On its website, Archimedes Group's tagline is, "Winning elections worldwide." It advertises itself as a kind of consultant for social media marketing related to elections, writing, "When approaching a client's challenge, we address all possible facets relating to it. We then formulate a concise yet comprehensive solution that will use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client's wishes." In a blog post, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, wrote: "The people behind this network used fake accounts to run Pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement. They also represented themselves as locals, including local news organizations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians. The Page administrators and account owners frequently posted about political news, including topics like elections in various countries, candidate views and criticism of political opponents."

On Wednesday, the White House launched a new tool for people to use if they feel they've been wrongly censored, banned, or suspended on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. "No matter your views, if you suspect political bias caused such an action to be taken against you, share your story with President Trump," the site reads. The Verge reports: The tool asks users for screenshots and links regarding specific enforcement actions, specifying Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube as platforms of interest. (None of the companies immediately responded to a request for comment.) The tool also collects significant personal information from the user, and near the end invites users to opt into email newsletters from President Trump, "so we can update you without relying on platforms like Facebook and Twitter." A separate question points users to an extensive user agreement, and makes clear that "you understand this form is for information gathering only."

Alongside sharing updates on many of its platforms, Microsoft said at its Build developer conference today that is also getting ready to release several new tools to shore up security for political parties and candidates and at the ballot box. From a report: Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems. The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon's advanced research agency, DARPA. Dubbed "ElectionGuard," the Microsoft kit will be available this summer, the company says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year's general elections. CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer's conference in Seattle. Nadella said the project's software, provided free of charge as part of Microsoft's Defending Democracy Program, would help "modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world." Microsoft also announced a cut-rate Office 365 application suite for political parties and campaigns for what it charges nonprofits. Both Microsoft and Google provide anti-phishing email support for campaigns. Three little-known U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box voting systems.

Joseph Cox, and Jason Koebler, reporting for Motherboard: At a Twitter all-hands meeting on March 22, an employee asked a blunt question: Twitter has largely eradicated Islamic State propaganda off its platform. Why can't it do the same for white supremacist content? An executive responded by explaining that Twitter follows the law, and a technical employee who works on machine learning and artificial intelligence issues went up to the mic to add some context.

With every sort of content filter, there is a tradeoff, he explained. When a platform aggressively enforces against ISIS content, for instance, it can also flag innocent accounts as well, such as Arabic language broadcasters. Society, in general, accepts the benefit of banning ISIS for inconveniencing some others, he said. In separate discussions verified by Motherboard, that employee said Twitter hasn't taken the same aggressive approach to white supremacist content because the collateral accounts that are impacted can, in some instances, be Republican politicians. The employee argued that, on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn't be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda, he argued.

Military voters stationed overseas will be able to cast their votes for the 2020 presidential election via a mobile app that uses a private blockchain. MIT Technology Review reports: Donald Kersey, West Virginia's elections director, tells the cryto news website LongHash that he believes the app, created by a startup called Voatz, can enhance participation by overseas voters. Turnout among this group is very low, in part because the process of receiving a ballot and securely returning it on time is often not straightforward. This is the rationale behind the decision by a number of states to allow overseas military voters to return their ballots via e-mail. West Virginia apparently is of the mind that Voatz's private blockchain will make this kind of online voting more secure. The state first piloted the program during the 2018 midterms.

Though Kersey admits there's no telling for certain whether the app can be compromised, West Virginia is undeterred, especially given the "really good response rate" officials saw during the midterms last year. "We are not saying mobile voting is the best solution to the problem, we are not saying that blockchain technology is the best solution to storage of security data," Kersey tells LongHash. "What we are saying though is that it's better than what we have."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a new bill today that would block all tobacco and vape purchases for Americans under 21 years old, citing widespread public health risks. Surprisingly, vaping companies don't appear to be too concerned, as Juul's CEO Kevin Burns issued this statement supporting the measure: "JUUL Labs is committed to eliminating combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in the world and to accomplish that goal, we must restrict youth usage of vapor products. Tobacco 21 laws fight one of the largest contributors to this problem -- sharing by legal-age peers -- and they have been shown to dramatically reduce youth usage rates." The Verge says it all has to do with Big Vape's image: Over the past year, Juul has come under the FDA's fire for its massive popularity among young people. So supporting a higher minimum age could help its image and take some of the regulatory pressure off. From an industry perspective, the move is fairly low risk since the product is already embedded in the population, and people under age 21 may already be addicted, says Kathleen Hoke, a law professor at the University of Maryland. "We can change this age to 21 but we're going to have to work extraordinarily hard at the state and local level to actually get cigarettes or vape products or chew out of the hands of the 18 to 20 year olds," she says.

[T]he bill's success will depend on how it's crafted. Rob Crane, professor of family medicine at The Ohio State University and president of the Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation, is skeptical that it will really hold tobacco retailers responsible for selling to people who are underage. From the more than 450 cities and counties that have passed Tobacco 21 laws, "what we have found that does work is when you make local health departments under civil law do the enforcement," he says. "For a rogue retailer that keeps on selling, there's a risk of license suspension." But if the law winds up penalizing convenience store clerks who sell vapes and tobacco products to kids, the retailer who's profiting gets off scot-free, he says. In the end, Crane is skeptical of the motivations behind the bill, no matter what form it takes. "This is all a PR move to keep Juul out of the hot seat from the FDA."

Almost two years after Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign, his report -- a redacted version of it -- is finally out [PDF]. [Update: Here's a PDF file of the report that supports search functionality.]

hackingbear writes: Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of electronics giant Foxconn, is stepping down from his role as chairman to run for president of Taiwan. Taiwan broke off from mainland China in 1949 after a civil war and is officially known as Republic of China; its legal territory still covers all of China. He will stand in the primaries of the opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), promoting a more China-friendly policy during what is currently a period of heightened tension with Beijing. Gou says he wants to improve relations with mainland China -- something which is quite feasible given his plentiful resources and experience. Foxconn already operates numerous factories in China, employing hundreds of thousands of workers, plus Gou has an alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, thanks to Foxconn's plans to build a $10 billion facility in Wisconsin. This is certainly a relationship that could give Gou a lot of clout if necessary. Unification with China versus going independent is a political issue defining the politics of Taiwan, serving a role similar to that of abortion and immigration issues in U.S. politics.

On Tuesday, former Maryland representative and 2020 presidential candidate John Delaney announced a plan to create a Department of Cybersecurity that "would be led by a cabinet-level secretary who would be in charge of implementing the United States' cybersecurity strategy," reports The Verge. "The proposal is the first major cybersecurity push from any presidential candidate so far this cycle." From the report: In a press release, Delaney argued that the U.S.'s cyber authorities are spread too thin across too many agencies. This new agency would work to streamline the country's current approach. "Securing our cyber-infrastructure is not only a national security priority, it is an economic one as well," Delaney said. "In light of the many recent and continued cyberattacks on our country, we need to establish a cabinet-level agency to focus on protecting our cyberspace."

Currently, the cybersecurity responsibility is scattered across a number of agencies, with Homeland Security handling threats to civilian agencies, US Cyber Command dealing with military cyberattacks, the FBI prosecuting federal and international cybercrime, and a string of ISACs coordinating private sector actors alongside government agencies. In the past, the White House has appointed a cybersecurity coordinator, or "czar," to work across those agencies, but President Trump eliminated the position in May 2018, leaving no single person or agency in charge of leading the country's cybersecurity efforts.

Salon writes that Silicon Valley tech workers are "defying their overlords," arguing that recent unionization attempts by Kickstarter employees may be only the beginning: The workers' Kickstarter campaign is not the first attempt, though, or even the first time rumblings of unionization, have circulated among programmers. In 2018, software engineers at the startup Lanetix announced their intent to unionize -- and were promptly fired by management (It is illegal to fire employees for trying to unionize). The National Labor Relations Board intervened, and ultimately forced Lanetix to pay the 15 fired engineers a total of $775,000. The show of worker power at Lanetix may have paved the way for Kickstarter's workers. Similarly, workers across the video game industry -- generally among the most overworked, underpaid workers within the tech industry -- have been making steps towards unionization. Game Workers Unite, profiled by Salon last year, is building a grassroots movement to organize the ranks of video game makers.

Together, this suggests that a small but visible movement for white-collar software engineers unionizing has been gaining steam in the Valley over the past few years -- suggesting that the people who make up the tech industry, once a bastion of libertarianism, are starting to understand the often subtle ways that their employers exploit them... For decades, libertarianism was part and parcel to the tech industry. Despite a grueling work culture and a high-profile collusion scandal among major tech corporations to suppress software engineers' wages, tech workers were more likely to see themselves as future founders than an exploited underclass -- a point of view encouraged by employers through high wages and generous, often absurd office perks. Recent developments suggest such endearing tactics are no longer working.

On the technology podcast Recode Decode, America's Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said that Silicon Valley's self-regulating days "probably should be" over. Recode reports: Pelosi said Silicon Valley is abusing the privilege of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says that internet companies are not responsible for what is posted on their platforms. "230 is a gift to them, and I don't think they are treating it with the respect that they should," she said. "And so I think that that could be a question mark and in jeopardy.... For the privilege of 230, there has to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it, and it is not out of the question that that could be removed."

Asked about Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook, Pelosi said she had not studied it closely. Instead, she more cautiously suggested that some agglomerations of power may be worth breaking up. "I know there could be some clear lines that we see in our community, of companies that maybe could be easily broken up without having any impact, one on the other," she said. "I'm a big believer in the antitrust laws, I think that's very important for us to have them and to use them, and to subject those who should be subjected to it. "

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: On Thursday, the Washington state legislature officially passed one of the most ambitious clean energy bills in the nation. Washington is now committed to making the state's electricity supply carbon neutral by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free by 2045. The bill makes the fourth state to commit to 100 percent clean energy and adds a feather to the cap of Governor Jay Inslee who requested the bill be introduced. Inslee is running as a climate candidate for president that can get things done in the District if elected, and this bill is a very tangible accomplishment he can now point to.

The bill previously passed the state senate 28-19. After passing the house 56-42 on Thursday, the legislation goes back to the senate for a final vote. Once signed into law, Washington will join, Hawaii, California, and New Mexico as the fourth state committed to 100 percent clean energy. Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have also made similar commitment as well as more than 90 cities, according to tracking by the Sierra Club. The bill shuts the door on coal, saying it "is the policy of the state to eliminate coal-fired electricity." By calling for energy to come from carbon-free sources by 2045, it leaves the door open for nuclear power. [...] In addition to committing to cutting emissions, the bill is also designed to ensure the transition to renewables and any bumps in energy prices aren't shouldered by the poor. The bill calls says utilities "must make funding available for energy assistance to low-income households."

Andrew Yang, the presidential candidate who supports Universal Basic Income and has attracted a devoted online following, is planning to use a 3D hologram on the campaign trail. "On Wednesday he gave the #YangGang, which is what his supporters call themselves, their first look at it," reports New York Magazine. From the report: The hologram's debut came on TMZ Live, which showed a video of Yang's hologram performing a duet alongside a hologram of his "hero," Tupac. "I was doing a demo of what a hologram would consist of in order to send the hologram of me to campaign in Iowa or other battleground states," he said.

Last month, Yang spoke about his hologram plans with Iowa newspaper, The Carroll Daily Times Herald. "We are exploring rolling a truck out that would enable someone to see a hologram of me that is three-dimensional give my stump speech," Yang told the paper. "And, also, if I were in a studio, which we could set up very easily, I could beam in and take questions live." Yang also told the paper that he plans to use hologram technology to remind voters that "it is 2019, and soon it will be 2020, and things are changing."

House lawmakers on Wednesday approved a Democrat-backed bill (alternative source) that would restore rules requiring AT&T, Verizon and other Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, marking an early step toward reversing one of the most significant deregulatory moves of the Trump era. From a report: But the net neutrality measure is likely to stall from here, given strong Republican opposition in the GOP-controlled Senate and the White House, where aides to President Trump this week recommended that he veto the legislation if it ever reaches his desk. The House's proposal, which passed by a vote of 232-190, would reinstate federal regulations that had banned AT&T, Verizon and other broadband providers from blocking or slowing down customers' access to websites. Adopted in 2015 during the Obama administration, these net neutrality protections had the backing of tech giants and startups as well as consumer advocacy groups, which together argued that strong federal open Internet protections were necessary to preserve competition and allow consumers unfettered access to movies, music and other content of their choice.

Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. ProPublica reports: Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa). In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry's profits.

"This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program," said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that the net neutrality bill Democrats are pushing through the House is "dead on arrival" in the Senate. From a report: The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote later today on the Save the Internet Act, which is the Democrats' proposal to restore Obama-era net neutrality protections that were repealed in 2017. It's expected to pass the Democrat-controlled House. McConnell was asked by reporters about whether the Senate would consider the bill once it passes. He indicated it would not, according to several tweets from reporters. McConnell's office confirmed the comment.

The Save the Internet Act restores rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015. These rules would ban internet service providers from blocking or throttling access to the internet. And they would prevent ISPs from charging companies extra to deliver their online faster to consumers. The Democrats' bill restores these rules and also restores the FCC's authority to regulate and oversee broadband networks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday rejected Republican attempts to weaken a bill that would restore net neutrality rules. The House Commerce Committee yesterday approved the "Save the Internet Act" in a 30-22 party-line vote, potentially setting up a vote of the full House next week. The bill is short and simple -- it would fully reinstate the rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015, reversing the repeal led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in 2017.

Commerce Committee Republicans repeatedly introduced amendments that would weaken the bill but were consistently rebuffed by the committee's Democratic majority. "The Democrats beat back more than a dozen attempts from Republicans to gut the bill with amendments throughout the bill's markup that lasted 9.5 hours," The Hill reported yesterday. Republican amendments would have weakened the bill by doing the following: Exempt all 5G wireless services from net neutrality rules; Exempt all multi-gigabit broadband services from net neutrality rules; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that builds broadband service in any part of the U.S. that doesn't yet have download speeds of at least 25Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3Mbps; Exempt from net neutrality rules any ISP that gets universal service funding from the FCC's Rural Health Care Program; Exempt ISPs that serve 250,000 or fewer subscribers from certain transparency rules that require public disclosure of network management practices; and Prevent the FCC from limiting the types of zero-rating (i.e., data cap exemptions) that ISPs can deploy. An additional Republican amendment "would have imposed net neutrality rules but declared that broadband is an information service, [preventing] the FCC from imposing any other type of common-carrier regulations on ISPs," reports Ars Technica. "The committee did approve a Democratic amendment to exempt ISPs with 100,000 or fewer subscribers from the transparency rules, but only for one year."

The Justice Department has warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that its potential rule changes limiting the eligibility of Netflix and other streaming services for the Oscars could raise antitrust concerns and violate competition law. From the report: According to a letter obtained by Variety, the chief of the DOJ's Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, wrote to AMPAS CEO Dawn Hudson on March 21 to express concerns that new rules would be written "in a way that tends to suppress competition." "In the event that the Academy -- an association that includes multiple competitors in its membership -- establishes certain eligibility requirements for the Oscars that eliminate competition without procompetitive justification, such conduct may raise antitrust concerns," Delrahim wrote. The letter came in response to reports that Steven Spielberg, an Academy board member, was planning to push for rules changes to Oscars eligibility, restricting movies that debut on Netflix and other streaming services around the same time that they show in theaters. Netflix made a big splash at the Oscars this year, as the movie "Roma" won best director, best foreign language film and best cinematography.

Delrahim cited Section 1 of the Sherman Act that "prohibits anticompetitive agreements among competitors." "Accordingly, agreements among competitors to exclude new competitors can violate the antitrust laws when their purpose or effect is to impede competition by goods or services that consumers purchase and enjoy but which threaten the profits of incumbent firms," Delrahim wrote. He added, "if the Academy adopts a new rule to exclude certain types of films, such as films distributed via online streaming services, from eligibility for the Oscars, and that exclusion tends to diminish the excluded films' sales, that rule could therefore violate Section 1." An Academy spokesperson said, "We've received a letter from the Dept. of Justice and have responded accordingly. The Academy's Board of Governors will meet on April 23 for its annual awards rules meeting, where all branches submit possible updates for consideration."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Almost a thousand Google staff, academic researchers, and other tech industry figures have signed a letter protesting the makeup of an independent council that Google created to guide the ethics of its AI projects. The search giant announced the creation of the council last week at EmTech Digital, MIT Technology Review's event in San Francisco. Known as the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC), it has eight members including economists, philosophers, policymakers, and technologists with expertise in issues like algorithmic bias. It is meant to hold four meetings a year, starting this month, and write reports designed to provide feedback on projects at the company that use artificial intelligence.

But two of those members proved controversial. One, Dyan Gibbens, is CEO of Trumbull, a company that develops autonomous systems for the defense industry -- a contentious choice given that thousands of Google employees protested the company's decision to supply the US Air Force with AI for drone imaging. The greatest outrage, though, has come over the inclusion of Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that opposes regulating carbon emissions, takes a hard line on immigration, and has argued against the protection of LGBTQ rights. The creation of ATEAC -- and the inclusion of Gibbens and James -- may in fact have been designed to appease Google's right-wing critics. At roughly the same time the council was announced, Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, was meeting with President Donald Trump. Trump later tweeted: "He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military. [We] also discussed political fairness and various things that Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!" "Not only are James' views counter to Google's stated values," the letter states, "but they are directly counter to the project of ensuring that the development and application of AI prioritizes justice over profit. Such a project should instead place representatives from vulnerable communities at the center of decision-making."