The 2020 election will be "the most secure, most protected election in the history of the United States of America," Christopher Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said on Tuesday. From a report: State and local officials, even before the start of party primaries, have voiced concerns that outside interference could disrupt elections in 2020. The recent outbreak of coronavirus has also impacted some state primaries. "People need to keep in mind that [election security] is something that we've been plugging away at for a long time. Get out there and vote. That's the best defense against any sort of interference," said Krebs. Krebs said the Trump administration is working with state and local election officials to develop contingencies for elections in communities affected by the virus.

Warning that the number of coronavirus cases in the United States was expected to grow, the Trump administration on Monday evening said that testing for the virus would ramp up quickly in the coming weeks while declining to estimate how many Americans had already been tested for the virus. From a report: The evening news conference at the White House came as the stock market plunged and an increasing number of Americans wondered how the official count of virus cases in the country, still in the mid-three-figures, could remain so low despite the aggressive spread of coronavirus elsewhere. Trump addressed economic concerns, telling reporters his administration would ask Congress to pass payroll tax relief and other quick measures. He also said he was seeking help for hourly-wage workers to ensure they're "not going to miss a paycheck" and "don't get penalized for something that's not their fault."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Nearly a month after ending his long shot Democratic presidential campaign, Andrew Yang launched on Thursday a nonprofit group focused on making the central ideas of his campaign a reality. The group, called Humanity Forward, will "endorse and provide resources to political candidates who embrace Universal Basic Income, human-centered capitalism and other aligned policies at every level," according to its website. The new group also plans to increase voter turnout in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on young Americans, Asian-Americans, independents and "individuals who have not been engaged in the political process," according to a release. Additionally, Yang, who is now a CNN political commentator, will launch a podcast in which he will "discuss new ideas to solve the greatest challenges of our time with" notable guests and "regular Americans" alike. Yang has also "committed to personally give $1,000 a month for an entire year to one donor to the new organization."

Last July, Hawaii representative and long-shot presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard sued Google for infringing on her free speech when it briefly suspended her campaign's advertising account after the first Democratic debate in June. On Wednesday, California's Central District Court rejected the suit outright. TechCrunch reports: Gabbard's campaign, Tulsi Now, Inc., asked for $50 million in damages from Google for "serious and continuing violations of Tulsi's right to free speech." In the suit, her campaign claimed that Google "helps to run elections" through political advertising and search results -- an argument District Judge Stephen Wilson firmly rejected. In dismissing the case, Wilson writes that what Gabbard "fails to establish is how Google's regulation of its own platform is in any way equivalent to a governmental regulation of an election." When it comes to Google, "an undisputedly private company," the First Amendment's free speech protections do not apply. A week ago, another California court reached the same conclusion in a case that right-wing group PragerU brought against YouTube.

The Silicon Valley venture capitalist Keith Rabois, onstage in January at a tech conference, said his first choice for president was a Democrat, Pete Buttigieg. And, sure, it would be a close call for Joseph R. Biden Jr. over President Trump. But Bernie Sanders? The New York Times: At that, Mr. Rabois, who has been a top executive at or invested in LinkedIn, Square, Yelp and PayPal, balked. Speaking to the crowd, he drew the line at democratic socialism. (Mr. Buttigieg ended his campaign on Sunday night.) "I would certainly vote for Trump over Sanders," Mr. Rabois declared. When it comes to the 2020 Democratic primaries, with California poised to allocate hundreds of delegates this week on Super Tuesday, many tech leaders in Silicon Valley have a plea: Anyone but Sanders.

From venture capitalists to chief executives, the tech elite are favoring moderates like Mr. Buttigieg and Michael R. Bloomberg. And with Mr. Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, leading the field in California and looking like the front-runner for the nomination, the tone among the leadership is growing more urgent. Few tech executives want to end up stuck choosing between Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump. Meanwhile, tech company workers are gathering en masse for Mr. Sanders. While Silicon Valley has long leaned blue, the chasm between centrist Democrats and an animated left wing has created uncertainty. And now two other things are happening. California Republicans see an opportunity. And a new moderate party in the state -- the Common Sense Party -- is rising.

An official at the Interior Department embarked on a campaign that has inserted misleading language about climate change -- including debunked claims that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial -- into the agency's scientific reports, the New York Times reported Monday, citing internal documents. From the report: The misleading language appears in at least nine reports, including environmental studies and impact statements on major watersheds in the American West that could be used to justify allocating increasingly scarce water to farmers at the expense of wildlife conservation and fisheries. The effort was led by Indur M. Goklany, a longtime Interior Department employee who, in 2017 near the start of the Trump administration, was promoted to the office of the deputy secretary with responsibility for reviewing the agency's climate policies. The Interior Department's scientific work is the basis for critical decisions about water and mineral rights affecting millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of acres of land.

The wording, known internally as the "Goks uncertainty language" based on Mr. Goklany's nickname, inaccurately claims that there is a lack of consensus among scientists that the earth is warming. In Interior Department emails to scientists, Mr. Goklany pushed misleading interpretations of climate science, saying it "may be overestimating the rate of global warming, for whatever reason;" climate modeling has largely predicted global warming accurately. The final language states inaccurately that some studies have found the earth to be warming, while others have not. He also instructed department scientists to add that rising carbon dioxide -- the main force driving global warming -- is beneficial because it "may increase plant water use efficiency" and "lengthen the agricultural growing season." Both assertions misrepresent the scientific consensus that, overall, climate change will result in severe disruptions to global agriculture and significant reductions in crop yields.

Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006, coding up the first prototype (with the help of a contractor) when he was still in his 20s. Dorsey's now it's CEO -- but "A major Republican donor has purchased a stake in Twitter and is reportedly seeking to oust him," reports the Guardian.

Bloomberg News first reported that Elliott Management has taken a "sizable stake" and "and plans to push for changes at the social media company, including replacing Dorsey". Paul Singer, the billionaire founder of Elliott Management, is a Republican mega-donor who opposed Donald Trump during the real-estate magnate's run for the presidential nomination but has since come onside...

Elliott Management is an activist investor, which means it regularly pushes for change in companies in which it buys shares.
Gizmodo referred to them as "hedge fund goons". But Reuters adds that Twitter "is one of the few U.S. technology companies headed, but not controlled, by one of its founders.

"It has given shareholders equal voting rights, making Dorsey, who owns only about 2% of the company, vulnerable to a challenge from an activist investor..."

Adrianne Jeffries, Leon Yin, and Surya Mattu, reporting for The Markup: Pete Buttigieg is leading at 63 percent. Andrew Yang came in second at 46 percent. And Elizabeth Warren looks like she's in trouble with 0 percent. These aren't poll numbers for the U.S. 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Instead, they reflect which candidates were able to consistently land in Gmail's primary inbox in a simple test. The Markup set up a new Gmail account to find out how the company filters political email from candidates, think tanks, advocacy groups, and nonprofits. We found that few of the emails we'd signed up to receive -- 11 percent -- made it to the primary inbox, the first one a user sees when opening Gmail and the one the company says is "for the mail you really, really want."

Half of all emails landed in a tab called "promotions," which Gmail says is for "deals, offers, and other marketing emails." Gmail sent another 40 percent to spam. For political causes and candidates, who get a significant amount of their donations through email, having their messages diverted into less-visible tabs or spam can have profound effects. "The fact that Gmail has so much control over our democracy and what happens and who raises money is frightening," said Kenneth Pennington, a consultant who worked on Beto O'Rourke's digital campaign. "It's scary that if Gmail changes their algorithms," he added, "they'd have the power to impact our election."

The Senate unanimously approved legislation on Thursday that would ban the use of federal funds to purchase telecommunications equipment from companies deemed a national security threat, such as Chinese group Huawei. From a report: The bipartisan Secure and Trusted Telecommunications Networks Act, which the House passed in December, bans the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from giving funds to U.S. telecom groups to purchase equipment from companies deemed threats. The bill would require the FCC to establish a $1 billion fund to help smaller telecom providers to rip out and replace equipment from such companies, and to compile a list of firms seen as posing a threat to telecom networks.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in this year's presidential election, has put forth the most audacious climate plan among the contenders. But there are doubts about the political and economic feasibility of his sweeping vision, as well as the wisdom of some of his particular technical proposals. From a report: Notably, the plan restricts tools that could help rapidly cut greenhouse-gas emissions, including nuclear power and technologies that can capture carbon dioxide. Sanders wants to pump more than $16 trillion into a version of the Green New Deal that would eliminate emissions from the US power sector, as well as all ground transportation, within a decade. To pull it off, he wants the government to play a much larger role in the electricity sector. His plan would direct new or expanded federal agencies to build nearly $2.5 trillion worth of wind, solar, geothermal, and energy storage projects.

The plan would also force major changes on the fossil-fuel sector, including ending federal subsidies, mountaintop-removal coal mining, and the import and export of fossil fuels. He'd also direct federal agencies to investigate whether companies broke the law in covering up their role in climate change, or owe damages for the destruction they cause. In addition, Sanders wants to invest more than $2 trillion to help families and small businesses improve the energy efficiency of their homes, buildings, and operations; and more than $1 trillion to retrofit or construct bridges, roads, water systems, and coastal protections in ways that will stand up to harsher climate conditions. He says the plan will create 20 million jobs, while offering wage guarantees, job training, and other assistance to displaced energy workers. His broader goals for the Green New Deal go beyond climate and clean energy as well, boosting funding for affordable housing and rural economic development, and enhancing protections for civil rights, environmental justice, and labor.

From a report: Andrew Walz calls himself a "proven business leader" and a "passionate advocate for students." Walz, a Republican from Rhode Island, is running for Congress with the tagline, "Let's make change in Washington together," or so his Twitter account claimed. Earlier this month, Walz's account received a coveted blue checkmark from Twitter as part of the company's broader push to verify the authenticity of many Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates currently running for office. Twitter has framed this effort as key to helping Americans find reliable information about politicians in the leadup to the 2020 election. But there's just one problem: Walz does not exist. The candidate is the creation of a 17-year-old high school student from upstate New York, CNN Business has learned.

The student, who CNN Business spoke to with the permission of his parents and has agreed not to be named as he is a minor, said he was "bored" over the holidays and created the fake account to test Twitter's election integrity efforts. The blue checkmark is a hallmark of Twitter and one that was later copied by Facebook. It is often given to prominent accounts belonging to journalists, politicians, government agencies and businesses. The feature is central to Twitter's goal of helping users find reliable information on the platform, often from verified newsmakers.

"Americans don't need Russia's polarizing influence operations. They are plenty good enough at dividing themselves," writes the Atlantic's national security reporter, arguing that "the new face of Russian propaganda" is just a carefully-curated selection of inflammatory content made by Americans themselves.

Citing the Mueller investigation, the article notes the irony that America's two front-runners for the presidency are now "both candidates Russian trolls sought to promote in 2016," calling them "far apart ideologically but nearly equally suited to the Kremlin's interests, both in being divisive at home and in encouraging U.S. restraint abroad." In 2016, the Kremlin invested heavily in creating memes and Facebook ads designed to stoke Americans' distrust of the electoral system and one another... The Russian government is still interfering, but it doesn't need to do much creative work anymore... Americans are now the chief suppliers of the material that suspected Russia-linked accounts use to stoke anger ahead of U.S. elections, leaving Russia free to focus on pushing it as far as possible. Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor who has studied Russian information operations, has seen Russian trolls shift tactics to become "curators more than creators," with the same goal of driving Americans apart. "The Russians love those videos," he said, "because they function to make us more disgusted with one another...."

[The article cites actions by Russia's "Internet Research Agency" in America's 2018 elections.] The organization was still creating memes, and it got an even bigger budget, according to Graham Brookie, the director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council think tank. But it also began using more of what Americans themselves were putting on the internet, seizing on divisive debates about immigration, gun control, and police shootings of unarmed black men, using real news stories to highlight genuine anger and dysfunction in American politics... Russian trolls can largely just watch Americans fight among themselves, and use fictitious Twitter personas to offer vigorous encouragement... They will keep prodding the same bruises in American society, or encouraging cries of electoral fraud if there's a contested Democratic primary or a tight general election.
Alina Polyakova, the president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis, tells the Atlantic that "a U.S. that's mired in its own domestic problems and not engaged in the world benefits Moscow."

The Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has partnered with political communications firm The Ideaz Factory to create "positive campaigns" using deepfakes to reach different linguistic voter bases, reports Nilesh Christopher reports via Motherboard. It marks the debut of deepfakes in election campaigns in India. From the report: On February 7, a day ahead of the Legislative Assembly elections in Delhi, two videos of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Manoj Tiwari criticizing the incumbent Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal went viral on WhatsApp. While one video had Tiwari speak in English, the other was him speaking in the Hindi dialect of Haryanvi. "[Kejriwal] cheated us on the basis of promises. But now Delhi has a chance to change it all. Press the lotus button on February 8 to form the Modi-led government," he said. One may think that this 44-second monologue might be a part of standard political outreach, but there is one thing that's not standard: These videos were not real. [The original video can be viewed here.]

"Deepfake technology has helped us scale campaign efforts like never before," Neelkant Bakshi, co-incharge of social media and IT for BJP Delhi, tells VICE. "The Haryanvi videos let us convincingly approach the target audience even if the candidate didn't speak the language of the voter." Tiwari's fabricated video was used widely to dissuade the large Haryanvi-speaking migrant worker population in Delhi from voting for the rival political party. According to Bakshi, these deepfakes were distributed across 5,800 WhatsApp groups in the Delhi and NCR region, reaching approximately 15 million people.

Alfred Ng, writing for CNET: Building 83 doesn't stand out on Microsoft's massive Redmond, Washington, headquarters. But last week, the nameless structure hosted what might be the software giant's most important product of 2020. Tucked away in the corner of a meeting room, a sign reading "ElectionGuard" identifies a touchscreen that asks people to cast their votes. An Xbox adaptive controller is connected to it, as are an all-white printer and a white ballot box for paper votes. If you didn't look carefully, you might have mistaken all that for an array of office supplies. ElectionGuard is open-source voting-machine software that Microsoft announced in May 2019. In Microsoft's demo, voters make their choices by touchscreen before printing out two copies. A voter is supposed to double-check one copy before placing it into a ballot box to be counted by election workers. The other is a backup record with a QR code the voter can use to check that the vote was counted after polls close. With ElectionGuard, Microsoft isn't setting out to create an unhackable vote -- no one thinks that's possible -- but rather a vote in which hacks would be quickly noticed.

The product demo was far quieter than the typical big tech launch. No flashy lights or hordes of company employees cheering their own product, like Microsoft's dual screen phone, its highly anticipated dual-screen laptop or its new Xbox Series X. And yet, if everything goes right, ElectionGuard could have an impact that lasts well beyond the flashy products in Microsoft's pipeline. ElectionGuard addresses what has become a crucial concern in US democracy: the integrity of the vote. The software is designed to establish end-to-end verification for voting machines. A voter can check whether his or her vote was counted. If a hacker had managed to alter a vote, it would be immediately obvious because encryption attached to the vote wouldn't have changed. The open-source software has been available since last September. But Microsoft gets its first real-world test on Tuesday, when ElectionGuard is used in a local vote in Fulton, Wisconsin.

Facebook said Friday that political candidates, campaigns and groups can use paid branded content across its platforms, a clarification prompted by a move from Michael Bloomberg's campaign to pay top Instagram influencers to post memes on its behalf. Axios reports: Its policy didn't explicitly state that it was OK for candidates to use branded content posts, but after hearing from various campaigns about the issue, Facebook moved to clarify its stance. Facebook has agreed that branded content should be allowed to be used by candidates, as long as the candidates are authorized and the creators disclose paid partnerships through branded content tools, according to a spokesperson.

Facebook previously prohibited political candidates and campaigns from running branded content by default because it wanted to avoid any risk that such actions could be viewed as accounts giving monetary contributions to campaigns. It's tweaking its approach now -- only in the U.S. -- because it believes that this is no longer a concern, given that it doesn't provide payments as a feature of its branded content tools. If a campaign were to buy ads to boost its branded content, then it would be subject to Facebook's advertising policies. That paid promotion would then need to be included in Facebook public, searchable political ad library for seven years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Nevada's Democratic Party said Thursday it plans to use iPads loaded with survey app Google Forms to calculate voting results in next week's caucuses. The system is an effort to avoid a repeat of the Iowa caucus chaos. The app will be loaded onto 2,000 iPads purchased by the party and distributed to precinct chairs, according to a memo signed by party Executive Director Alana Mounce seen by the Associated Press Thursday. Google's app will calculate and submit results electronically, while a second step will rely on submissions also being made by phone. Nevada's caucuses will be held on Feb. 22.

Academics from MIT's computer science laboratory have published a security audit today of Voatz, a mobile app used for online voting during the 2018 US midterm elections and scheduled to be used again in the upcoming 2020 presidential election. From a report: MIT academics claim they identified bugs that could allow hackers to "alter, stop, or expose how an individual user has voted." "We additionally find that Voatz has a number of privacy issues stemming from their use of third party services for crucial app functionality," the research team said in a technical paper released today. "Our findings serve as a concrete illustration of the common wisdom against Internet voting, and of the importance of transparency to the legitimacy of elections," researchers added. MIT academics urge states to continue using paper ballots rather than mobile apps that transmit votes over the internet. They say the current paper ballot voting system is designed to be transparent, and allow citizens and political parties to observe the voting process. "Voatz's app and infrastructure were completely closed-source," said James Koppel, one of the MIT academics.

Scott Santens, writing for Vocal: Back in June of 2019, I tweeted about the latest egregious example of MSNBC excluding Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang from their ongoing coverage of the 2020 Presidential candidates. There had been previous examples, but that was the worst up to that point because they had photos of all 20 candidates who were going to be in the first debates, and instead of including Yang as one of them, they included someone who wasn't even going to be there. I then started to add each new example as a new reply, and that ongoing thread has now been covered over and over again with each new example as a source of entertaining absurdity. It's been covered by traditional media outlets like The Guardian, Vox, and The Hill. It's also been covered by new media like Ethan and Hila Klein of the H3 Podcast for their two million subscribers. I have gotten many requests to put the entire thread in one place outside of Twitter, so this article has been created to meet that request. Each time a new example occurs, I will update the thread on Twitter, and update this page on Vocal too. I have also made a point here of expanding on the thread in a way I can't on Twitter, by expanding the timeline with earlier examples that had occurred before I started my thread. So instead of starting in June, this timeline starts back in March.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order directing U.S. agencies to test the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure systems in the event of a disruption or manipulation of global positioning system services (GPS). From a report: GPS is critical to a variety of purposes ranging from electrical power grids, weather forecasting, traffic signals, smartphone applications and vehicle navigation systems. The order said "disruption or manipulation of these services has the potential to adversely affect the national and economic security of the United States."

Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur and founder of Venture for America, will end his campaign for president after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary. The Washington Post reports: "I am a numbers guy," Yang said in an interview before addressing supporters at Manchester's Puritan Backroom. "In most of these [upcoming] states, I'm not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign. If I become persuaded that there's a particular candidate that gives us a superior chance of beating Donald Trump, and I think it's important to make that opinion known, then I would consider it for sure," Yang said. He also said he would be open to becoming another candidate's running mate or joining a presidential Cabinet.

In his stump speech, Yang warned of the societal and economic changes automation would continue to bring to the United States. He proposed countering it by implementing universal basic income in the form of a $1,000-a-month "Freedom Dividend" for U.S. citizens. His sometimes bleak message on the campaign trail was contrasted with his upbeat, irreverent style of campaigning: Yang once crowd-surfed at a candidate forum and sometimes challenged other celebrities to pickup basketball games. He half-danced onto just about every stage to the '90s Mark Morrison R&B hit "Return of the Mack" and spawned a loyal following of supporters who dubbed themselves the "Yang Gang." They often showed up at his events wearing trademark "math" hats, a nod both to his self-described emphasis on facts and research and to the geek culture that surrounded his candidacy. "This is the nerdiest campaign in history," Yang told The Washington Post last year. Yang was also the first presidential candidate to use campaign funds for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. "He told CNN on Monday that the concept of a freedom dividend was 'not going anywhere,' and emphasized on Tuesday that he had forced a new idea into Democratic politics," reports The Washington Post. "He made that point with math."

"Now, 66 percent of Democrats support a universal basic income," Yang said. "It's got 72 percent of young people, aged 18 to 34."

The new effort by the Federal Trade Commission will require all five big technology companies to provide information about the smaller players they've purchased over the past 10 years, including documents for deals that may not have been large enough to warrant deep, closer inspection by government watchdogs at the time. From a report: The records the FTC amasses could ultimately influence its thinking about Silicon Valley and its size, sparking investigations, resulting in tough punishments or prompting the commission to seek further enforcement powers from Congress once it concludes its work. "This initiative will enable the Commission to take a closer look at acquisitions in this important sector, and also to evaluate whether the federal agencies are getting adequate notice of transactions that might harm competition," FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement.

The inquiry announced Tuesday differs from a traditional investigation: Using its so-called 6(b) authority, the FTC can embark on wide-ranging reviews of entire industries without necessarily bringing a law-enforcement action. The agency in the past has invoked such powers to delve deep into drug prices, alcohol ads and gas gouging, experts said, often ushering about major changes in the markets and companies it studies. With big tech, the FTC is particularly interested in the smaller startups purchased by Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Such deals typically aren't large enough to require companies under law to report them to agencies like the FTC, which would then review them for competition concerns. The document demands sent to all five tech giants require them to demystify these transactions, explaining their acquisition strategies and the ways they ingested startups -- and the data they amassed -- into their own services.

A software flaw exposed the personal data of every eligible voter in Israel -- including full names, addresses and identity card numbers for 6.5 million people -- raising concerns about identity theft and electoral manipulation, three weeks before the country's national election. The New York Times reports: The security lapse was tied to a mobile app used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to communicate with voters, offering news and information about the March 2 election. Until it was fixed, the flaw made it possible, without advanced technical skills, to view and download the government's entire voter registry, though it was unclear how many people did so. How the breach occurred remains uncertain, but Israel's Privacy Protection Authority, a unit of the Justice Ministry, said it was looking into the matter -- though it stopped short of announcing a full-fledged investigation. The app's maker, in a statement, played down the potential consequences, describing the leak as a "one-off incident that was immediately dealt with" and saying it had since bolstered the site's security. "Ran Bar-Zik, the programmer who revealed the breach, explained that visitors to the Elector app's website could right-click to 'view source,' an action that reveals the code behind a web page," the report adds.

"That page of code included the user names and passwords of site administrators with access to the voter registry, and using those credentials would allow anyone to view and download the information. Mr. Bar-Zik, a software developer for Verizon Media who wrote the Sunday article in Haaretz, said he chose the name and password of the Likud party administrator and logged in."

The flaw was first reported on Sunday by the newspaper Haaretz.

It's another sea of red ink for federal research funding programs in President Donald Trump's latest budget proposal. The 2021 budget request to Congress released today calls for deep, often double-digit cuts to R&D spending at major science agencies. From a report: At the same time, the president wants to put more money into a handful of areas -- notably artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science (QIS) -- to create the new technology needed for what the budget request calls "industries of the future." Here is a rundown of some of the numbers from the budget request's R&D chapter. (The numbers reflect the portion of each agency's budget classified as research, which in most cases is less than its overall budget.)

1. National Institutes of Health: a cut of 7%, or $2.942 billion, to $36.965 billion.
2. National Science Foundation (NSF): a cut of 6%, or $424 million, to $6.328 billion.
3. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science: a cut of 17%, or $1.164 billion, to $5.760 billion.
4. NASA science: a cut of 11%, or $758 million, to $6.261 billion.
5. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy: a cut of 173%, which would not only eliminate the $425 million agency, but also force it to return $311 million to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
6. U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Agricultural Research Service: a cut of 12%, or $190 million, to $1.435 billion.
7. National Institute of Standards and Technology: a cut of 19%, or $154 million, to $653 million.
8. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: a cut of 31%, or $300 million, to $678 million.
9. Environmental Protection Agency science and technology: a cut of 37%, or $174 million, to $318 million.
10. Department of Homeland Security science and technology: a cut of 15%, or $65 million, to $357 million.
11. U.S. Geological Survey: a cut of 30%, or $200 million, to $460 million.

Amazon has asked a federal court for permission to get testimony from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper as part of its ongoing protest over the Defense Department's handling of a multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract, according to a court filing unsealed Monday. From a report: The document also seeks permission to depose former Defense Secretary James Mattis and what he may have known about Trump's attitude toward the contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. The decision on the motion to depose is expected in the coming weeks. It is incredibly rare, if not unprecedented, for a sitting US president to be deposed in a contract protest. In a footnote of the court filing, Amazon notes that "a deposition of a sitting President of the United States presents unique circumstances." Amazon argues in the document that the Pentagon's explanation for awarding the contract to Microsoft left out "crucial information and details that led to this flawed and potentially detrimental decision regarding DoD's future cloud infrastructure."

What happened when conservative activist Tom Fitton issued an inaccurate press release last week about Iowa's voter registration rolls? After being debunked by Republican state officials -- and identified as "false" by the Associated Press -- the false claims simply remained on both Facebook and Twitter.

The Associated Press reports: Fitton, founder of Judicial Watch, tweeted a report claiming that eight Iowa counties have more people registered to vote than are actually eligible to vote. [Republican] Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate moved quickly to counter the false information... Pate tweeted a link to the secretary of state's website, for those who wanted to check the numbers. "The county population numbers you claim are way too low. Dallas County's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is nearly 9,000+ more than you claim, and Johnson County's is nearly 7,000 higher," Pate tweeted.

But the false information circulated Sunday and throughout the day on social media.
One tweet was retweeted over 40,000 times. But according to another report, that was just the beginning... The claim was amplified on Twitter by Fox TV host Sean Hannity, a close confidant of President Donald Trump... Fitton admitted in an interview that he "used older statistics and census numbers to reach his conclusion," the Associated Press reported. Judicial Watch's posts were still on Twitter and Facebook as of Wednesday afternoon.

A Twitter spokesperson said the Judicial Watch tweet was "not in violation of our election integrity policy as it does not suppress voter turnout or mislead people about when, where, or how to vote." Twitter last year banned political advertising on its platform.

Facebook, which controversially allows politicians to lie in political ads, did not provide a response to this news organization's inquiry about the Judicial Watch post. Facebook's director of product management has said the firm does not fact-check political ads for truthfulness and that those ads should be regulated by the federal government, not social media companies.
The Republican Secretary of State said in a statement that the false claims "erode voter confidence in elections."

New submitter em1ly writes: A source familiar with the Nevada version of the error-ridden Iowa caucus app spoke to Motherboard about even more issues with the app. From the report: "After logging into the app, users were presented with a dashboard letting them submit how many caucus attendees they wished to add for each candidate, according to the app. A pop-up then asked, 'Are you sure you want to submit the first alignment? Please ensure all in-person participant counts are correct before confirming.' But submitting the counts for the first alignment did not work, according to a source. Motherboard granted the source anonymity to speak candidly about a technical issue. 'Error,' a second pop-up reads. 'Could not submit alignment.'" A Shadow spokesperson told Motherboard that "Because the deadline for the Nevada app was later, Shadow's Nevada app was still in beta testing, and that testing identified some errors that were being fixed." They also said that the app was on track for a "successful rollout" with the Nevada Democratic Party.

"There was a new release ready to test in Nevada following the Iowa caucuses. That version wasn't ready for use and has not been, and will not be released," they added.

Nevada Democrats have already said they will not use the app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google and Facebook seem to have resigned themselves to losing part of the longest and highest profile internet cable they have invested in to date. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week, the two companies requested permission to activate the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between the US and the Philippines and Taiwan, leaving its controversial Hong Kong and Chinese sections dormant. Globally, around 380 submarine cables carry over 99.5 percent of all transoceanic data traffic. Every time you visit a foreign website or send an email abroad, you are using a fiber-optic cable on the seabed. Satellites, even large planned networks like SpaceX's Starlink system, cannot move data as quickly and cheaply as underwater cables.

When it was announced in 2017, the 13,000-kilometer PLCN was touted as the first subsea cable directly connecting Hong Kong and the United States, allowing Google and Facebook to connect speedily and securely with data centers in Asia and unlock new markets. The 120 terabit-per-second cable was due to begin commercial operation in the summer of 2018. Instead, it has been PLCN itself that has been disrupted, by an ongoing regulatory battle in the US that has become politicized by trade and technology spats with China.

A security firm consulted by ProPublica found that the "IowaReporter" app used to count and report votes from individual precincts in the Iowa Democratic caucuses was vulnerable to hacking. From the report: The IowaReporterApp was so insecure that vote totals, passwords and other sensitive information could have been intercepted or even changed, according to officials at Massachusetts-based Veracode, a security firm that reviewed the software at ProPublica's request. Because of a lack of safeguards, transmissions to and from the phone were left largely unprotected. Chris Wysopal, Veracode's chief technology officer, said the problems were elementary. He called it a "poor decision" to release the software without first fixing them. "It is important for all mobile apps that deal with sensitive data to have adequate security testing, and have any vulnerabilities fixed before being released for use," he said.

There's no evidence that hackers intercepted or tampered with caucus results. An attack would have required some degree of sophistication, but it would have been much easier to pull off had a precinct worker used an open Wi-Fi hotspot to report votes instead of a cell data plan. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security offered to test the app for the Iowa Democratic Party, but the party never took the government up on it, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official said the party did participate in a dry run, known as a tabletop exercise. The party did not respond to requests for comment on this issue. Gerard Niemira, Shadow's CEO, said in a statement to ProPublica that "we are committed to the security of our products, including the app used during the Iowa caucuses. While there were reporting delays, what was most important is that the data was accurate and the caucus reporting process remained secure throughout."

"Our app underwent multiple, rigorous tests by a third party, but we learned today that a researcher found a vulnerability in our app. As with all software, sometimes vulnerabilities are discovered after they are released." He added that no "hack or intrusion" occurred during the caucuses, and that "the integrity of the vote in Iowa was not compromised in any way." The app is not currently in use, he said.

NBC News is also reporting that the phone number used to report Iowa caucus results was posted on 4chan on Monday night "along with encouragement to 'clog the lines,' an indication that jammed phone lines that left some caucus managers on hold for hours may have in part been due to prank calls."

Motherboard has chosen to publish the app used to tabulate early voting results in Iowa's Democratic Presidential primary. According to editor-in-chief Jason Koebler, "Trust and transparency are core to the U.S. electoral process," and "that's why Motherboard is publishing the app that malfunctioned in Iowa. From the report: The app, called IowaReporter, ultimately won't affect the vote totals of the Iowa caucuses, which are being recounted with paper ballots and other hard documentation. But the app's failure -- and the widespread attention this failure has received -- spurred chaos on election night, followed by speculation, conspiracy theories, and political jockeying. To try to combat that misinformation, it's necessary to offer complete transparency on what the app is, what it can and cannot do, and why it failed.

Motherboard obtained a copy of the app. By decompiling and analyzing it, it's possible to learn more about how the app was built and what might have gone wrong during the Iowa caucus. We reached out to several security researchers and asked them to analyze it for us, and have published an article about their findings. Motherboard waited to publish the app until Shadow, which controls the app's back-end servers and accounts, confirmed that it had been taken offline. [Shadow Inc. CEO Gerard Niemira] stressed that no voter data could be accessed from the app or from any of the databases it used. What we are publishing is an inert app that is no longer being used for an election, that the DNC has stated will not be used in future elections, and that is no longer connected to backend servers or services. You can download the Android .apk file here.

UPDATE 2/6/20: A security firm consulted by ProPublica found that the "IowaReporter" app was also vulnerable to hacking. "The IowaReporterApp was so insecure that vote totals, passwords and other sensitive information could have been intercepted or even changed," reports ProPublica. "Because of a lack of safeguards, transmissions to and from the phone were left largely unprotected."

The Senate on Wednesday acquitted President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, rejecting the House's charges that he should be removed from office for abusing his power and obstructing the congressional investigation into his conduct. Politico reports: The vote capped a frenetic four-month push by House Democrats to investigate and impeach Trump for allegedly withholding U.S. military aid from Ukraine to pressure its leaders to investigate his Democratic rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden. The impeachment articles also charged Trump with obstructing the House's investigation into the matter.

The first article, abuse of power, failed 48-52 -- well short of the 67-vote super-majority required to remove Trump from office. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the abuse of power charge. The second article, obstruction of Congress, failed 47-53 -- a party-line vote. All Democratic senators voted to convict Trump on both counts. Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, announced the result on each article of impeachment Wednesday afternoon, bringing the three-week trial to a close. "The Senate, having tried Donald Trump, president of the United States, upon two articles of impeachment exhibited against him by the House of Representatives, and two-thirds of the senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained therein: it is, therefore, ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles," Roberts said.

Zeynep Tufekci, writing for The Atlantic yesterday: The morning after caucus-goers filed into high-school gyms across Iowa, the state's Democratic Party is still unable to produce results. The app it developed for precisely this purpose seems to have crashed. The party was questioned before by experts about the wisdom of using a secretive app that would be deployed at a crucial juncture, but the concerns were brushed away. Troy Price, the state party's chairman, claimed that if anything went wrong with the app, staffers would be ready "with a backup and a backup to that backup and a backup to the backup to the backup." And yet, more than 12 hours after the end of the caucus, they are unable to produce results. Last night, some precinct officials even waited on hold for an hour to report the results -- and got hung up on. It appears that the Iowa Democrats nixed the plan to have precincts call in their results, and instead hired a for-profit tech firm, aptly named Shadow, to tally the caucus results. The party paid Shadow $60,000 to develop an app that would tally the results, but gave the company only two months to do it. Worried about Russian hacking, the party addressed security in all the wrong ways: It did not open up the app to outside testing or challenge by independent security experts.

This method is sometimes dubbed "security through obscurity," and while there are instances for which it might be appropriate, it is a fragile method, especially unsuited to anything public on the internet that might invite an attack. For example, putting a spare key in a secret place in your backyard isn't a terrible practice, because the odds are low that someone will be highly motivated to break into any given house and manage to look exactly in the right place (well, unless you put it under the mat). But when there are more significant incentives and the system is open to challenge by anyone in the world, as with anything on the internet, someone will likely find a way to get the keys, as the Motion Picture Association of America found out when its supposedly obscure digital keys, meant to prevent copyright infringement, quickly leaked. Shadow's app was going to be used widely on caucus day, and independent security experts warned that this method wasn't going to work. The company didn't listen. If Shadow had opened up the app to experts, they likely would have found many bugs, and the app would have been much stronger as a result. But even that process would not have made the app secure.

The Iowa caucus debacle represents one of the most stunning failures of information security ever. From a column: This failure was delivered by the same Iowa Democratic Party officials who have said for the last four years they were "ramping up" their technology capabilities, convening seemingly endless security task forces to ensure foreign powers did not disenfranchise voters, and collaborating with federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security to make sure everyone was in the loop on voting security. Voters will be paying close attention to how party leaders ensure that votes going forward have clear contingency plans in place, not just to protect against hackers, but from all types of technology failures, including applications that might not work.

Iowa officials counting the results coming in Monday from the caucusing app reported irregularities that required them to switch from the app to counting votes manually. Party officials said the "underlying data" put into the app was fine, but it is unclear as of yet how they know this or even what they consider "underlying data." "Last night, more than 1,600 precinct caucuses gathered across the state of Iowa and at satellite caucuses around the world," the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday. "As precinct caucus results started coming in, the IDP ran them through an accuracy and quality check. It became clear that there were inconsistencies with the reports. The underlying cause of these inconsistencies was not immediately clear, and required investigation, which took time."

Reports of Iowa precinct chairs struggling to use an app designed to help tally participation in the Democratic presidential caucuses on Monday fueled conspiracy theories on social media and raised questions about how smoothly the high-stakes nominating contest would unfold. From a report: Just hours before the beginning of the contest, the first of the 2020 elections, the headquarters of the Iowa Democratic Party received multiple calls from precinct chairs around the state reporting problems with the new app the party is using to calculate, tabulate and report results for the caucuses. The state party said nearly all of the calls were related to user-error problems, such as precincts in areas with bad cellphone service having problems downloading or logging into the app, or others simply asking about the app's functionality. Though the issues could possibly cause results to be delayed, the party said that it would not ultimately affect the reporting of results.

Sean Bagniewski, the Democratic Party chairman in Polk County, the most populous county in Iowa, said that only 20 percent of his 177 chairs could get into the app, but he added that there were "no malfunctions." "We're telling everyone to phone it in," Mr. Bagniewski said, referring to the hotline the party has used for decades to report results. Yet those issues appeared to trigger speculation on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms that the app had been hacked, or that it was malfunctioning in a way that would benefit a certain candidate. Further reading: Results from Iowa caucuses delayed because of 'quality control'.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: West Virginia's legislature last week passed legislation allowing disabled voters to cast votes by smartphone, sending the bill to the desk of Governor Jim Justice. Justice is expected to sign the legislation, according to NBC. It's a decision that alarms many computer security experts, who say that the Internet and smartphones are too vulnerable to hackers.

The legislation would require every county in the state to offer smartphone voting. It doesn't specify any particular voting method, but the state has recently been experimenting with software called Voatz that tries to use a blockchain to help secure elections. West Virginia performed a small-scale pilot project with Voatz in the 2018 election, allowing about 150 overseas voters to vote using the technology. A fundamental problem with online voting, experts say, is that modern computing devices have a huge "attack surface." Even if the voting app itself is completely secure, there might still be vulnerabilities in the user's operating system, network, or the servers used to register users and collect votes. And to swing an election, a hacker doesn't need to change anyone's votes -- just preventing some of a candidate's voters from voting can be sufficient to swing a close election. But West Virginia officials have pressed forward, arguing that it's too difficult for some disabled voters to get to a physical polling place to cast votes. Washington is also considering smartphone voting. The King Conservation District, a district of 1.2 million voters encompassing Greater Seattle, may have the option to cast votes online using a smartphone.

YouTube on Monday reinforced its guidelines on tackling fake or misleading election-related content on its platform as the United States gears up for the presidential election later this year. From a report: YouTube will remove any content that has been "technically doctored" or manipulated or misleads the user about the voting process or makes false claims about a candidate, it said in a blog.

Ahead of the Democratic presidential primaries that begin Monday with the Iowa caucus, presidential candidate Andrew Yang called for a global ban on the use of autonomous weaponry. In a tweet, Yang called for U.S. leadership to implement a ban on automated killing machines, then shared a link to a Future of Life Institute video titled "Slaughterbots," which offers a cautionary and dystopian vision of the future. From a report: [...] In the video, the fictional CEO promises the ability to target and wipe out "the bad guys" or people with "evil ideology" or even entire cities. The video then imagines the breaking out of partisan political warfare. The drones are used to assassinate 11 U.S. Senators of one political party at the U.S. Capitol building. In the wake of the hypothetical attack, it's unclear after assessment from the intelligence community what state, group, or individual carried it out, but in the confusion calls for war and violent crime ratchet up.

There is some precedent in reality. Russian company Kalishnakov is developing a kamikaze drone, and though it was most likely piloted by a human, the world saw one of the first targeted political assassination attempts with a drone in history in 2018 in Venezuela. DARPA is developing ways for swarms of drones to take part in military missions, and the U.S. Department of Defense developed hardware to guard against weaponized drone attacks.

Add a gun that can't shoot straight to the problems that dog Lockheed Martin's $428 billion F-35 program, including more than 800 software flaws. From a report: The 25mm gun on Air Force models of the Joint Strike Fighter has "unacceptable" accuracy in hitting ground targets and is mounted in housing that's cracking, the Pentagon's test office said in its latest assessment of the costliest U.S. weapons system. The annual assessment by Robert Behler, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, doesn't disclose any major new failings in the plane's flying capabilities. But it flags a long list of issues that his office said should be resolved -- including 13 described as Category 1 "must-fix" items that affect safety or combat capability -- before the F-35's upcoming $22 billion Block 4 phase.

The number of software deficiencies totaled 873 as of November, according to the report obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of its release as soon as Friday. That's down from 917 in September 2018, when the jet entered the intense combat testing required before full production, including 15 Category 1 items. What was to be a year of testing has now been extended another year until at least October. "Although the program office is working to fix deficiencies, new discoveries are still being made, resulting in only a minor decrease in the overall number" and leaving "many significant" ones to address, the assessment said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Research presented at the ACM FAT 2020 conference in Barcelona today supports the notion that YouTube's platform is playing a role in radicalizing users via exposure to far-right ideologies. The study, carried out by researchers at Switzerland's Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, found evidence that users who engaged with a middle ground of extreme right-wing content migrated to commenting on the most fringe far-right content.

Their paper, called "Auditing radicalization pathways on YouTube," details a large-scale study of YouTube looking for traces of evidence -- in likes, comments and views -- that certain right-leaning YouTube communities are acting as gateways to fringe far-right ideologies. Per the paper, they analyzed 330,925 videos posted on 349 channels -- broadly classifying the videos into four types: Media, the Alt-lite, the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) and the Alt-right -- and using user comments as a "good enough" proxy for radicalization (their data set included 72 million comments). The findings suggest a pipeline effect over a number of years where users who started out commenting on alt-lite/IDW YouTube content shifted to commenting on extreme far-right content on the platform over time. The rate of overlap between consumers of Media content and the alt-right was found to be far lower. "The researchers were unable to determine the exact mechanism involved in migrating YouTube users from consuming 'alt lite' politics to engaging with the most fringe and extreme far-right ideologies -- citing a couple of key challenges on that front: Limited access to recommendation data; and the study not taking into account personalization (which can affect a user's recommendations on YouTube)," reports TechCrunch.

"But even without personalization, they say they were 'still able to find a path in which users could find extreme content from large media channels.'"

An anonymous reader shares a report: Pinterest is ramping up its efforts to crack down on political misinformation ahead of the 2020 election -- a sign that the platform best known for lighthearted fare such as recipes, wedding planning and beauty tips is not immune from the challenges facing other major social media sites. The company tells The Technology 202 that it will now remove any content that misleads people about where, when or how to vote. It is also promising to crack down on any hoaxes that could turn off people from participating in the census, as experts warn the count could be a key target for bad actors seeking to meddle with the U.S. democratic process. Pinterest's new "civic participation" policy will apply to content from users' posts and ads on the service.

"This is an Internet problem," said Aerica Shimizu Banks, Pinterest's lead for federal policy and social impact. The only way to address misinformation broadly, Banks adds, is for tech companies and government officials to work together. Pinterest, like other tech companies, will report any count-related hoaxes to the U.S. Census Bureau so that the agency can debunk them and ensure they're not spreading on other social networks.

357 Amazon employees have now "violated the e-commerce giant's communications policy Sunday in an unprecedented public display of support for colleagues who were warned that they could be fired for speaking out to criticize the company's climate practices," reports the Washington Post: Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of workers concerned about the company's business with the oil and gas industry as well as its carbon footprint, published quotes from the workers in a post on Medium. The comments, all of which are attributed to Amazon workers by name, are a mass defiance of company rules that bar workers from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives... "Solidarity to the workers facing retaliation for standing up!" wrote Charlie LaBarge, a software engineer...

Amazon encourages workers to advocate for causes they believe in but wants them to pursue those convictions when related to the company's business internally, spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement. Workers can submit questions to executives during all-hands meetings, and they can join internal interest groups, such as ones that focus on sustainability. Employees can also attend lunch sessions with Amazon leaders to discuss the issues, as long as they are willing to keep matters raised in those sessions confidential. "While all employees are welcome to engage constructively with any of the many teams inside Amazon that work on sustainability and other topics, we do enforce our external communications policy and will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems," Herdener said.
Ironically, the Washington Post...is owned by Amazon.

Facebook, Amazon and Apple spent record amounts on lobbying in 2019, with Mark Zuckerberg's social-media company leading the so-called FAANG companies in outlays aimed at influencing Washington, according to disclosures filed this week. From a report: Facebook shelled out $16.7 million last year, well above its 2018 total of $12.6 million, its disclosures show. Amazon has reported spending $16.1 million in 2019 vs. $14.4 million a year ago, and Apple said it put forth $7.4 million, topping its 2018 outlay of $6.7 million and its 2017 total of $7.2 million. The other two FAANG companies -- Netflix and Alphabet's Google business -- didn't set records with their 2019 lobbying spending. Netflix disclosed shelling out $850,000 last year, up from $800,000 in 2018 but below its 2015 total of $1.3 million. Google spent $11.8 million last year, down sharply from its 2018 total of $21.7 million as the search heavyweight reorganized its lobbying effort. The spending -- which already was on a record pace for some companies after last year's third quarter -- has come as Big Tech increasingly finds itself in lawmakers and regulators' cross hairs.

A district encompassing Greater Seattle is set to become the first in which every voter can cast a ballot using a smartphone. NPR reports: The King Conservation District, a state environmental agency that encompasses Seattle and more than 30 other cities, is scheduled to detail the plan at a news conference on Wednesday. About 1.2 million eligible voters could take part. The new technology will be used for a board of supervisors election, and ballots will be accepted from Wednesday through election day on Feb. 11.

King County voters will be able to use their name and birthdate to log in to a Web portal through the Internet browser on their phones, says Bryan Finney, the CEO of Democracy Live, the Seattle-based voting company providing the technology. Once voters have completed their ballots, they must verify their submissions and then submit a signature on the touch screen of their device. Finney says election officials in Washington are adept at signature verification because the state votes entirely by mail. That will be the way people are caught if they log in to the system under false pretenses and try to vote as someone else. The King County elections office plans to print out the ballots submitted electronically by voters whose signatures match and count the papers alongside the votes submitted through traditional routes. "Voters who use the smartphone portal also have the option to not submit their ballots electronically," notes NPR. "They can log in, fill out the ballot and then print it to either drop off at designated drop-off locations or put in the mail."

71-year-old science fiction author William Gibson coined the word "cyberspace" in his 1984 novel Neuromancer. 36 years later he's back with an even more dystopian future in his new novel Agency.

But in a surprisingly candid interview in the Daily Beast, Gibson says he prefers watching emerging new technologies first because "To use it is to be changed by it; you're not the same person."
"I'm not someone who works from assumptions about where technology might be going. My method of writing is exploratory about that."

That's certainly the case with Agency, Gibson's latest, a densely structured, complexly plotted novel that takes place in two separate time frames, which he refers to as "stubs," and has as one of its central characters an AI named Eunice, who is one part uploaded human consciousness and another part specialized military machine intelligence. In one stub it's 2017, a woman is in the White House, and Brexit never happened. But the threat of nuclear war nonetheless hovers over a conflict in the Middle East. In the other stub, it's 22nd century London after "the jackpot," a grim timeline of disasters that has reduced the Earth's population by 80 percent and left Britain to be ruled by "the klept," which Gibson describes as a "hereditary authoritarian government, [with its] roots in organized crime."

Given these scenarios, it's no surprise to discover that the 71-year-old Gibson's latest work was heavily influenced by the 2016 election and the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the presidency. "The book I had been imagining had been a kind of a romp," says the U.S.-born Gibson down the phone line from his long-time home in Vancouver, B.C. "But then the election happened, and I thought, 'Uh-oh, my whole sense of the present is 24 hours out of date, and that's enough to make the book I've been working on kind of meaningless.' It took me a long time [to re-think and re-write the book], and I thought the weirdness factor of reality, finding some balance -- what can I do with the existing level of weirdness, and that level kept going up. I wanted to write a book that current events wouldn't have left by the time it got out, and I think Agency works...."

"It's an interesting time for science fiction now," says Gibson, "because there are people writing contemporary fiction who are effectively writing science fiction, because the world they live in has become science fiction. Writing a contemporary novel today that doesn't involve concepts that wouldn't have been seen in science fiction 20 years ago is impossible. Unless it's an Amish novel."
The Washington Post calls Gibson's new novel "engaging, thought-provoking and delightful," while the senior editor at Medium's tech site One Zero says it's the first time Gibson "has taken direct aim at Silicon Valley, at the industry and culture that has reorganized the world -- with some of his ideas propelling it."

"The result is a blend of speculation and satire that any self-respecting denizen of the digital world should spend some time with."

And they're also publishing an exclusive excerpt from the novel.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wants to get rid of the legal protection that has shielded social media companies including Facebook from liability for users' posts. From a report: The former vice president's stance, presented in an interview with The New York Times editorial board, is more extreme than that of other lawmakers who have confronted tech executives about the legal protection from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. "Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms," Biden said in the interview published Friday. The bill became law in the mid-1990s to help still-nascent tech firms avoid being bogged down in legal battles. But as tech companies have amassed more power and billions of dollars, many lawmakers across the political spectrum along with Attorney General William Barr, agree that some reforms of the law and its enforcement are likely warranted. But revoking the clause in its entirety would have major implications for tech platforms and may still fail to produce some of the desired outcomes. Section 230 allows for tech companies to take "good faith" measures to moderate content on their platforms, meaning they can take down content they consider violent, obscene or harassing without fear of legal retribution.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will notify state officials when local election systems are believed to have been breached by hackers [the link may be paywalled], a pivot in policy that comes after criticism that the FBI wasn't doing enough to inform states of election threats, WSJ reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: The FBI's previous policy stated that it notified the direct victims of cyberattacks, such as the counties that own and operate election equipment, but wouldn't necessarily share that information with states. Several states and members of Congress in both parties had criticized that policy as inadequate and one that stifled state-local partnerships on improving election security. Further reading: Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App.

Network security giant Cloudflare said it will provide its security tools and services to U.S. political campaigns for free, as part of its efforts to secure upcoming elections against cyberattacks and election interference. From a report: The company said its new Cloudflare for Campaigns offering will include distributed denial-of-service attack mitigation, load balancing for campaign websites, a website firewall, and anti-bot protections. It's an expansion of the company's security offering for journalists, civil rights activists and humanitarian groups under its Project Galileo, which aims to protect against disruptive cyberattacks. The project later expanded to smaller state and local government sites in 2018, with an aim of protecting servers containing voter registration data and other election infrastructure from attacks. Cloudflare's co-founder and chief executive Matthew Prince said there was a "clear need" to help campaigns secure not only their public facing websites but also their internal data security. The company said it's working with the non-partisan, non-profit organization Defending Digital Campaigns to provide its services to campaigns. Last year the Federal Elections Commission changed the rules to allow political campaigns to receive discounted cybersecurity assistance, which was previously a campaign finance violation.

Facebook said on Thursday that it would not make any major changes to its political advertising policies, which allow lies in ads, despite pressure from lawmakers who say the company is abdicating responsibility for what appears on its platform. The New York Times: The decision, which company executives had telegraphed in recent months, is likely to harden criticism of Facebook's political ad practices heading into this year's presidential election. The company also said it would not end so-called microtargeting for political ads, which lets campaigns home in on a sliver of Facebook's users -- a tactic that critics say is ideal for spreading divisive or misleading information. Political advertising cuts to the heart of Facebook's outsize role in society, and the company has found itself squeezed between liberal critics who want it to do a better job of policing its various social media platforms and conservatives who say their views are being unfairly muzzled.

The issue has raised important questions regarding how heavy a hand technology companies like Facebook -- which also owns Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp -- and Google should exert when deciding what types of political content they will and will not permit. By maintaining a status quo, Facebook executives are essentially saying they are doing the best they can without government guidance and see little benefit to the company or the public in changing.

A new leak of more than 100,000 documents from Cambridge Analytica's work in 68 different countries "will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on 'an industrial scale,'" writes the Guardian.

Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed shares their report: The release of documents began on New Year's Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, with links to material on elections in Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. The documents were revealed to have come from Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and to be the same ones subpoenaed by Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Kaiser, who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary The Great Hack, decided to go public after last month's election in Britain. "It's so abundantly clear our electoral systems are wide open to abuse," she said. "I'm very fearful about what is going to happen in the US election later this year, and I think one of the few ways of protecting ourselves is to get as much information out there as possible."

The documents were retrieved from her email accounts and hard drives, and though she handed over some material to parliament in April 2018, she said there were thousands and thousands more pages which showed a "breadth and depth of the work" that went "way beyond what people think they know about 'the Cambridge Analytica scandal....'" Kaiser said the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation that worked with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns to manipulate and influence people, and that raised huge national security implications.

During a campaign event on Monday, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden "suggested coal miners could simply learn to code to transition to 'jobs of the future,'" reports Newsweek: "Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine, sure in hell can learn to program as well, but we don't think of it that way," he said... "Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God's sake..."

Many Twitter users criticized Biden's comments as reductive. "Telling people to find other work without a firm plan to help them succeed will never be popular," communications professional Frank Lutz wrote... Congressional candidate Brianna Wu tweeted that she was "glad to see the recognition that you don't need to be in your 20s to do this as a profession," but also called Biden's suggestion "tone-deaf and unhelpful."
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the response this speech got from New York magazine's Sarah Jones: "Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code." And in comments on the original submission, at least two Slashdot readers seemed to agree. "Not everyone can code and certainly not every coal miner or coal worker," wrote Slashdot reader I75BJC. "Vastly different skills."

Slashdot reader Iwastheone even shared a Fox News article in which rival presidential candidate Andrew Yang argued "Maybe Americans don't all want to learn how to code... Let them do the kind of work they actually want to do, instead of saying to a group of people that you all need to become coders."

But is there something elitist in thinking that coal miners couldn't learn to do what coders learned to do? It seems like an interesting question for discussion -- so leave your own thoughts in the comments.

Should coal miners be encouraged to learn to code?

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: Spotify announced Friday that it will suspend political advertising on its platform next year, making it the latest in a series of tech and social media platforms to publicly address how it will handle content targeting voters. The music streaming company said that its decision was made because it does not yet have the means to screen political advertising content.

"At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content. We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities," a spokesperson said in a statement to media outlets.

The move by Spotify, which was first reported by AdAge, comes after a wave of backlash against Facebook, which said it would not fact check content in political ads... Twitter also committed to stop accepting political ads in a stance against "forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people." And Google has said it will restrict the way political advertisers can target specific audiences.