Congress Votes To Gut Internet Privacy Rules

The House voted Tuesday to repeal landmark internet privacy rules that required broadband companies to first get consent before sharing their customers' sensitive information, including browsing history and location data, with advertisers and other third party companies. The vote comes a week after the Senate approved the repeal. Now President Trump&039;s signature is the final step needed to abolish the privacy protections.

Passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October, the rules also forced broadband providers to tell customers about the data they collect, why they collect it, and to identify the kinds of third party companies that might be given access to that information. Parts of the internet privacy rules were scheduled to take effect later this year. Others, including a provision that required broadband companies to protect consumer information from hackers and data breaches, had already kicked in. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, however, moved to block the data security rules earlier this month.

Republican lawmakers and the telecom industry have staunchly opposed the regulations. They have argued that the rules unfairly target internet providers, like Comcast and AT&T, and offer an advantage to other web companies that regularly harvest and sell customer information. Since businesses like Facebook and Google are not bound by the FCC rules, critics say the privacy regulations singled out broadband companies.

“These rules varied from the industry principles developed last year and established a double-standard by creating different sets of regulation for internet service providers on the one hand and the rest of the internet ecosystem on the other,” US Telecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said in a statement last week.

But a coalition of consumer and privacy groups have argued that internet providers occupy a powerful position in people&039;s internet use. Groups including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Free Press say that the rules are a crucial protection in the digital age.

“We are one step closer to a world where ISPs can snoop on our traffic, sell our private information to the highest bidder, and pre-install spyware on our mobile phones,” Jeremy Gillula, a senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News.

Unlike social media companies, and other kinds of advertisers and web trackers, broadband providers can monitor all unencrypted internet traffic. Democratic lawmakers have also pointed out that many Americans only have a single internet provider serving their community, leaving them no choice but to accept whatever data collection practices are in place if they want internet service.

3 Invasive Things Your ISP Could Do If the Privacy Rules Are Repealed

1. Selling Your Browsing History

“The consequences of repeal are simple: ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, and Charter will be free to sell your personal information to the highest bidder without your permission — and no one will be able to protect you,” wrote Gigi Sohn, counselor to former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, in an op-ed at the Verge Monday.

While Americans can use free browser tools to block many types of web tracking, monitoring by internet providers is much harder to prevent. “Your ISP is in a privileged position, where they can see everything,” said Gillula, who has written about the “creepy” data collection that ISPs can conduct if the regulations are gutted.

“Any attempt to block the ISP from monitoring you, they have the power to override,” Ernesto Falcon legislative counsel at EFF, told BuzzFeed News.

2. Compiling Internet Profiles And Injecting Targeted Ads

“There are major medical, financial, and legal websites — like the US Courts, for example — that are largely unencrypted. ISPs will be able to build detailed profiles of their customers — knowing when they&039;re at vulnerable points in their lives — and sell that information to practically whomever they wish,” Gaurav Laroia, policy counsel at Free Press, told BuzzFeed News. If someone is visiting a medical website, for instance, third parties can infer what illnesses they may suffer from, revealing sensitive health information.

“It&039;s well-established that these internet companies are looking hungrily at companies like Facebook and Google; they want in on that advertising action,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU, told BuzzFeed News. “This is an effort by them to preserve the ability to monetize people&039;s information. And without these rules, they are going to plow forward.”

3. Deploying Hidden Tracking Cookies On Our Phones

Following a 15-month investigation, the FCC settled with Verizon Wireless last year over the company&039;s use of so called “supercookies” — tracking code that could not be deleted, which Verizon used to monitor customers&039; online activity without their permission.

“It didn’t matter if you were browsing in Incognito or Private Browsing mode, using a tracker-blocker, or had enabled Do-Not-Track: Verizon ignored all this and inserted a unique identifier into all your unencrypted outbound traffic anyway,” the EFF&039;s Gillula wrote. The browsing history, according to the FCC, was collected for several years without consent; Verizon and other third party companies used it for targeted advertising.

For privacy advocates, pervasive data collection of your internet activity can be enormously invasive. “The websites you visit can indicate information about your financial life, you sexual life, your medical life, what disease you have, what diseases you might be worried you have,” said Stanley.

“We don&039;t even know what other derivative uses exist, because no one has ever had this type of information on consumers,” Falcon said, referring to new types of data collection and novel forms of the sale of personal data. “That&039;s what&039;s most frightening.”

Quelle: <a href="Congress Votes To Gut Internet Privacy Rules“>BuzzFeed

Pro-Trump Media Has A New Obsession: The White House Briefing Room

Lee Stranahan / Via youtube.com

Following Trump administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer&#039;s pledge to establish a White House press corps with voices “outside of Washington”, a number of unabashedly Trump-friendly news outlets have made the pilgrimage to the west wing briefing room — the symbolic heart of the establishment. Their goal: to bring their anti-elite, pro-Trump, and occasionally trollish brand of coverage to the White House.

For some of these self-described “real news” outlets and personalities, landing a seat in the White House briefing room is vindication of their often sensational and semi-factual 2016 presidential campaign stories which some believe undermined the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and helped propel Trump to the Oval Office. For others, it’s a chance to ask questions the mainstream media won’t touch. And for many, there’s a singular benefit worth the trip to Washington alone: the exposure that comes from seeing and being seen on the highest rated show on daytime TV.

“The briefing room has become a piece of pop culture for this generation and the people who followed the election every day on TV and are now glued to the day-to-day,” one newer White House correspondent told BuzzFeed News. For the reporter, being in the room brings with it the intoxicating proposition of asking a question that could set news cycle for the day — or the week. “And so it&039;s definitely an opportunity for far-right, crazy blogosphere types to make a name for themselves. It’s that way for anyone new but definitely true for the far-right guys. Everyone’s watching.”

“It&039;s definitely an opportunity for far-right, crazy blogosphere types to make a name for themselves.”

For Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich of the far-right blog Gateway Pundit, a short time in the briefing room has generated enormous returns. Hoft, Gateway Pundit’s founder, announced Wintrich’s White House correspondent position at ‘The Deploraball’ the night before Trump was sworn in as president. Since then, the 28- year old Wintrich has been the focus of dozens of articles (one by this writer), the star of a documentary film, and last week, the subject of a lengthy New Yorker profile. Earlier this month, he was the alleged victim of an altercation inside the briefing room involving Fox Radio’s John Decker, who, according to Wintrich and a few observers, openly chastised Gateway Pundit as a racist, xenophobic outlet. The incident — the details of which are disputed by both parties — was partially witnessed and tweeted by the well-followed members of the White House press corps, written up in a variety of publications, and outrage-shared across the pro-Trump internet, casting Wintrich among the far-right as the heroically aggrieved party, just trying to do his job.

But Wintrich has yet to ask a question of Spicer. Instead, he’s opted to “feel out the room” and “learn the protocols” before jumping in. “If you see pictures of me on Twitter in the briefing room. I’m literally squeezed in the corner taking notes,” he told BuzzFeed News.

The daily briefing spectacle has caught the eye of non-Washington types like New Right blogger and Twitter personality, Mike Cernovich, who lives in California. “It&039;s so good for your brand to be in the room now because it still seems like this prestigious place,” he told BuzzFeed News. “That&039;s why the press corps is losing it — White House access is a major status thing and now it feels like everyone&039;s able to do it.”.

While Spicer’s briefings may appear more open to the media’s fringes, the truth is, the briefing has never been overly exclusive. Day passes for a trip to the press room require little more effort than submitting some personal information to the White House (caveat: full-time “hard passes” are much harder to obtain). Cernovich said he has tentative plans to try and drop by a briefing sometime in April. Last week on Twitter he asked his followers, “should I get a White House pass?” (again, it doesn’t quite work that way, but the sentiment suggests he wants to show up). Responses ranged from “Light eradicates darkness. DO IT&#033;” to “I think we should revoke CNN&039;s and give it to you.”

The conspiracy and pro-Trump news site Infowars has deftly injected itself into the Beltway news cycle multiple times without even stepping into the briefing room. In February, Infowars’ founder Alex Jones posted a video falsely claiming he’d secured White House press credentials from the Trump administration. Jones subsequently walked back that claim, explaining he’d simply taken initial steps to secure credentials. Then, in late January, Jones hired former World Net Daily writer and fellow conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi to head up an Infowars Washington bureau. In early February, Corsi tweeted that the White House had told him it “didn’t think there would be any problem in Infowars and Alex Jones and me getting press credentials.”

Two weeks ago, Lauren Southern, a controversial far-right Canadian media personality, made her way to DC to attend a White House briefing, where she tweeted a selfie with the caption, “Independent media takeover.” The tweet ricocheted around the internet; for pro-Trumpers it was another win for the unsung voices of “new media.” Southern — known for her previous denunciations of both rape culture and popular feminism— showing up in the briefing room registered to some as alarming breach. A few hours after posting the selfie, Media Matters ran a story with the headline, “Meet Lauren Southern, The Latest “Alt-Right” Media Troll To Gain Access To The White House Press Briefing.” The story called Southern “just the latest of the fringe, sycophantic “alt-right” media personalities that the White House is letting into its press briefings.”

Southern said she decided to show up in the room after Wintrich’s confrontation. “I heard there was hostility towards new media in the briefing room and wanted to see the experience for myself,” she told BuzzFeed News, adding that she intends to return “in order to ask questions the MSM won&039;t touch.”

The new prestige of the White House briefing room reverses decades of decline. For years the role of White House correspondent had gradually shifted from being central in journalism to one that many reporters dreaded as being captive to unresponsive, low level aides while big stories broke across the internet and elsewhere. As such, tensions over briefing room access have flared in the early weeks of Trump’s presidency. A number of reporters for mainstream outlets have voiced public concerns on Twitter over Spicer and President Trump’s penchant for calling on conservative media outlets during press conferences.

This month, after a reporter for the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal served as the press pool reporter for a Vice Presidential event, the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi questioned partisanship’s role in the White House press corps in an article headlined, “What’s a legitimate news outlet? A new face in the White House press pool raises questions.” And in a recent New Yorker article, White House correspondents and camera crew from legacy news outlets were quoted sniping at the new publications that have popped up in the briefing room. In one instance a radio correspondent was overheard bemoaning that, “at best, they don’t know what they’re doing…at worst, you wonder whether someone is actually feeding them softball questions.”

The prickly reception given to White House briefing room newcomers isn’t exactly unprecedented. At his first press conference in 2009, President Obama’s decision to call on The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein prompted a mini news cycle of its own. In 2009, Time Magazine described Obama’s decision as such: “the whole White House media shop, has crossed a Rubicon of sorts, acknowledging the equivalent legitimacy of an unapologetically unobjective media outlet, which lives nowhere but the Internet and which didn&039;t even exist four years ago”

At the time, New York Times White House reporter, Peter Baker called the decision to add partisan-leaning blogs to the press corps “troubling,” arguing that “We’re blurring the line between news and punditry even further and opening ourselves to legitimate questions among readers about where the White House press corps gets its information.” It’s a position Baker still appears to hold today; this month he told the told The Daily Signal that the issue has only grown murkier. “It becomes harder to draw lines now and say this organization is acceptable and this one is not,” he wrote.

Multiple self-professed members of pro-Trump outlets told BuzzFeed News their welcome to the room by more established outlets was less than friendly — “there’s a palpable tension there,” Wintrich told BuzzFeed News. While two other White House correspondents said allegations of a freeze-out were “overblown.” The discrepancy likely results from the spectrum of conservative outlets and reporters in the Trump press room. While some, like Wintrich and Gateway Pundit delight in trolling, plenty of reporters from right-leaning new media outlets try to play it straight and push the administration on claims like wiretapping and Russian interference in the election. “Plenty of those guys come from conservative outlets but still show up everyday ready to do the hard work like everyone else,” one White House correspondent said.

“They&039;re playing right into our fucking hands — it&039;s ridiculous.”

Regardless, the perceived tension and occasional hand-wringing from mainstream media is having the — perhaps unintended — consequence of elevating the profiles of the new faces in the room. The trolls, in essence, have been fed.

“They&039;re playing right into our fucking hands — it&039;s ridiculous,” Wintrich said describing the reaction to the briefing room altercation a few weeks ago. “So many members of conservative media after this happened reached out all supportive and told me how unfair the situation was. That&039;s street cred for me.” For Southern, the reaction from places like Media Matters is what will keep her coming back to the press room. “I literally just stood there and this was their reaction? I look forward to seeing the collective meltdown when I actually get a question in,” she said.

“I think members of the media are doing a disservice to themselves by putting so much attention on people who don&039;t report each day from the White House and use the briefing to bring attention to themselves,” one White House reporter said. “The Gateway Pundit situation was an ordeal and all but at the end of the day I don&039;t know I’ve ever read anything by [Wintrich]. So why not just ignore it?” In Southern’s case, Cernovich agrees. “They&039;re so triggered by the presence of people like Wintrich that they made him into an overnight sensation. He got the mainstream media to troll themselves.”

Quelle: <a href="Pro-Trump Media Has A New Obsession: The White House Briefing Room“>BuzzFeed

Uber's Leadership Is 78% Male, According To Its New Diversity Report

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Uber&#039;s leadership is 78% male and 22% female, according to a new diversity report released by the company today.

The report — Uber&039;s first-ever — comes about a month after Uber launched an internal investigation into sexism allegations, after a female former engineer posted a viral account alleging systemic sexism and sexual harassment at the company.

According to the report, tech leadership — those with director-level positions or higher — is 88.7% male and 11.3% female.

Overall, Uber is 63.9% male and 36.1% female, as of March 2017.

Uber

For comparison, Twitter&039;s latest diversity report said the company was 37% female as of December 2016.

But in tech roles, the gap widens to 84.6% male and 15.4% female.

Uber

In non-tech roles, staff is 44.4% female and 55.6% male.

The report also covered race. Uber&039;s U.S. workforce is 49.8% white, 30.9% Asian, 8.8% black, 5.6% Hispanic, 4.3% mixed race and 0.6% “other.”

Uber

Bloomberg reported last week that Uber’s own recruiters were denied access to its diversity data, stymying their efforts to hire more women and people of color.

US leadership overall is 76.7% white, 20.2% Asian, 2.3% black and 0.8% Hispanic. Uber said it has no black or Hispanic people in tech leadership roles.

Tech leadership in the US is 75% white and 25% Asian.

In January, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson wrote a letter to Uber asking the company to release diversity data on the heels of its hiring of Bernard Coleman III as head of diversity and inclusion.

Liane Hornsey, Uber&039;s chief human resources officer, said in a conference call with reporters last week that the company plans to hold new training sessions called “Why Diversity Matters,” “How to be an Ally,” and “Building Inclusive Teams.”

“This report is a first step in showing that diversity and inclusion is a priority at Uber,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement provided by a spokesperson.

In Uber&039;s first companywide meeting on Feb. 21 after sexism allegations became public, Kalanick apologized for leading the company up to that point and promised staff Uber would “do better.” Two days later, women of Uber urged Kalanick to begin “listening to your own people,” and start “admitting to ourselves as a company that we have a systemic problem,” according to leaked audio obtained by BuzzFeed. On Friday, The Information reported that Kalanick and a team of five Uber employees visited an escort bar during a work trip to Seoul in mid-2014, leading to an HR complaint from a female employee who felt uncomfortable.

Quelle: <a href="Uber&039;s Leadership Is 78% Male, According To Its New Diversity Report“>BuzzFeed

The Facebook App Now Has Camera, Direct, And Stories, Three Features That Copy Snapchat

From left to right: Facebook Camera, Direct, and Stories.

Facebook

Facebook will start globally rolling out three features today on iOS and Android that strongly resemble Snapchat. They&#039;re called Camera, Direct, and Stories.

Facebook Direct — disappearing photos and videos with options to add text and filters — mimics the individual Snaps people send to each other. Facebook Stories copies Snapchat Stories, even in name — they&039;re ephemeral photos and videos that appear as a circle at the top of your news feed for 24 hours. Comments on a Story and images and videos on Direct will disappear whenever the content they&039;re responding to does. To take photos and videos for Direct or Stories, you have to launch Facebook Camera.

The company said it has been testing these features since August and that it began developing them in response to people sharing more photos and videos on Facebook. In its Q4 2016 earnings call, Facebook boasted that 1.15 billion users access the social network only on its mobile app every month, though it didn&039;t specify what percentage of total users that number accounted for.

Facebook&039;s algorithm will rank your friends&039; stories based on its determination of “how close you are with them,” Facebook product manager Connor Hayes told BuzzFeed News.

Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, but Snap founder Evan Spiegel turned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg down. Snap made its initial public offering in late February 2017 at a valuation of $34 billion.

In a briefing, Hayes didn&039;t deny Snapchat&039;s influence on Facebook&039;s new features. Snapchat “had really pioneered Stories and did a great job uncovering the fact that [Stories] are a great way to communicate visually,” he said. “We see Stories as a format that will be consistent across social media for everyone to create and share visual content.” The company had previously denied that Snapchat affected its decision to create similar features.

Snapchat-esque features are now available in all of Facebook&039;s flagship apps: Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger, and now Facebook Camera, Direct, and Stories. Each app has a different use case, Facebook said, and you won&039;t be able to cross-post content among them. They&039;re also only available in app form, not on your desktop.

“While the story format within Messenger lends itself more to &039;who’s up for coffee?&039; and an ensuing thread, the story format in Facebook is more aligned with how people share photos and videos there already — though the content people share on Stories will be more lightweight,” Hayes said.

The social network has introduced a number of different filters within Camera, Direct, and Stories, including overlays for local holidays or slang. It&039;s also partnered with several film studios and artists to create filters in the mold of popular characters and artworks, like the Minions.

These filters aren&039;t sponsored, as some of Snapchat&039;s are, and brands won&039;t have access to the Facebook Stories feature for now. Stories also won&039;t show ads at launch, though they may later.

Quelle: <a href="The Facebook App Now Has Camera, Direct, And Stories, Three Features That Copy Snapchat“>BuzzFeed

This Chatbot Can Help Immigrants Who Work In Tech

In the film “For Here Or To Go,” Indian-born computer programmer Vivek Pandit&#039;s offer to join a startup is rescinded when the company discovers it would have to sponsor Pandit&039;s H-1B visa transfer.

Via trailers.apple.com

Visabot — a Facebook Messenger chatbot that guides immigrants through the visa application process — just added a capability that will make Silicon Valley very happy. Starting today, Visabot can help people navigate the labyrinthine process of transferring their H1-B work visa to a new employer.

Often, tech workers who are in the US on H-1B — or “skilled worker” visas — work for corporations like Google, Microsoft or Intel, which have giant legal teams that help with visas. But say a visa holder at one of those companies gets a job offer from a hip new startup — they can’t take the gig unless that startup is willing to sponsor their visa transfer, an expensive and complicated process. This state of affairs — which happens to be the plot of For Here Or To Go, a recently released film about Indian tech workers in Silicon Valley — leaves a lot of foreign-born computer programmers feeling trapped.

“When startups are hiring, they need [the job filled], like, tomorrow,” Visabot CEO Artem Goldman told BuzzFeed News. “The startup usually doesn’t care about all these visa issues. They don’t want to spend time and money on that — they can’t.”

For now, Visabot isn’t doing regular H-1B applications, only H-1B transfers, and the pros at Visabot’s partner law firms still check its work. But Goldman says regular H-1B applications will be available soon, though not by this year’s April 3 deadline.

Visabot — which already offers tourist visa extensions, artist visas, and help with DACA — works kind of like TurboTax: the algorithm walks applicants through the application process with a series of questions. First, you select which type of visa fits your needs, and then provide Visabot with information about you — where you live, went to school, where you work, etc.

Visabot then asks you to upload the necessary documents, and even sends notifications when deadlines creep up. “It’s going to be kind of like a lawyer, but better, because it’s a machine, so there’s no mistakes,” said Goldman. While some think it’s too risky, about half of the lawyers Goldman talks to say their jobs could be made a easier by artificial intelligence.

“We still can’t say that we will replace an immigration lawyer in the next five years, because there are so many complicated types of visas,” Goldman said. “But what we can do is save lots of their time. By doing this, they’re going to have more clients, and the clients are going to have lower prices.”

One early Visabot client, a twenty-year-old Romanian singer named Afina Madoian, confirmed that getting an O-1 artists visa through the bot was easier than it would have been to find a lawyer in Romania.

“A lot of companies take money and don’t do anything,” Madoian said. What she liked about Visabot is that she got a price upfront. She started gathering documents in September and, after a lawyer reviewed and submitted her application, got her approval in February; the whole process cost her $4,000. Madoian said while she would recommend using Visabot, she might not have been willing to entrust her US visa — something she’s wanted since childhood — to a robot if she hadn’t originally been put in touch with Goldman through a friend.

Since Visabot launched late last year, it’s processed more than 50,000 applications for various types of visas. Goldman acknowledged that the nationwide panic over immigration law induced by some of President Trump’s policies has been good for business. Whenever the president tweets about immigration, Goldman says Visabot sees a bump in traffic. “We joke to investors that Donald Trump is our head of PR,” said Goldman. But that attention isn’t always good.

“We have a lot of people from like Africa and Arab countries saying, ‘Guys, I need to have a Green Card please, how much is it going to cost?’ I’m feeling bad when I can’t help, but I can’t,” Goldman said. “It’s not about us improving or changing the immigration system. What we do is making the process of immigration — this bureaucratic, difficult and unclear process — as easy as it is with bots.”

Quelle: <a href="This Chatbot Can Help Immigrants Who Work In Tech“>BuzzFeed