This Trojan Horse App Sneaks Vital Info To Women In Iran

Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty Images

When Silicon Valley started building smartphone apps for women’s health a few years ago, venture capitalists and startup founders gravitated toward period-tracking. Hamdam, an app aimed at Iranian women, offers the same service. Except that Hamdam, which launched this weekend, uses period-tracking as a Trojan horse to give women in Iran access to information about contraception, STDs, rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Hamdam also provides legal language that women can use to strengthen their rights in a marriage contract, which are standard in Iran and typically favor the husband. Text inside the app covers rights around child custody and the ability to work, to continue education, or to seek a divorce.

Hamdam is the second app to be spun out of IranCubator, an app development program launched last year by United for Iran, a Berkeley-based nonprofit formed after the 2009 uprising in Iran. IranCubator was conceived as a way to leverage the Bay Area’s software expertise to promote civil rights — and take advantage of the explosion of smartphones in Iran — by running a global contest to build Android apps for social good. (Its first offering was RadiTo, a podcasting app that launched in February to help Iranians access banned foreign stations like the BBC and eventually create podcasts of their own.)

A screenshot from Hamdam asking the user whether she is experiencing any pain associated with her period.

Soudeh Rad, the French-Iranian gender equality activist who submitted the idea for Hamdam, told BuzzFeed News that she felt compelled to focus on sexual health because the topic can be so hard to broach. “We come out of Iran and we take all the taboos with us,” she explained, adding that the scant information available to women in Iran tends to be “biased, heteronormative, and male pleasure–centered.”

That restrictiveness led Rad to the idea of creating Hamdam as a Trojan horse: The app labels itself as a period tracker, and contains plenty of information about menstruation, but also covers topics to empower Iranian women and help them exercise their rights.

Hamdam’s creators say that every aspect of the app is tailored to the needs of Iranian users, from content to distribution to privacy. The app is launching on Android, the most widely used operating system Iran. But users don’t have to rely on Google's Play app store to find it. They can also download Hamdam on popular channels of Telegram, a messaging app that has roughly 20 million users inside Iran.

In an effort to circumvent potential censorship issues and low bandwidth connections that could slow Hamdam’s momentum, the app&039;s developers plan to release an Android application package (APK) so that the app can be downloaded by email, Reza Ghazinouri, a co-director of United for Iran, told BuzzFeed News.

A screenshot from Hamdam asking the user how light or heavy her period is.

Personal information fed into the app will only be stored on the user’s phone, with no communication between the client and server, Ghazinouri said. For all its apps, IranCubator also uses an independent firm in Berlin to run a full penetration test, which looks for vulnerabilities a hacker could exploit and then implements all the firm&039;s security recommendations. In Hamdam’s case, that included disabling screenshots. Rad just finished some beta testing with users in Iran last week. “As soon as they understood it was an app, in their mobile [devices], and not connected to a server, they kind of became super excited about it,” she said.

When developing the app&039;s content, the goal was to make Hamdam as accessible as possible. According to Rad, it&039;s the first period-tracking app in Iran that lets people use the Persian calendar. She also tried to avoid anything that might label the app sensitive content for users under 18. The information about self breast exams, for instance, includes detailed descriptions, but no pictures. That philosophy extended to the text as well: “The wording and language used in the app is not designed for only Tehrani upper- and middle-class women — it’s designed for everyone,” Ghazinouri told BuzzFeed News.

A screenshot from Hamdam asking the user how her general mood is.

Quelle: <a href="This Trojan Horse App Sneaks Vital Info To Women In Iran“>BuzzFeed

Twitter Suspends, Then Re-Instates White Supremacist David Duke

Today Twitter suspended and then re-instated the account of former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and senate candidate David Duke. For a period on Monday morning, Duke&#039;s account is inaccessible, displaying a message that the account has been taken offline. By 2:00 P.M. EST on Monday afternoon, the account was reinstated. Duke tweeted that he wasn&039;t sure why the account was taken down.

While its currently not clear which specific tweets brought about the suspension, Duke is well known on Twitter for his White Nationalist and political rhetoric. In the run up to and after the 2016 election, Duke has been a vocal proponent of Donald Trump and a number of his domestic policies.

Duke also mixes it up, picking fights with politicians, liberals, and celebrities. Last month, Duke got in a prolonged Twitter fight with actor Chris Evans, who plays Captain America. “Why does Chris Evans, who plays the Jewish inspired super hero, Captain America, hate the women of his people so much? WhiteGenocide,” Duke tweeted at the actor.

Most recently, Duke was tweeting about this weekend&039;s dueling Trump and anti-Trump protests in places like Berkeley, California, causing some to wonder on Twitter if Duke was inciting pro-Trump supporters toward violence.

Duke&039;s brief suspension comes at a time when Twitter is making a concerted, public effort to crack down on its abuse problem. Since January, the company has rolled out better spam filters and algorithmic tools to de-prioritize egg accounts and comments from trolls. The company also started relying on algorithms last week to police accounts for violating rules. It&039;s unclear whether the suspension was the result of any new algorithmic abuse prevention practices. Twitter has yet to respond to a request for comment.

White nationalist, Richard Spencer, (who was banned from Twitter recently on a technicality and later reinstated) tweeted and suggested that those angered by Duke&039;s suspension should join a crowdsourced lawsuit to sue Twitter for discrimination.

For Duke&039;s part, he appears hopeful that the (potentially mistaken) suspension and re-instatement will help him get a verified Twitter account.

Quelle: <a href="Twitter Suspends, Then Re-Instates White Supremacist David Duke“>BuzzFeed

An Anti-Immigration Website Posted A Video Of Indian Families Hanging Out In A Park

Via saveamericanitjobs.org

In the aftermath of the deadly Kansas shooting of Indian-born engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an immigration reform advocacy website that features photos and a video of Indian families relaxing in suburban Columbus, Ohio has Indian immigrant communities across the country worried, with some unwilling to travel outside the towns where they live.

The site, SaveAmericanITJobs.org, argues that immigrants in the US on work visas are a threat to US tech jobs. Created and maintained by a 66-year old computer programmer from Virginia named Steve Pushor, it has been circulating on Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook and email all week.

“What we&#039;re trying to point out is people in Ohio, IT workers and other professional people, have lost their jobs to foreign guest workers. That&039;s what our point is,” Pushor told BuzzFeed News. Pushor, who said saw a spike in web traffic after Kuchibhotla’s shooting, says he doesn’t want Indians currently living in the United States to leave the country, and doesn’t advocate violence.

Bhavin Bavalia, an American-born IT professional and the son of Indian immigrants, said he first came across the site when a friend shared it on Facebook “It’s very scary for me knowing that I have a lot of family in these small Indian communities,” he said. “To think that there could be some weirdo filming my cousin’s kids as they’re playing at the park, and possibly fomenting resentment towards them, is just disturbing.”

The content on SaveAmericanIt.org ranges from a post on the “real life story of a highly skilled IT professional and his ordeal of job loss at Pacific Gas and Electric Company by an H-1B from India” to criticism of “Indian companies” and an “Indian IT mafia” that “have ignored or shoved aside American IT professionals for years.” But it’s a PDF entitled “Ohio – A Journey To Indian Park” and an accompanying video that the Indian tech workers with whom BuzzFeed News spoke found most troubling.

In the video, Pushor’s camera pans over people playing volleyball and children riding bikes, he narrates what he sees: “The number of people from foreign countries blows my mind out here. You see this whole area is all Indian, amazing. It&039;s an amazing number of jobs have been taken away from Americans. The Indian crowd has ravished the Midwest. It&039;s crazy.”

“This is spooking people.”

Pushor initially posted this video and the accompanying document — which decries India as a “hell hole” and mourns the loss of “Normal Rockwell white people” in the US — in August, when it generated some early discussion on Facebook, Reddit and Youtube. It’s surfaced again in recent days, shared in private networks and on social media among Indian immigrants and their families. Kaplesh Kapadia, the Indian-born CEO of a California startup called SelfScore, said Pushor’s website was the subject of discussion this week in at least five different Whatsapp groups.

“This is spooking people, combined with the Kansas murder,” he told BuzzFeed News.

Pramod Buravalli, the India-born CEO of a Houston IT firm, hosts a weekly podcast on Indian-American issues; he says his listeners have been asking whether their families are safe in the US, or whether they should go back to India. “They think maybe going to local bars is a no-no,” Buravalli said.

Many people, including New York-based Indian-American startup founder Anil Dash, said watching Pushor’s video in light of the Kansas shooting made them worried for safety of their children. “He’s like following people who are just at a playground in their neighborhood, and their kids are there. I’m a dad. I have a kid. We play in public playgrounds,” Dash said. “This idea that someone&039;s going to surveil you and creepily videotape your family is kind of terrifying.”

An Indian-born engineer who lives in Texas, and asked to remain anonymous out of concern that he or his family would be targeted, sounded a similar note of concern. “I have a 5 month old, and I definitely would not go around new places with him,” he said. “We were talking among friends that we shouldn&039;t probably travel outside Austin unless we really need to.”

Pushor described the tone of his posts about Ohio as “satire” and pointed to other documents on the site, including an interview with an anonymous Indian tech worker living in California . “To say our video and our document… is going to make such an impact on their lives is a big stretch.”

“This idea that someone&039;s going to creepily videotape your family is kind of terrifying.”

On his website, Pushor lists three organizations — The IEEE-USA, NumbersUSA and Protecting US Workers — as “other advocates” in the immigration space. Reached for comment by BuzzFeed News, all three of those organizations said they were unfamiliar with Pushor, and declined to endorse his site.

Russell Harrison is a spokesperson for the IEEE, an engineering tech trade group that he described as “pro-immigrant,” but in favor of reforming the work visa program. “They’re going further than they should probably go,” Harrison said of Pushor’s site.. “We don’t believe the individuals trapped on the H-1B are doing anything wrong.”

Harrison said he saw a spike in public concern about work visa fraud following allegations that Disney had fired American workers and replaced them with lower-paid immigrants. It was around the same time that Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, called the skilled visa program “very, very bad for workers” and said we “shouldn’t have it.”

Tech companies, many of which rely heavily on the labor of high-skilled immigrants, came out definitively in opposition to President Trump&039;s early attempts to restrict immigration.

Indian immigrants in tech were therefore understandably anxious about Trump. The president has since backtracked on work visas; he’s yet to sign an executive order aimed at throttling the skilled visa program, and he met with Indian business leaders in DC earlier this week. But his failure to immediately speak out against Kuchibhotla’s killing raised the ire of the Indian immigrant community.

While Trump condemned Kuchibhotla’s murder in his Tuesday speech to congress, his five day delay in addressing it frustrated some in the US Indian community. “It felt like too little, far too late,” remarked Dash, who said he&039;s concerned by the Trump administration&039;s failure to address hate crimes head on. Of particular concern to him, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon’s 2015 comments that seemed to suggest a proliferation of Asian tech CEOs in Silicon Valley is in opposition to a “civic society.”

“I am 100 percent convinced we’ll see more incidents,” Dash said, referring to the Kansas shooting. “The thing I’m hearing from folks across the country is, it’s a much more hostile environment than even after 9/11.”

Kapadia, who has lived in the US for past 18 years, echoed that sentiment, saying xenophobia wasn&039;t much of a concern for him until recently. He&039;s unsettled by some of the aggressive rhetoric around immigration. He hopes Trump will take a consistent and firm stand against the kind of hate that claimed Kuchibhotla&039;s life and fears that if he doesn&039;t more incidents could follow.

“As the leader of the country, you say things, and people take it to the extreme,” Kapadia said. “… People feel that they have the freedom to discriminate.”

Quelle: <a href="An Anti-Immigration Website Posted A Video Of Indian Families Hanging Out In A Park“>BuzzFeed