Silicon Valley Engineers Pledge To Never Build A Muslim Registry

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

A group of nearly 60 employees at major tech companies have signed a pledge refusing to help build a Muslim registry. The pledge states that signatories will advocate within their companies to minimize collection and retention of data that could enable ethnic or religious targeting under the Trump administration, to fight any unethical or illegal misuse of data, and to resign from their positions rather than comply.

The group describes themselves as “engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people.”

Silicon Valley tech companies themselves have, for the most part, stayed silent or declined to comment when asked about similar commitments to upholding civil rights. The pledge, which is posted at Neveragain.tech, comes a day before top executives at major tech companies plan to attend a summit hosted at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Recode reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Google CEO Larry Page, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and perhaps Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accepted an invitation to the summit from President-Elect Donald Trump.

Ka-Ping Yee, a software engineer at Wave, formerly of Google, and Leigh Honeywell, a security engineering manager at Slack, helped organize the Never Again pledge. Yee told BuzzFeed News that he didn't know why tech companies have not made similar commitments. “What&039;s important to me is that individuals who care about the ethical use of technology can step forward, show how many of us there are, and say that there are lines we will not cross,” said Yee.

Last month, after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was “pretty crazy” to think that fake news could have affected the presidential election, a group of renegade Facebook employees formed an unofficial task force to investigate Facebook&039;s role in promoting propaganda.

“Ultimately, it&039;s individuals who make decisions and do the work, and can take personal responsibility for their choices; if enough individuals refuse to participate, unethical projects can&039;t proceed,” Yee added.

The pledge says:

We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others …

Honeywell said that the idea for a pledge came out of “informal discussions among techie friends.” Roughly 30 people collaborated on the text. “We reached out to some civil society groups for feedback – we didn’t want it to be written in a vacuum,” she said. The organizers then looked within their existing networks to enlist others.

Right now within tech companies “there’s a lot of conversation happening about what people’s ethical lines are,” Honeywell told BuzzFeed. “I think that’s really important. We don’t know what’s ahead, but we can at least lay down some ethical boundaries for our own behavior, and hopefully encourage others to do the same.”

As part of the pledge, the signatories have committed to the following actions:

• We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.

• We will advocate within our organizations:

• • to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting.

  • to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data.

  • to responsibly destroy high-risk datasets and backups.

  • to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible.

  • to demand appropriate legal process should the government request that we turn over user data collected by our organization, even in small amounts.

• If we discover misuse of data that we consider illegal or unethical in our organizations:

• • We will work with our colleagues and leaders to correct it.

  • If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users.

  • If we have the authority to do so, we will use all available legal defenses to stop these practices.

  • If we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply.

• We will raise awareness and ask critical questions about the responsible and fair use of data and algorithms beyond our organization and our industry.”

Quelle: <a href="Silicon Valley Engineers Pledge To Never Build A Muslim Registry“>BuzzFeed

Apple's Airpods Now Available For Pre-Order After Unusual Delay

Looks like Apple&#039;s new Airpods will arrive in time for the winter holiday shopping binge after all. On Tuesday morning that the wireless earbuds became available for purchase online with a ship date of Wed Dec 21.

Apple introduced AirPods in September alongside the headphone jack-less iPhone 7, touting them as a technically superior alternative to wired earbuds. Packed with a custom-designed Apple chip, accelerometers, optical sensors, beam-forming microphones, and antennas, Airpods are diminutive in-ear computers and a big part of Apple&039;s vision for the future of audio. “These are as advanced a project as Apple Pencil,” Apple SVP Phil Schiller told BuzzFeed News back in September. “We started this project when we started the Watch project. We knew we needed a great wireless solution for audio. We said, ‘What if you could design what the future of headphones should look like?’ That’s what we asked the team to do.”

When it announced Airpods in September, Apple said the $159 headphones would begin shipping in October. But on October 26, with the month nearly concluded, the company said it was delaying their retail availability. “We don’t believe in shipping a product before it’s ready,” an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “We need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers.” Apple did not provide an explanation for the postponement, its first big delay of a new product since the white iPhone 4 in 2010.

Asked to explain the issue behind Airpods&039; delay, Apple declined comment. But a person familiar with the product&039;s development said it required additional “fine-tuning” related to sound performance and battery life.

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

Quelle: <a href="Apple&039;s Airpods Now Available For Pre-Order After Unusual Delay“>BuzzFeed

Twitter Re-Instates White Nationalist Leader, Richard Spencer

On Saturday evening, Twitter re-instated the account of Richard Spencer, a leading figure of the so-called alt-right movement and the head of the white nationalist think tank, The National Policy Institute.

Spencer&#039;s account was suspended mid-November as part of a larger cull of prominent alt-right accounts, including Ricky Vaughn (who was previously banned after a BuzzFeed News story detailing his campaign to disenfranchise voters with false information), former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickenson, and John Rivers. Twitter did not comment on as to the reason for the ban, leading many to believe that the justification was for any number of violations of Twitter&039;s rules for targeted harassment, incitement, and hate speech.

However, according to Twitter, Spencer&039;s ban was due to a technicality: creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. Twitter&039;s multiple account policy was put in place as a safeguard to help curb dog piling and targeted harassment. An email provided to BuzzFeed News shows that Twitter suspended Spencer for overlapping accounts and would re-instate one of Spencer&039;s accounts if he followed Twitter&039;s protocols.

Hello,

As referenced in our November 18, 2016 communication, creating serial and/or multiple accounts with overlapping use is a violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules).

Please select one account for restoration; the others will remain suspended. This account will need to comply fully with the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Please reply to this email with the username of the account you would like reinstated and we will make sure to answer your request in a timely manner.

Thanks,

Twitter

“Our rules explicitly prohibit creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. When we temporarily suspend multiple accounts for this violation, the account owner can designate one account for reinstatement, ” a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “Twitter Rules also prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, and violent threats. We will take action on accounts that violate these policies.”

In a posted tweet a few minutes after his re-instatement, Spencer claimed he&039;d Twitter lobbied to get the account back. “I worked on getting my personal reinstated first. Next will be Radix, NPI, _AltRight_, and WSP,” he said referring to the accounts of his White Nationalist think tank, journal, and publishing platform. Twitter&039;s rules would suggest that Spencer will not be able to re-instate these other accounts without violating Twitter&039;s rules once again. Spencer did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News&039; request for comment.

The re-instatement of Spencer&039;s account comes at a difficult policy moment for Twitter, which is grappling with its role in policing its platform in a post-Trump world. Spencer&039;s ban in November angered free speech advocates and even political observers. After the ban, David Frum wrote of the seemingly arbitrary policing of Spencer&039;s account in The Atlantic noting, “In the case of Richard Spencer, however, there is no evidence of harassment or incitement to harass. The same can be said of most (although not all) of the other accounts suspended on November 15. These suspensions seem motivated entirely by viewpoint, not by behavior.”

Twitter&039;s enforcement with regard to the behavior of many members of the far right has been particularly opaque and inconsistent since the company decided to permanently suspend noted troll and Breitbart writer, Milo Yiannopoulos this summer. Twitter suggested the decision to suspend stemmed from Yiannopoulos using his account to incite his followers to harass targets and that the ban was the result of actions and not speech (a justification seemingly attributed to Spencer&039;s ban).

Just this week, the company came under pressure to address the actions of Donald Trump, after the President-elect&039;s tweets lashing out against Indiana union leader Chuck Jones prompted Jones to receive threatening phone calls. As BuzzFeed News wrote last week, Trump&039;s tweets raised “questions about whether such behavior might run afoul of Twitter’s gauzy rules for conduct and its prohibitions against harassment and incitement.” Twitter declined to comment as to whether Trump&039;s tweets were in violation of Twitter&039;s rules. However, public scrutiny and Trump’s use of platform might be causing unease. At a Recode event last week, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey was asked what Twitter thought about the President-elect’s use of the service. Dorsey’s response: “complicated.”

Though Spencer&039;s ban has been reversed, Spencer is now tip-toeing Twitter&039;s three strike policy, which carries a permanent suspension. A few hours after his re-instatement, Spencer appears to be back to form:

Quelle: <a href="Twitter Re-Instates White Nationalist Leader, Richard Spencer“>BuzzFeed

Doxxing May Become A Federal Crime

Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark wants to make “doxxing” a federal crime.

Doxxing, the malicious online publication of a person&#039;s sensitive information, caught the public&039;s attention this summer after a high-profile attack on SNL actress Leslie Jones. Hackers breached Jones&039; website, posting nude photos of her, as well as pictures of her driver&039;s license and passport. The hack, which seemed motivated at least in part by racism and misogyny, prompted an investigation by the Department of Homeland security, although no culprit has yet been announced.

By proposing a new law, Clark told BuzzFeed News she&039;s trying to ensure that citizens are protected from a growing number of cybercrimes. Her bill would create a federal prohibition on doxxing, which she defines as “specific criminal intent to place another person in fear of death or serious bodily injury by knowingly publishing their personally identifiable information.”

Convicted offenders of the Interstate Doxxing Prevention Act would face fines and up to five years in prison. They could also face civil lawsuits.

The bill is part of Clark&039;s larger effort to grapple with severe harassment that often begins on screens but follows victims offline and everywhere else. A proposal to curb the spread of non-consensual pornography, so-called “revenge porn,” also counts Clark as a co-sponsor. Victims of web-enabled abuse are sometimes forced to take drastic actions to protect themselves, including fleeing their homes or hiring dedicated security.

Clark has also emphasized the economic hardship that victims face — amid severe online threats, targets are often forced to forgo work opportunities to stay out of harm&039;s way.

When a new Congress meets next year, Clarke will reintroduce a bundle of proposed laws to curb many types of online abuse that would provide law enforcement with the resources and urgency to prosecute this evolving form of cybercrime. The package will include the doxxing bill and another that criminalizes “swatting,” which is when hackers trick heavily armed emergency responders into showing up at a target&039;s location.

Clark herself was the victim of a swatting attempt earlier this year.

After an anonymous caller warned police of an “active shooter” at Clark’s home address, officers were dispatched to her residence, swarming the front of her house, some with rifles, she said at the time. A spokesperson for the Melrose, Massachusetts Police Department told BuzzFeed News that the anonymous tipster was attempting to elicit a police response. By manipulating law enforcement, swatting is intended to intimidate victims, damage property, and provoke bodily harm. According to the FBI, more than 400 swatting cases occur each year.

The types of sensitive information protected by the doxxing bill include: home addresses, social security numberers, bank account passwords, and cellphone numbers.

“We have seen a growing trend of using personal information and releasing it on the internet, often with a literal call to arms, to say, &039;This is where people live if you wanted to harass them, injure them, even [call for] death threats against them,&039;” Clark said. “It is an extreme form of intimidation that takes the threats right out of the virtual world and into our neighborhoods and into people&039;s private homes.”

“We are trying to address [this type of behavior], step up enforcement of the laws that are already on the books, and make sure, as cybercrime changes, that we are being flexible and changing to meet those security needs.”

Quelle: <a href="Doxxing May Become A Federal Crime“>BuzzFeed

If You Still Have A Galaxy Note7, Samsung’s New Update Will Make It Unusable

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Samsung will start releasing a global software update on December 19 for its recalled Galaxy Note7 smartphone that will prevent the phone from charging, making phone calls, and sending text messages.

Samsung said in a statement that customers have returned 93% of the recalled phones. It aims to bring that to 100% with this software update, which will effectively render the phones useless.

But in a twist, Verizon will block the software update for its customers with Note7s. Jeffrey Nelson, Verizon&#039;s VP of global corporate communications, said in a statement that the cell service carrier wants to protect customers who may not have another device to immediately switch to, who may find themselves in emergency situations, or who may be traveling for the winter holidays. The company encourages Note7 owners to exchange their phones as soon as possible.

Verizon has so far complied with Samsung&039;s recall efforts, Nelson&039;s statement said. The majority of Verizon customers have already replaced their Note7s with other Samsung models, according to the statement, though it did not give exact numbers.

When asked whether the update will affect the relationship between Verizon and Samsung, a Verizon spokesperson said, “Samsung is a great partner, and we love working with them. This is just a situation where we don&039;t agree on this one thing.”

Samsung released the Galaxy Note7 in August 2016, but soon after the release, dozens of customers reported their phones were overheating and exploding. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled the phone in September 2016, and Samsung began issuing its customers replacements.

Those replacements, however, were also prone to the same problems as the original Note7 phones. Notably, one grounded a Southwest Airlines flight in the US, which prompted all airlines in the country to ban the phone from any flight, going so far as to say they would confiscate the phone from passengers. Samsung responded by setting up return kiosks in major American airports.

Note7 owners can exchange their phones for another Samsung phone or a refund by visiting Samsung&039;s recall site.

Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sprint said in a press release that it will push the update to customers’ Note7 phones on January 8, 2017. T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment but said it would have a response soon. BuzzFeed News is waiting to hear back from AT&T about their plans for the update.

Quelle: <a href="If You Still Have A Galaxy Note7, Samsung’s New Update Will Make It Unusable“>BuzzFeed

Twitter Rolls Back Update After Mass Uproar

The people have won.

Twitter caused an uproar Thursday when it broadly rolled out a test where @names would be stripped from the start of replies in the Notifications tab and wouldn&#039;t be counted towards the character count in replies, with a limit of 50 @names. Well, oops, that was a mistake.

Twitter announced the changes in May and had been testing them since. But the broad iOS rollout apparently happened a bit ahead of schedule. Naturally, when seeing the changes, people on Twitter began to vent, turning the timeline into a rolling feed of complaints.

Multiple Twitter users are now reporting that the update is gone for them. But it may not be gone forever. Twitter is still testing the update with a small group.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized in a tweet for “confusion.”

Reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed BuzzFeed News to the tweet above and declined further comment.

Quelle: <a href="Twitter Rolls Back Update After Mass Uproar“>BuzzFeed

NFL Punters Are Finally Cool, Thanks To Twitter

NFL punters, those guys who kick the ball as far as possible when their teams fail to score, haven’t always been the most respected players on the field. Football is a physical game, and punters stay as far away from contact as possible — it’s even a penalty to run into them after they kick. But while this contrast has long made punters the butt of jokes, something revolutionary is happening in the NFL this year: these erstwhile whimps are finally are becoming cool.

Punters are dancing, celebrating with swagger, and winning over legions of fans in the NFL in 2016. And if you want to understand why, just look at their Twitter accounts. Not long ago, punters were seen and not heard (with some exceptions). They&#039;d rarely take the media podium after the game, and would make headlines most often when they blew it. But these players have become masterful users of Twitter, finally giving themselves a voice to push back against the insults and celebrate their achievements. Combine that with Twitter’s video push, which has helped circulate punter highlights that TV broadcasts would never show, and the punter’s image is changing dramatically.

The two punters leading this charge are the Oakland Raiders’ Marquette King and Indianapolis Colts’ Pat McAfee. Both players shined in recent weeks thanks to seemingly good-natured scraps with opposing players on Twitter, both of which the punters dominated. King, for instance, called out an opposing player who got him penalized him on Sunday, tweeting a photo of the player pointing to a referee with the label “SNITCH.” That photo has been retweeted more than 96,000 times.

McAfee, for his part, put failed-quarterback-turned-successful-wide-receiver Terrell Pryor of the Cleveland Browns to shame last week. After Pryor poked fun of a swaggerlicious McAfee dance on Twitter, McAfee quote tweeted Pryor and wrote “Child please.. I&039;ve been doing this since you were still a quarterback.” The burn led Yahoo Sports to issue the warning: Do not mess with Pat McAfee on Twitter.

McAfee and King aren’t the only punters having fun on Twitter. Nearly every punter in the league has an account, and the majority seem to understand they’re having a moment. Johnny Hekker, who punts for the L.A. Rams, recently joked about his counterparts’ groovy moves, tweeting, “I cant wait to see all of the new dancing ratings for punters next year.” And New Orleans Saints punter Thomas Morstead regularly tweets behind the scenes photos and video of NFL life.

“Twitter did make punters cool. That&039;s true. And I love it,” Bleacher Report NFL columnist Mike Freeman told BuzzFeed News. “I like when players can express themselves and circumvent the league office which tries to strangle individuality.”

But Freeman also warned that, given the way some NFL fans deal with race, celebration of King may turn to criticism. “The backlash is coming,” he said. “Particularly for the punter in Oakland. When a black player celebrates, it&039;s often viewed much differently by the more right wing elements of NFL fandom. To some, [a] white punter in Indy celebrating is spirited. Black punter celebrating is showboat. I hope they all keep shaking their ass.”

And by all indications, shake their asses they will. On Monday night, McAfee kept up the tradition, artfully placing a punt at the hapless New York Jets’ two yard line, 98 yards away from the end zone. McAfee’s celebration, video of which circulated widely on Twitter, left the television broadcasters dumbfounded. After a few of McAfee’s golf waves and arm thrusts towards his chest, one announcer could barely muster, “I tell you what, these punters…”

Tonight, it will be King’s turn, as the Raiders play the Kansas City Chiefs in a prime time game that will be broadcast nationally on both television and, yes, on Twitter.

Quelle: <a href="NFL Punters Are Finally Cool, Thanks To Twitter“>BuzzFeed

Trump's Antagonistic Tweet Tests The Limits of Twitter's Rules

Jeff Kowalsky / AFP / Getty Images

Last night President-elect Donald Trump used his Twitter account to criticize Chuck Jones, an Indiana union organizer who has been sharply critical of Trump’s recent Carrier deal to keep jobs from moving to Mexico. Jones suggested the deal didn&#039;t save as many jobs as Trump had promised and said the President-elect “lied his ass off.” And so Trump lashed out publicly, lambasting Jones before an audience of some 17 million-plus Twitter followers:

Jones’ phone began to ring almost immediately with a flood of threats, according to a report from the Washington Post.

While Trump frequently air grievances on Twitter, his decision to single out a lone citizen with a public denouncement raises questions about whether such behavior might run afoul of Twitter&039;s gauzy rules for conduct and its prohibitions against harassment and incitement.

It&039;s tricky and unprecedented territory for Twitter. Trump is obviously free to mention individuals by name on Twitter, especially as they relate to policy and governing. However, Trump&039;s new role as the most powerful leader in the free world as well as, his extreme visibility, and the history of his followers targeting and harassing his enemies create potential fallout that stands to affect real people, regardless of the intent with which they are made. Simply put: as President, the potential consequences of Trump&039;s speech make his case — and Twitter&039;s potential enforcement — somewhat unique.

For some context, it&039;s worth noting how Twitter handled noted troll and Breitbart tech writer, Milo Yiannopoulos, who Twitter permanently suspended from the service last July. In Yiannopoulos’ instance, Twitter suggested the decision to suspend stemmed from Yiannopoulos using his account to incite his followers to harass targets and that the ban was the result of actions and not speech. “People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,” a company spokesperson said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News after Yiannopoulos’ suspension. “But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.”

Trump, for his part, appears to know the power of his account and the vitriol of some of his followers. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly wrote in a recent memoir that Trump called her in 2015 after a segment on her show he didn&039;t like and threatened her with his legion of followers. “I almost unleashed my beautiful Twitter account on you, and I still may,” Kelly quoted Trump as saying in her book. Trump did eventually use his account to criticize Kelly which resulted in death threats, stalkers, and a torrent of harassment on and off Twitter.

“What people don&039;t realize about Donald Trump — and I don&039;t even know if Donald Trump realizes it — is that every tweet he unleashes against you…creates such a crescendo of anger,” Kelly said yesterday in an NPR interview.

Behavior of this sort is explicitly against Twitter’s rules, which state that “you may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others” and defines abusive incitement as:

If a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others;

If the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats;

If the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and

If the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.

But while Twitter&039;s rules are explicit, the company&039;s interpretation and enforcement of those rules is far more opaque. Last month, when Twitter suspended a number of prominent accounts associated with the so-called alt-right movement, the company drew the ire of free speech advocates for shutting down the account of white nationalist think-tank leader, Richard Spencer. The company did not comment on any of the individual suspended accounts and did not provide any examples of Spencer violating rules (which led critics of the ban to suggest he had not), instead issuing a statement: “The Twitter Rules prohibit targeted abuse and harassment, and we will suspend accounts that violate this policy.”

In the Trump/Jones instance, murky waters are made even murkier by the fact that Jones’ position as a union leader, who has made media appearances, arguably elevates him to the level of a public figure. Similarly, another potential loophole for Twitter not to take action could be that Trump didn&039;t target Jones&039; account — he mentioned him only by name. Still, the company is in a tricky position. Last week, Twitter told Slate that it would consider banning key government officials and that “the Twitter Rules apply to all accounts, including verified accounts.”

Twitter declined BuzzFeed News&039; request for comment.

Trump, for his part, continues to be a vocal supporter of Twitter. Yesterday on the TODAY show, Trump praised the service as “a modern-day form of communication” that affords him to operate “much faster than a press release” and “much more honestly than dealing with dishonest reporters.”

Just hours before Trump&039;s comments, at a Recode event, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey was asked what Twitter thought about the President-elect&039;s use of the service. Dorsey&039;s response: “complicated.”

Quelle: <a href="Trump&039;s Antagonistic Tweet Tests The Limits of Twitter&039;s Rules“>BuzzFeed