Author: azeeadmin

Male impotence, substance abuse, right-wing politics, left-wing politics, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, mental health.

Those are just a few of the advertising labels that Google’s adtech infrastructure routinely sticks to Internet users as it watches and tracks what they do online in order to target them with behavioral ads.

Intimate and highly sensitive inferences such as these are then systematically broadcast and shared with what can be thousands of third party companies, via the real-time ad auction broadcast process which powers the modern programmatic online advertising system. So essentially you’re looking at the rear-end reality of how creepy ads work.

This practice is already the target of a legal complaint in Europe, filed under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The real-time bidding (RTB) complaint, which was lodged last fall by Dr Johnny Ryan of private browser Brave; Jim Killock, previously director of the Open Rights Group; and Michael Veale, a data and policy researcher at University College London, alleges “wide-scale and systemic breaches of the data protection regime by Google and others” in the behavioral advertising industry.

It argues the personalized ad industry has “spawned a mass data broadcast mechanism” which gathers “a wide range of information on individuals going well beyond the information required to provide the relevant adverts”; and also that it “provides that information to a host of third parties for a range of uses that go well beyond the purposes which a data subject can understand, or consent or object to”.

“There is no legal justification for such pervasive and invasive profiling and processing of personal data for profit,” the complaint asserts.

The individuals filing the complaints have now submitted additional evidence showing lists of ad categories used by Google and online ad industry association, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), that they say show sensitive inferences are systematically made.

The documents, reviewed by TechCrunch, are supplementary evidence for the two original complaints filed with the UK’s ICO and the Irish DPC last year.

The complaint action has also now been joined by Polish anti-surveillance NGO, the Panoptykon Foundation — which has notifies its local DPA of what it describes as “massive GDPR infringement”.

“Ad auction systems are obscure by design,” said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the NGO in a statement. “Lack of transparency makes it impossible for users to exercise their rights under GDPR. There is no way to verify, correct or delete marketing categories that have been assigned to us, even though we are talking about our personal data. IAB and Google have to redesign their systems to fix this failure.”

Ravi Naik, partner at ITN Solicitors, who is working with the complainants, also added in a statement: “Panoptykon’s submissions add to the increasing focus on real time bidding. The complaint builds on our work before the UK ICO and Irish DPC. We foresee a cascade of complaints to follow across Europe, and fully expect an EU-wide regulatory response”.

The three content taxonomy documents that have been submitted as evidence include one used by Google and two compiled by the IAB to provide publishers with lists of ad categories.

The pair make the lists available online for publishers to download, though there’s no suggestion general Internet users are encouraged to take a look at how their online activity is sliced and diced into ad categories in order that their attention can be sold off to the highest bidder.

And while plenty of the ad categories look harmless enough — hatchback cars, pets, poetry, and so on — others, such as the ones we’ve flagged above, can be highly intimate and/or sensitive.

In Europe such sensitive data categories constitute what’s considered special category personal data — which refers to the most sensitive types of personal data, including medical information, political affiliation, religious or philosophical views, sexuality and information revealing racial or ethnic origin.

Multiple types of this special category data appear to be included in the content taxonomy lists we’ve reviewed.

Under GDPR, processing special category data generally requires explicit consent from users — with only very narrow exceptions, such as for protecting the vital interests of the data subjects (and, well, trying to sell Viagra isn’t going to qualify).

The original complaints argue that Internet users are unlikely to be aware such labels are being routinely stuck on them, let alone how widely their personal data is being shared with third parties participating in programatic ad auctions that rely on scale for the system to function.

The RTB process does not offer Internet users an opportunity to consent to each and every personal data transaction. If it did, web browsers would be swamped with creepy requests to process intimate information about them from scores of unfamiliar companies. And there’s no reason to think people would be okay with that.

“The speed at which RTB occurs means that such special category data may be disseminated without any consent or control over the dissemination of that data. Given that such data is likely to be disseminated to numerous organisations who would look to amalgamate such data with other data, extremely intricate profiles of individuals can be produced without the data subject’s knowledge, let alone consent,” the group write in their original complaint filing.

“The industry facilitates this practice and does not put adequate safeguards in place to ensure the integrity of that personal (and special category) data. Further, individuals are unlikely to know that their personal data has been so disseminated and broadcast unless they are somehow able to make effective subject access requests to a vast array of companies. It is not clear whether those organisations have a record of compliance with such requests. Without action by regulators, it is impossible to ensure industry-wide compliance with data protection regulations.”

They cite a New Economics Foundation’s estimate which suggests ad auction companies broadcast intimate profiles about an average UK internet user 164 times per day, adding: “Tracking IDs and other personally specific information are not actually necessary for ad targeting but allow you to be reidentified and profiled every day.”

Here’s a few more highly sensitive labels that are being attached to web users’ identities and shared with potentially thousands of bidding ad companies: Special needs kids, endocrine and metabolic diseases, birth control, infertility, diabetes, Islam, Judaism, disabled sports, bankruptcy.

These categories come from v2 of the IAB’s content taxonomy.

The group has also submitted v1 of the IAB’s taxonomy as evidence, and this includes other disturbingly intimate categories — including a category for ‘incest/abuse support’.

The IAB claims to have depreciated the v1 list but the complainants say it’s still being used in the IAB’s latest ad auctioning system.

We’ve reached out to the IAB Europe for comment.

Filing this new evidence, the complainants argue it underlines “the unreasonable degree of intimacy of the personal data broadcast in ad auctions”.

“The evidence we file today illustrates that the IAB and Google ad auction system can broadcast remarkably intimate details about what you watch, listen to, and read online. ‘Special category’ personal data like this enjoys special protections in the GDPR. I believe this raises the stakes of our complaint,” Brave’s Ryan told TechCrunch.

“Actors in this ecosystem are keen for the public to think they are dealing in anonymous, or at the very least non-sensitive data, but this simply isn’t the case. Hugely detailed and invasive profiles are routinely and casually built and traded as part of today’s real-time bidding system, and this practice is treated though it’s a simple fact of life online. It isn’t: and it both needs to and can stop,” added Veale in a statement.

The original IAB lists can be downloaded as a spreadsheet here (see tab 2 for the v1 list; and tab 1 for v2). While PDF versions of the IAB lists with special category and sensitive data highlighted can be viewed here (v1) and here (v2).

Google’s original document can be downloaded here from developers.Google.com. (A marked up version highlighting the special category data is also available from Brave here.)

We’ve also reached out to Google for comment on the latest development in the complaint.

After being sent the category lists for review, an ICO spokesperson told us: “The ICO and our partner authorities on the European Data Protection Board are already engaged on various issues relating to Google and we are engaging with the industry more widely. We are considering the concerns that have been raised with us.”

The agency has made online behavioral advertising a key priority, noting in its Technology Strategy that it’s probing web and cross device tracking, and citing examples including device fingerprinting, browser fingerprinting and canvas fingerprinting.

“This is likely to continue as more devices connect to the internet (IoT, vehicles etc) and as individuals use more devices for their online activities,” it writes in the strategy document. “These new online tracking capabilities are becoming more common and pose much greater risks in terms of systematic monitoring and tracking of individuals, including online behavioural advertising. The intrusive nature of the technologies in combination drives the case for this to be a priority area.”

Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing startup which claims over 550 million registered users, is deepening its focus on electric vehicles after it announced a joint venture with BAIC, a state-owned automotive giant.

‘Jingju’ — as the venture is called — is a partnership between Didi and BAIC affiliate Beijing Electric Vehicle that will develop “next-generation connected-car systems” using fleet management, AI and other tech, according to an announcement made today.

The exact scope of Jingju is not exactly clear from the details released so we’ve asked Didi for more information. We’ll update this post with more details as and when we get them.

Didi has long talked about plans to bring more environmentally-friendly vehicles into its fleet in line with efforts across China — Shenzhen, for example, has implemented electric taxis and buses. Back in late 2017, the company announced plans for its own EV charging network and, today, it claims that it has nearly 400,000 “new energy” vehicles on its platform. Didi says it clocked up 31 million registered drivers to date, so there’s obviously a lot of work to be done to raise the EV/hybrid representation.

But BAIC is an ideal partner to make that happen. Not only is it a key automaker in China but it has pledged to stop selling fuel-powered vehicles by 2025.

The joint venture is likely to tie into Didi’s existing driver services business, which helps drivers get access to services that include leasing and purchase financing, insurance, repairs, refueling, car-sharing and more. Essentially, with its huge army of drivers, Didi can get preferential rates from service providers, which means better deals for its drivers.

That, in turn, is helpful for recruiting new drivers and growing the business which is under threat because of new regulations that look set to limit the number of people who can drive for Didi.

A group of current and former BuzzFeed employees are asking the company to pay out paid time off to all recently laid-off staff. In response, Lenke Taylor, BuzzFeed’s human resources lead, said it wants to meet with staff and is “open to re-evaluating” its decision on PTO.

In an open letter to Smith, BuzzFeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti, and editor in chief Ben Smith, and signed by more than 400 employees so far, the BuzzFeed News Staff Council wrote “BuzzFeed is refusing to pay out earned, accrued, and vested paid time off for almost all U.S. employees who have been laid off.” The BuzzFeed News Council, which describes itself as “a group of employees appointed to open up the lines of communication between News employees and company management,” added that BuzzFeed is only paying out PTO to employees in California, where it is required by law.

BuzzFeed announced last week that it is laying off 250 employees, or 15 percent of its workforce. In an employee memo, Peretti said the lay offs were done to help BuzzFeed sustain growth without seeking additional rounds of funding. The company has raised almost $500 million over the past decade, including a $200 million flat round in 2016.

“This is paid time that employees accrued by choosing not to take vacation days, and instead do their work at BuzzFeed,” the letter read. “Many of the employees who have been laid off had the most difficult jobs in terms of scheduling—such as the breaking and curation teams on BuzzFeed News who regularly worked weekends and holidays, or managers who weren’t able to use vacation time because they were expected to be available to their teams.”

“For many people, paying out PTO will be the difference between whether or not bills and student loans will be paid on time and how their families are supported,” it continued. “It is unconscionable that BuzzFeed could justify doing so for some employees and not others in order to serve the company’s bottom line.”

BuzzFeed’s laid-off employees received a severance of a minimum 10 weeks pay, and benefits through April. Taylor’s response to the petition’s organizers said the company wants to meet with staff to discuss the issue:

“We would like to have a dialogue with the news staff council and staff from other departments on PTO payout. We are open to re-evaluating this decision but we think it is important for everyone to understand the tradeoffs in changing the PTO practice, how we came to the decision to offer everyone a minimum of 10 weeks salary, and the ways we’ve adjusted our severance to be fair and competitive in every state we operate,” she wrote.

Taylor added that the company will follow up with employees by the end of Monday to schedule a meeting.

Samsung Electronics said Sunday it will replace plastic packaging used for its bevy of products from mobile phones and tablets to home appliances and wearables with paper and other environmentally sustainable materials like recycled/bio-based plastics.

Samsung will start making the switch in the first half of the year. The company aims to only use paper packaging materials certified by forestry initiatives by next year. By 2030, Samsung says it plans to use 500,000 tons of recycled plastics and collect 7.5 million tons of discarded products (both cumulative from 2009).

The company said it’s formed an internal task force to come up with innovative packaging ideas that avoid plastic.

For instance, the plastic trays used to hold mobile phones and tablets will be replaced with ones made from pulp. Samsung said it will also alter the phone charger design, swapping the glossy exterior with a matte finish and eliminating plastic protection films, reducing the use of plastics.

Plastic bags used to protect the surface of home appliances such as TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners and washing machines as well as other kitchen appliances will also be replaced with bags containing recycled materials and bioplastics. Bioplastics are made from plastic wastes and non-fossil fuel materials like starch or sugar cane.

The company also committed to only using fiber materials certified by global environmental organizations like the Forest Stewardship Council, Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Scheme and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative for packaging and manuals by 2020.

The company will adopt more environmentally sustainable materials even if it means an increase in cost,” Gyeong-bin Jeon, head of Samsung’s Global Customer Satisfaction Center, said in a statement.

Urgently, the roadside assistance startup that connects car owners who need help with tow truck and other services, has raised $21 million in a Series B round that includes the venture arms of BMW, Porsche and Jaguar Land Rover.

BMW has also signed Urgently as a vendor partner for its own roadside assistance platform (known as BMW Assist) to provide roadside assistance and extended mobility services to owners of all four of its brands in the U.S, including BMW, BMW Motorrad, MINI and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.

Urgently, founded by Chris Spanos, Surendra Goel, and Luke Kathol, doesn’t charge annual membership fees like AAA or other auto clubs. Instead, the app works a lot like Uber of Lyft . Users can request help like getting a jump start, a tow or tire change via the app, which connects them with available services nearby. At that time, the user is shown what the towing or other service fee will be. Payments are handled within the app.

The potential for Urgently goes beyond connecting with traditional car owners. The platform is scalable, making it attractive for companies that have large fleets too. And as more electric vehicles come to market, there may be more demand for roadside assistance services like mobile charging.

“The old model of roadside assistance must make way for a modern, more digital approach,” Kasper Sage, a partner at BMW i Ventures said. “Urgent.ly will allow OEMs around the world to provide their customers the kind of real-time and connected digital experience they now expect in everything from food delivery to ride-sharing.”

As the new year begins gaining steam, there is ostensibly a piece of good news on the cyber front. Major cyber attacks have been in a lull in recent months and still are.

The good tidings are fleeting, however. Attacks typically come in waves. The next one is due, and 2019 will be the worst year yet — a sad reality as companies increasingly pursue digitization to drive efficiency and simultaneously move into the “target zone” of cyberattacks.

This bad news is compounded by the harsh reality that there are not nearly enough cybersecurity pros to properly respond to all the threats.

The technology industry has never seen anything quite like it. Seasoned cyber pros typically earn $95,000 a year, often markedly more, and yet job openings can linger almost indefinitely. The ever-leaner cybersecurity workforce makes many companies desperate for help.

Between September 2017 and August 2018, U.S. employers posted nearly 314,000 jobs for cybersecurity pros. If they could be filled, that would boost the country’s current cyber workforce of 714,000 by more than 40%, according to the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education. In light of the need, this is still the equivalent of pocket change.

Towfiqu Photography via Getty Images

Global Gap of Nearly 3 Million Cybersecurity Positions

In a recent study, (ISC)2 – the world’s largest nonprofit association of certified cybersecurity pros – said there is now a gap of almost 3 million cybersecurity jobs globally – substantially more than other experts said might be the case years into the future.

Companies are trying to cope in part by relying more aggressively on artificial intelligence and machine learning, but this is still at a relatively nascent stage and can never do more than mitigate the problem. Big companies have their hands full, and it’s even worse for smaller enterprises. They’re attacked more — sometimes as a conduit to their larger business partners – because their defenses are weaker.

So what kind of cyber talent are companies and government entities looking for?

Preferably, they want people with a bachelor’s degree in programming, computer science or computer engineering. They also warm up to an academic background replete with courses in statistics and math. They want cybersecurity certifications as well, and, of course, experience in specialties plagued by staffing shortages, such as intrusion detection, secure software development and network monitoring.

These are ideal candidates, but, in fact, the backgrounds of budding cyber pros need not be nearly this good.

Only Recently Has Formal Training Existed

Cybersecurity has long been a field that has embraced people with nontraditional backgrounds. Almost no cybersecurity pro over 30 today has a degree in cybersecurity and many don’t even have degrees in computer science. Professionals need some training to become familiar with select tools and technologies – usually at a community college or boot camp — but even more they need curiosity, knowledge of the current threat landscape and a strong passion for learning and research. Particularly strong candidates have backgrounds as programmers, systems administrators and network engineers.

Asking too much from prospective pros isn’t the only reason behind the severe cyber manpower shortage. In general, corporations do too little to help their cyber staffs stay technically current and even less when it comes to helping their IT staffs  pitch in.

(ISC) 2 formalized a study of more than 3,300 IT professionals less than 18 months ago and learned that organizations aren’t doing enough to properly equip and power their IT staffs with the education and authority to bolster their implementation of security technologies.

Inadequate Corporate Cyber Training

One key finding was that 43% of those polled said their organization provides inadequate security training resources, heightening the possibility of a breach.

Universities suffer shortcoming as well. Roughly 85 of them offer undergraduate and/or graduate degrees in cybersecurity. There is a big catch, however.  Far more diversified computer science programs, which attract substantially more students, don’t mandate even one cybersecurity course.

Fortunately, positive developments are popping up on other fronts. Select states have begun taking steps to help organizations and individuals alleviate a talent shortage by building information sharing hubs for local businesses, government and academia — all revolving around workforce development.

Georgia recently invested more than $100 million in a new cybersecurity center. A similar facility in Colorado, among other things, is working with area colleges and universities on educational programs for using the next generation of technology. Other states have begun following in their wake.

On another front, there is discussion about a Cybersecurity Peace Corps. The model would be similar to the original Peace Corps but specific to nascent cybersecurity jobs. The proposed program — which would require an act of Congress and does not yet exist — would place interested workers with nonprofits and other organizations that could not otherwise afford them and pay for their salaries and training.

Cyber Boot Camps and Community College Programs

Much further along are cyber boot camps and community college cybersecurity programs. The boot camps accept non-programmers, train them in key skills and help them land jobs. Established boot camps that have placed graduates in cyber jobs include Securest Academy in Denver, Open Cloud Academy in San Antonio and Evolve Security Academy in Chicago.

There are also more than a dozen two-year college cybersecurity programs scattered across the country. A hybrid between a boot camp and community college program is the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), which partners with the Department of Defense on a free cybersecurity training program for active military service members.

A small handful of technology giants have also stepped into the fray. IBM, for example, creates what it calls “new collar” jobs, which prioritize skills, knowledge and willingness to learn over degrees. Workers pick up their skills through on-the-job training, industry certifications and community college courses and represent 20% of Big Blue cybersecurity hires since 2015.

Technology companies still must work much harder to broaden their range of potential candidates, seeking smart, motivated and dedicated individuals who would be good teammates. They can learn on the job, without degrees or certificates, and eventually fit in well. You can quibble with how much time, energy and work this might take. It’s clear, however, that there is no truly viable alternative.

Sometimes the end justifies the means. Other times it clearly doesn’t. But in the new bizarro world that is the modern day U.S. political climate, increasingly the means has become the new end itself.

Currently taking center stage for this phenomenon is the now notorious border wall. President Trump is insisting we need a border wall; Democrats of course insisting we don’t.

The better question here might be a border wall for what end goal exactly? What problem is the wall supposed to solve and would it actually do the job? If you wade through the president’s soundbites and campaign rally chants around illegal immigration, the answer would seem to be we should erect a wall to deal with the growing crime and drug issues flooding into our nation at the hands of malicious illegal immigrants. The bad hombres if you will.

In fact, we’re told by the president that the invasion on our border has become such a dire issue that it’s a crisis worth shutting down the government over, leaving a trail of 800,000 American families as political pawns along the path of this game of chicken. But is there really a historic attack on our borders of would-be criminals looking to raid America?

During a recent trip to Rio Grande, Texas, which sits at the border of Mexico, the president remarked that we have never seen so many Border Patrol apprehensions “ever in our history.” Fortunately, for our dedicated border patrol agents, who incidentally under the shutdown are no longer getting paid, that statement is not at all true.

A look at the actual apprehension data from the Department of Homeland Security tells us just how rudely inaccurate the comment was. Turns out border apprehensions have fallen by a pretty staggering 76% from their peak of 1.67M back in 2000. In fact, the last several years have seen apprehension figures drop so significantly they now match levels not seen in nearly 50 years.

Driving the massive reduction in apprehensions back to early 1970’s levels were a few key changes: (1) A tripling of border patrol agents from around 6,000/7,000 levels in the late 90’s to north of 19,000, (2) investment in a “virtual fence” of mobile and fixed surveillance technologies (radar, drones, sensors, mobile and fixed cameras, night-vision goggles, etc.), which agents have called a “game changer,” and (3) some targeted fencing courtesy of the Secure Fence Act. These investments (along with an improving Mexican economy) seemed to have had the desired effect, driving down border apprehensions dramatically from their chaotic peak.

But, wouldn’t fewer apprehensions mean more illegal immigrants must be getting through the border? Why would lower apprehensions also mean lower “invasions” of illegal immigrants? Well, because intuition and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tells us so. According to the CBP website (which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security): “It may seem counterintuitive, but high apprehension numbers are evidence of a border out of control, where there are few barriers, real or perceived, to entry into the U.S. High apprehensions are seen as evidence of low deterrents to violate U.S. law.”

Further validation of this comes when you examine annual apprehensions per Border Patrol agent, per year. If we had just doubled or tripled agents and they were still being overwhelmed at the same rate they were in the 1990’s or early 2000’s, we might have a true national crisis on our hands. On the contrary, in 1993, Border Patrol agents averaged 313 apprehensions per agent during the year, but in 2017 that figure had plummeted to just 16 border apprehensions per agent. A 95% reduction we’ve likely never taken a moment to either recognize, or tie back to the previous border security investments that were made.

If apprehension data can be taken as a reasonable barometer for illegal immigration activity, and illegal immigration activity has dropped significantly over the last several years, then you might even expect to see a leveling off of the growth of undocumented immigrants already residing within the U.S. The most recent data from Pew Research (generally recognized as the best at tracking this) confirms just that, suggesting that the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. not only peaked around 2007, but seems to be in a gradual decline since then, dropping from 12.2M to 10.7M. This makes sense given the apprehension data above.

But even if illegal immigration is in significant decline, and the total number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. is also declining, then the goal of the wall must presumably be to keep out the abundance of murderers, rapists, and drug smugglers that the president has frequently reminded us are pouring across the border and committing crimes at alarming rates. The challenge here is that appears to also not be the case. Though the majority of heroin and other opioids abused by Americans do originate in Mexico, the president’s own Department of Justice confirmed in 2018 in a 164-page report that only a small percentage of these drugs are seized outside of legal Ports of Entry (e.g. via illegal immigrants), and that the majority comes into the country through legal Ports of Entry either in privately owned vehicles or on tractor trailers, where it’s typically mixed in with legal goods being trucked into the U.S.

Meanwhile, a 2018 study by the Cato Institute – not particularly known for being a bastion of Democratic party stances – examined criminal activity in the state of Texas based on immigration status. Turns out, not only are illegal immigrant arrest and conviction rates not higher than native-born Americans, they are appreciably lower. The below chart shows that conviction rates for crimes (includes homicides, sex crimes, and larceny) committed by illegal immigrants was about 50% lower than those of native-born Americans (as a % of their respective populations).

Looking at arrests instead of convictions yields a similar outcome, where total arrests of illegal immigrants for those same crimes were 40% lower than those native to the U.S.

In our current meme-driven culture, where many conservatives are quick to remind everyone that all lives matter, the irony should not be lost that that principle seems to step aside here for a disturbing fixation on anecdotal headline crimes from a group that actually looks to be a dramatically safer member of the community.

A couple decades ago we clearly had a border crisis. Illegal immigrants were pouring into the border and border patrol was overwhelmed trying to control the hemorrhaging. But the sustained reduction since then to early 1970’s levels is perhaps the rare example of the public sector actually helping address a problem.

Now if the stated goal was, for example, to get illegal immigration to as close to zero as possible because it otherwise (1) creates an undue economic burden on the country and/or (2) is an unfair jumping the line over those trying to enter legally, those are reasonable assertions that would potentially win over voters beyond the campaign choir. But that’s not the conversation coming out of the White House, probably because it’s difficult to build fiery bite-size campaign slogans and chants around “BUILD THE WALL TO FURTHER REDUCE ANNUAL AGENT APPREHENSIONS FROM 16 TO 0!” No doubt it’s a bit messy, and not nearly as frothy.

So if we don’t have a border invasion crisis…and existing undocumented immigrants seem to be both declining in numbers and a much safer part of the population…is the purpose of building a wall then really just to fulfill a campaign rally promise? It feels like the answer to that is yes.

Consequently, we end up left with a situation where we’ve actually done an encouraging about face on border security from the legitimate crisis of 18+ years ago – yet the repeatedly peddled need is to “build-the-wall.” But building the wall is undoubtedly not a well-reasoned means to some clear end, but rather the end goal itself, perpetually requiring the salesman to navigate the thin ridge between ignorant and dishonest cliffs.

You see it first on Facebook or Twitter. Something contemptible: an image, or a video, or a tweet. One accompanied by a furious, snarky caption, highlighting just how awful and unacceptable it is, a dunk fueled by rage. The outrage rises within you. How can it not? You’re primed for outrage. We all are, now. Outrage grenades just waiting for our pins to be pulled.

Usually, if you dig down behind the outrage to its fuel, it’s because our most cherished beliefs, the ones with which we most strongly identify, are – maybe implicitly, maybe implicitly – being attacked.

It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started […] delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party — an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.

It’s important to point out that this outrage is not caused by fake news. Sometimes, maybe, but not usually. The assholes out there are very real, and often their behavior is indeed hateful. Maybe they’re teenagers; maybe they’re politicians; maybe they’re celebrities; maybe they’re just randos catapulted into notoriety by today’s algorithmic tsunami.

Sure, you don’t have all the context. You never have all the context. But sometimes you don’t need all the context, and sometimes even when you have it, it only reinforces the cries of outrage and hate you see flying in from all sides, from your friends, from your acquaintances, endlessly retweeted and shared.

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room […] In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice […] The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen.

Are these ephemerally prominent assholes truly the worst people on earth? Of course not. The worst people on earth tend to do their work quietly, or in remote corners of the planet, away from cameras. What matters about these assholes is that they’re emblematic. They become convenient representations of everything we despise. And because emblems aren’t human, they’re just 2-D cardboard cutouts, there’s no risk of any compassion undercutting our hate.

I’m not saying sympathy. Of course you shouldn’t sympathize with assholes. But sympathy and compassion are two very different things. Compassion is the aching recognition that everyone is as human as you, including people who do awful, hateful things, and that their lives too were dictated mostly by forces beyond their control.

But the dark magic of social media is that it strips all compassion from our outrage, as casually and automatically as it strips videos of context or images of EXIF data.

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

Each wave of outrage is a little easier than the last, as the pathways of hate in our brain become greased, become smoothed, become automatic like muscle memory. Soon the assholes become unpersons, axiomatically and automatically unworthy of compassion. When you participate in the hate, you become a more hateful person yourself. Of course you don’t intend to. Of course you think yourself better than that, more righteous.

But there’s no disjoint between being more righteous and more hateful. On the contrary. Those two things are very closely correlated. In fact they feed back on one another in a virtuous cycle that grows into a tornado.

On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns–after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax […] at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.

There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. […] At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. […] The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.

I’m not suggesting that these tsunamis of online outrage are bad because their targets are invalid. Sometimes they are, but that’s not my point. My point is that participation in them is harmful — to you, and to us all — even though, maybe even especially when, its targets are completely valid.

It’s a weird and crazy and utopian notion, I know, but here’s an odd proposal. Maybe it’s too much to ask that you stop tweeting snd sharing your outrage and hate. But how about this: if you do participate, then for every ejaculation of fury, add another one, a balancing tweet, a quick thoughtful Facebook post, wherein you express some compassion — again, not sympathy, not agreement, but compassion — for someone with whom you bitterly disagree. You never know. It might become a habit.

It’s Huawei vs. the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe and Japan.

It’s almost as if the world’s biggest surveillance superpowers don’t want Huawei cell tower and networking router equipment inside critical networks in their countries, amid concerns of the company’s links to the Chinese military.

Huawei, they say, could be spying for the Chinese — and that presents a national security risk.

But there’s a problem. Years of congressional hearings and “inconclusive” hardware inspections have presented a mixed picture on the threat that Huawei may, or may not pose. Despite the fact that the company’s founder and president is a former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army and the company remains heavily funded by the Chinese government, there’s also no public, direct evidence that Huawei is using its equipment to spy on network traffic inside the U.S. or any other country. In any case, Huawei can’t prove a negative, so all it can do is allow governments to assess its devices — which has so far found some issues but nothing conclusive to tie it to Chinese espionage actors.

That’s the crux of the argument: nobody thinks Huawei is spying now. To get caught would be too dangerous. But nobody knows that it won’t spy in the future.

The worst case nightmare scenario is that telcos will snap up Huawei’s technology and install its equipment in every nook, cranny and corner of their networks. Why wouldn’t they? The technology is cheap, said to be reliable, and is necessary for the impending 5G expansion. Then years later China exploits a hidden vulnerability that either lets its hackers steal economic secrets from businesses.

At that point, it would be too late. The network operators can’t just rip out their routers and switches. The damage is done.

Telcos need Huawei as much as Huawei needs them. But the North American and European telcos are finding it increasingly difficult to navigate pressures from their governments, which treat them as critical national infrastructure and a constant national security concern.

The reality is that China is no more a national security threat than the U.S. is to China, which has its own burgeoning networking equipment business. Just as much as the U.S. and Canada might not want to use Huawei or ZTE equipment in their networks for fear of a surprise cyberattack ten years down the line, why should China, Russia, or any other “frenemy” state choose HPE or Cisco technologies?

Companies have an option: Is the enemy you know better than the one you don’t?

Ren Zhengfei, founder and chief executive officer of Huawei Technologies Co., attends an interview at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019. Ren, the billionaire telecom mogul, broke years of public silence to dismiss U.S. accusations the telecoms giant helps Beijing spy on Western governments and to praise Donald Trump for his tax cuts. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The U.S. government has persisted across administrations with its fiery rhetoric over Huawei’s links to the Chinese government, since a House Intelligence Committee report in 2012 pushed for a domestic ban on equipment built by Huawei and ZTE, another Chinese electronics maker, and even warning against using their consumer phones. Noticeably absent from the House’s report was any specific proof of Chinese spying.

Core to the panel’s claim that “a router that turns on in the middle of the night, starts sending back large data packs, and it happens to be sent back to China,” said former congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI). Huawei, which has always denied the claims, has long called for evidence. Only this week, the U.S. said it doesn’t need to show proof, citing the company’s ability to be “leveraged by the Chinese government.”

The report contained claims of bribery and corruption, copyright infringement and more, but there was no smoking gun that proved that the company was spying — only that it could at the request of Beijing.

China’s authoritarian rule notwithstanding, the country says that it doesn’t have a single law that can compel a company to spy on its behalf or put backdoors in its products. Westerners are rightfully skeptical: in China, the government doesn’t need a law to say it can or can’t do something.

Yet ironically, it’s the U.S. and the U.K. — and more recently Australia — that have laws in place that can in fact compel a company to turn over data, or force a company to install backdoors. After the Edward Snowden disclosures that revealed the scope of U.S. surveillance, China retaliated by dropping U.S. technology from its networks and systems. That was no bother for China; it has its own booming tech industry, and just started using its own homegrown equipment instead.

Other countries aren’t so lucky, and more often than not are stuck between buying their tech from the two spying giants.

Western nations would rather trust U.S. technology with its powerful surveillance laws, while the rest of the world either trusts Chinese technology or simply doesn’t care.

Any technology can be a national security risk. It’s less selecting the right gear, and more picking your poison.

The Galaxy S10 will be revealed at an event in San Francisco on February 20. This much we know for sure. Samsung sent out invites for the event sporting a giant number a few weeks back. It’s clear the company’s looking to get out ahead of what should be a fairly action-packed Mobile World Congress this year. 

We know, too, that the event will be occasion for the company to talk up its forthcoming foldable. Samsung told up as much during its last developer conference — and for good measure, the invite also sported a large crease down the middle. The S10, however, will almost certainly be the real star of the show.

And in typical Samsung fashion, the new flagship has been leaking out like crazy since late last year. By now, it seems, we’ve seen handset from every conceivable angle. So here’s what we know — or, what we think we know, at least.

For starters, Samsung is skipping the notch altogether, jumping straight from skinny top bezel to pinhole cutout — what the company called its “Infinity O” display. It’s more or less the same as the one found on the recently revealed Galaxy A9 Pro. The S10+, meanwhile, will feature an oblong version of hole punch, seemingly in order to include a second front-facing camera.

Interestingly, there are believed to be three S10 models set to be announced on the 20th. You’ve got your standard S10 (6.1-inch), the S10 Plus (6.4-inch) and a budget version (5.8-inch), which will be something akin to Samsung’s take on the iPhone XR. Among other things, the product may be devoid of the curved screens that have become a mainstay for the Galaxy line.

With Samsung’s Note woes well in the rearview mirror, the company is reportedly amping up to once again boost the battery life, with the S10 sporting a 3,100mAh and the Plus carrying a whopping 4,100mAh. Huge if true.

Less surprising is the inclusion of the Snapdragon 855 — that’s going to power practically every non-iPhone flagship this year. Ditto for Android Pie. 5G is much less certain, however. While it’s true that Samsung has already announced that not one but two handset will arrive from the company sporting the next-gen cellular tech, we can’t say for sure whether the S10 will be among them.

That said, rumors about a Galaxy S10 X sporting the tech aren’t out of the real of possibility. That seems more likely than Samsung shoehorning it into the base model. After all, 5G won’t be hitting a saturation point this year. That could bring the number of S10 models up to four. 

Similarly, rumors around the headphone jack are all over the place. The latest images, however, seem to confirm that Samsung’s staying put on that one, steadfastly remaining one of the last flagships to sport the once ubiquitous port.