March 20 and 21, 2018


News and Views


THIS IS A STORY ABOUT A BUSINESS WHICH HAS “DONE THE RIGHT THING” IN SUSPENDING TESTING OF DRIVERLESS CARS, THOUGH THE ARTICLE DOES SAY THAT THE SUSPENSION IS “TEMPORARY.” HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE EXTENDED AND TESTING WILL BE MADE MORE RIGOROUS.

AUTOPILOT ON AIRPLANES MAKES MORE SENSE TO ME, IF THE PLANE IS UP ABOVE THE AREA OF GREATEST TRAFFIC – 30,000 FEET, ETC. – BUT CARS ARE MUCH MORE DANGEROUS IN THAT THE STOPPING DISTANCE IS SO SHORT; THEY ARE RIGHT ON THE GROUND IN THE PATHS OF DOZENS OF OTHER CARS FROM FRONT, REAR AND SIDE; AND THE LENGTH OF TIME BEFORE THE AUTOMATED CAR CAN IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM IS, AS WELL, MUCH TOO SHORT.

IN MANY SITUATIONS THESE DAYS, AUTOMATIC OR ROBOTIC MEANS OF CONTROL ARE BEING USED. MANUFACTURERS PROBABLY THINK THAT SAVES MONEY, BUT THEY WOULDN’T THINK THAT IF THEY WERE FORCED TO PAY A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE VICTIM’S MEDICAL COSTS. DRIVERLESS CARS JUST AREN’T AS “INTELLIGENT” AS THEY NEED TO BE. TRAFFIC ON A MAJOR HIGHWAY IS STILL VERY DANGEROUS. I TRY TO USE LOCAL ROADS IN ALL CASES IF SUCH ARE AVAILABLE, AND THEY USUALLY ARE; THOUGH MANY OF OUR LOCAL ROADS IN JACKSONVILLE ALSO HAVE “HIGHWAY” NUMBERS, HAVE NUMEROUS LANES IN EACH DIRECTION, HAVE MULTIPLE TURNOFFS, AND THE ACCEPTABLE RATE OF SPEED IS AROUND 50 MPH. ALSO, AS THIS ARTICLE INDICATES, THERE’S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE HUMAN BRAIN. IT DOESN’T JUST SEE. IT REASONS.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/self-driving-uber-kills-arizona-171055918.html?soc_trk=gcm&soc_src=ecd5e8af-dc90-3332-9efb-d522bf6b8dfa&.tsrc=notification-brknews
Self-driving Uber kills Arizona woman in first fatal crash involving pedestrian
The Guardian
Sam Levin and Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
The Guardian March 19, 2018

Tempe police said car was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash and that the vehicle hit a woman who later died at a hospital

A self driving Volvo vehicle, purchased by Uber, moves through an intersection in Scottsdale, Arizona, on 1 December 2017.
A self driving Volvo vehicle, purchased by Uber, moves through an intersection in Scottsdale, Arizona, on 1 December 2017. Photograph: Natalie Behring/Reuters
More
An autonomous Uber car killed a woman in the street in Arizona, police said, in what appears to be the first reported fatal crash involving a self-driving vehicle and a pedestrian in the US.

Tempe police said the self-driving car was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash and that the vehicle hit a woman, who was walking outside of the crosswalk and later died at a hospital. There was a vehicle operator inside the car at the time of the crash.

Uber said in a statement on Twitter: “Our hearts go out to the victim’s family. We are fully cooperating with local authorities in their investigation of this incident.” A spokesman declined to comment further on the crash.

The company said it was pausing its self-driving car operations in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO tweeted, “Some incredibly sad news out of Arizona. We’re thinking of the victim’s family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened.”

Uber has been testing its self-driving cars in numerous states and temporarily suspended its vehicles in Arizona last year after a crash involving one of its vehicles, a Volvo SUV. When the company first began testing its self-driving cars in California in 2016, the vehicles were caught running red lights, leading to a high-profile dispute between state regulators and the San Francisco-based corporation.

Police identified the victim as 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg and said she was not in a crosswalk during the crash, but did not provide further details. Uber is assisting in the “active investigation” the statement added. The self-driving technology is supposed to detect pedestrians, cyclists and others and prevent crashes.

John M Simpson, privacy and technology project director with Consumer Watchdog, said the collision highlighted the need for tighter regulations of the nascent technology.

“The robot cars cannot accurately predict human behavior, and the real problem comes in the interaction between humans and the robot vehicles,” said Simpson, who has opposed the pilot self-driving programs in California.

Simpson said he was unaware of any previous fatal crashes involving an autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian.

Tesla Motors was the first to disclose a death involving a self-driving car in 2016 when the sensors of a Model S driving in autopilot mode failed to detect a large white 18-wheel truck and trailer crossing the highway. The car drove full speed under the trailer, causing the collision that killed the 40-year-old behind the wheel in the Tesla.

Earlier this year, California regulators approved the testing of self-driving cars on public roads without human drivers monitoring inside.

“The technology is not ready for it yet, and this just sadly proves it,” said Simpson.

In one recent incident, California police officers found a Tesla that was stopped in the middle of a five-lane highway and found a driver asleep behind the wheel. The man said the vehicle was in “autopilot”, which is Tesla’s semi-autonomous driver assist system, and he was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.

In another recent case, a Tesla car rear-ended a fire truck on a freeway, with the driver again telling the authorities the car was in autopilot mode at the time of the collision



MSNBC MADDOW
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/16/18
Trump shows disturbing pattern with officials critical of Russia
Rachel Maddow points out the concerning proximity between criticism of Russia and the job peril of Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent discusses the circumstances of Rex Tillerson's firing in contrast with the story the White House is trying to push about it. Duration: 22:37


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/16/18
Trump shows new seriousness about Stormy Daniels case
Rachel Maddow reports that Donald Trump has hired attorney Charles Harder to represent him in the Stormy Daniels legal case, and filed to move the case to a federal court, showing a new seriousness about the situation. Duration: 3:02


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/16/18
Murder considered in death of another Putin opponent in UK
Ellen Barry, international correspondent for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about British authorities treating the death of Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov as a murder and re-examining more than a dozen past suspicious Russian deaths in the UK. Duration: 10:23


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/15/18
Carson, Mnuchin give Trump reasons to keep firing cabinet members
Rachel Maddow looks at how Donald Trump secretaries Ben Carson and Steven Mnuchin are garnering the kind of embarrassing scandal headlines that seem likely to draw the ax-wielding attention of Donald Trump. Duration: 3:05


HELP THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/15/18
Mueller demands Russia documents from Trump Organization: NYT
Rachel Maddow relays a report by The New York Times that Robert Mueller has sent a subpoena to the Trump Organization for Russia-related documents over a time that extends to before Donald Trump declared his candidacy. Duration: 3:24


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/15/18
New sanctions reveal Russian hacking of US energy infrastructure
Nicole Perlroth, cybersecurity reporter for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about new details of Russia's efforts to hack vital U.S. infrastructure accompanying new sanctions on Russia Duration: 11:58



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/03/18/andrew-mccabes-firing-from-fbi-may-have-been-justified-schiff-says.html
Andrew McCabe's firing from FBI 'may have been justified,' Schiff says
By Nicole Darrah | Fox News

Photograph -- Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on Sunday that the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe "may have been justified." (REUTERS/AP Photo)

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who often has fought the Republicans over the actions of President Trump and the FBI, said on Sunday that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's firing from the bureau might be "justified."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe late Friday night, just hours before the FBI official was set to retire, jeopardizing McCabe's ability to collect full pension benefits.


Adam Schiff
✔
@RepAdamSchiff
No way yet to evaluate the rush to fire Andrew McCabe, but each FBI official who corroborates Comey on the issue of potential obstruction has been targeted by Trump and his allies in Congress — McCabe is only the latest example. This is no coincidence.

11:31 AM - Mar 18, 2018
12K
5,647 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

"There's no way for us to know at this point, but even though it may have been justified, it can also be tainted," Schiff said on ABC News' "This Week," referencing McCabe's potential role in a probe investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.

The ranking Democrat added that he thought it was difficult to know whether the firing was legitimate because it happened before the release of an inspector general report expected to conclude McCabe was not forthcoming about matters related to the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails.

ANDREW MCCABE CONTROVERSIES, FROM THE TRUMP TEXT SCANDAL TO HIS WIFE'S FAILED CAMPAIGN

Schiff also asked whether President Trump's "badgering" of Sessions to fire McCabe and "every other of the James Comey associates" played a role because of their connection to the former FBI director.

"Every one of them has been targeted by the administration, by the Republicans and Congress. And is this because they corroborate James Comey? That's a question we also have to answer," Schiff said.

Nicole Darrah covers breaking and trending news for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @nicoledarrah.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/03/20/austin-bombings-what-we-know-now-including-blast-near-san-antonio/440869002/?csp=chromepush
Austin bombings: What we know now, including the blast near San Antonio
John Bacon, USA TODAY Published 8:05 a.m. ET March 20, 2018 | Updated 9:05 a.m. ET March 20, 2018

Four mysterious explosions in Austin this month have killed two people and wounded four more. Now a fifth blast has taken place at a FedEx facility near San Antonio, 65 miles south of Austin.

Here is what we know:

Where did the the [sic] latest bombing take place?

A package bomb exploded at a FedEx facility near San Antonio at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. Schertz police said the explosion came from a package in the sorting area of the facility. One person was treated for injuries and released at the scene, the police department said in a statement. No arrests have been made.

Are the bombings connected?

Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said the four attacks in Austin appeared to be connected. "Clearly we are dealing with a serial bomber," he said. After the blast in Schertz, FBI San Antonio spokeswoman Michelle Lee said "it would be silly for us not to admit that we suspect it’s related” into four bombings in Austin this month.

An employee wrapped in a blanket talks to a police officer after she was evacuated at a FedEx distribution center where a package exploded, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, in Schertz, TX. Authorities believe the package bomb is linked to the recent string of Austin bombings. ERIC GAY, AP

When did the bombings begin?

The first package exploded March 2, killing Anthony Stephan House, 39, when he picked up a package on the front porch of his northeast Austin home. The second bomb went off March 12 inside a home in east Austin. Draylen Mason, 17, was killed and his mother was hospitalized. The third blast came a short time later in a neighborhood south of downtown. A 75-year-old Hispanic woman picked up a package on her front porch when it exploded, seriously injuring her. The last Austin blast occurred late Sunday, when a blast, possibly set off by a tripwire, injured two men in southwest Austin.

Are all the bombings similar?

The first three attacks involved suspicious packages left on doorsteps in Austin. The package Sunday apparently was left on the side of a road in the city. The latest explosion took place at a FedEx facility about 65 miles from Austin.

What is the motive for the attacks?

Police say they have no idea why the bomber is setting off the explosions. Before Sunday's blast, Manley held a televised news conference, pleading for the bomber to come forward. "We assure you, we are listening and we want to understand what brought you to this point, and we want to listen to you, so please call us." Authorities said hate crimes had been considered. The victims of the first three attacks were black and Hispanic. Sundays victims were white males.

Video -- The San Antonio Texas Fire Department says a package bomb has exploded at a FedEx distribution center in Schertz, Texas, hurting 1 person, a FedEx employee who apparently suffered a non-life-threatening "percussion-type" injury from the blast. (March 20) AP


THANK GOD FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS!!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/03/20/cambridge-analytica/442250002/?csp=chromepush
Cambridge Analytica board suspends CEO pending probe into misuse of Facebook user data
Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY Published 3:01 p.m. ET March 20, 2018 | Updated 3:24 p.m. ET March 20, 2018

LONDON — The board of Cambridge Analytica, the company credited with helping Donald Trump win the presidency, suspended CEO Alexander Nix on Tuesday in the wake of comments a British broadcaster secretly recorded him making.

In a series of broadcasts by Britain's Channel 4, Nix was filmed making controversial statements about his firm's work on elections, including appearing to say to a potential client that his company could entrap politicians in compromising situations.

Nix's suspension was effective immediately.

The broadcasts also come amid allegations that the London-based data analytics firm hired by the Trump campaign harvested the data of up to 50 million Facebook users without their consent.

In the latest broadcast, which aired Tuesday evening in Britain, Nix downplayed his private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee when he was asked about his firm's work for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Nix claimed that Republican lawmakers asked him just three questions. "After five minutes — done," he said about his December testimony behind closed doors. "They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works," he added.

Nix, in the video shown Tuesday, also claimed credit for Cambridge Analytica's work with data and research that he said allowed Trump to win the election with a narrow margin of "40,000 votes" in three swing states, giving Trump an electoral college victory, despite losing the popular vote.

Since Trump’s election, Cambridge Analytica has flip-flopped over its role in the campaign. The company initially claimed credit for helping elect Trump, but Nix also sought to portray the firm's role as minimal amid investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Channel 4's broadcast came a day after the network showed surreptitiously obtained video of Nix saying his company could entrap politicians in compromising situations.

Monday night's broadcast in Britain showed one exchange in which Nix said the company could "send some girls around to the candidate’s house." Ukrainian girls, he said, "are very beautiful. I find that works very well."

More: Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos said to resign

More: As data misuse scandal grows, Facebook investigated by FTC, meets with lawmakers

Cambridge Analytica, in a statement Monday, denied that it or its affiliates "use entrapment, bribes or so-called honey-traps" against politicians. It also denied any wrongdoing over the Facebook data it acquired from Cambridge University psychology professor Alex Kogan.

The television station said it filmed a series of meetings at London hotels over four months, between November and January, during which a Channel 4 reporter posed as an operative for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.

In addition to Nix, other senior Cambridge Analytica executives, including Mark Turnbull, the firm's managing director, attended the meetings.

In videos of the meetings broadcast by Channel 4, Cambridge Analytica executives boasted that it and its parent, Strategic Communications Laboratories, had worked in more than 200 elections across the world, including Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic, India and Argentina.

In another exchange, Turnbull described how Cambridge Analytica can discreetly publicize damaging material about a political opponent on social media and the Internet.

"We just put information into the bloodstream of the Internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again ... like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda,’ because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda,’ the next question is, 'Who’s put that out?'"

More: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost almost $5 billion in wealth in one day

More: Cambridge Analytica: British broadcaster secretly tapes 'honey-trap' claims

Tuesday night's broadcast also featured an on-the-record interview with Hillary Clinton conducted in October, when she was promoting her book. She said it would be "very disturbing" if Cambridge Analytica were found to be involved in Russia’s alleged attempt to influence the election.

"So you’ve got CA, you’ve got the Republican National Committee — which of course has always done data collection and analysis — and you’ve got the Russians. And the real question is how did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania — that is really the nub of the question," Clinton said in the interview.

Cambridge Analytica denied any involvement with Russia and said any such allegation is false.


http://thehill.com/homenews/house/379131-schiff-asks-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-to-testify-as-part-of-dems
Schiff asks Cambridge Analytica whistleblower to testify
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 03/19/18 01:52 PM EDT

Image – Facebook logo © Greg Nash

The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee has invited Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie to testify as part of the Democrats' investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

In a letter sent to Wylie on Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Democrats want to interview Wylie and request that he present the documents that have evidence of the data firm’s wrongdoing.

“The Committee’s Minority is seeking testimony from the whistleblower about the reported misappropriation of private data, as well as information to determine where the data was stored, how it was used, and whether third parties accessed and exploited the information, including in Russia,” Schiff wrote.

Wylie recently alleged that Cambridge Analytica had illegally obtained the private information of more than 50 million people from Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge professor.

Kogan had gathered the information through an app he created that required a Facebook login. However, only 270,000 people had given permission for their data to be collected through the app.

In 2015, Facebook discovered that the firm had violated its privacy policies and demanded that it provide certification that it had destroyed all of its gathered data. The firm provided the certification but, on Friday, Facebook suspended the firm after it discovered the data was not deleted and instead given to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook has come under scrutiny once again for their role in this privacy breach.

On Monday, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) called for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing to question major technology companies about privacy concerns.

Wylie claims that Facebook suspended him shortly after the reports about the data were published. He claims the company knew of the data breach for two years.

Cambridge Analytica was used by the Trump campaign during the 2016 elections. The firm’s CEO has reportedly been interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly requested all of the emails between the Trump campaign and the firm as part of his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The data firm has ties to former White House adviser Stephen Bannon and was funded by Robert Mercer, a billionaire conservative donor.



FACEBOOK IS ON THE HOT SEAT. THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME THEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS, AND WHILE I ANSWERED THEIR APPLICATION QUESTIONS, I DIDN’T LIKE THE INTRUSIVENESS OF SOME OF THEM. MAYBE THEIR WHOLE HISTORY SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED. THIS STARTED IN 2015, IF ANOTHER OF TODAY’S ARTICLES IS CORRECT.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2018-03-20/ftc-to-investigate-facebook-over-use-of-personal-data-bloomberg-news
FTC to Investigate Facebook Over Use of Personal Data -Bloomberg News
March 20, 2018, at 9:40 a.m

FILE PHOTO - The Federal Trade Commission building is seen in Washington on March 4, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron REUTERS

WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook Inc over its use of personal data, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, amid reports that a London-based political consultancy had improperly accessed information on 50 million Facebook users.

Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, said the probe would look into whether the social media company allowed Cambridge Analytica to receive some Facebook user data in violation of its policies.

Representatives for the FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernadette Baum)


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-facebook-likes-could-flag-voters-for-manipulation/
How Facebook "likes" could flag voters for manipulation
AP March 20, 2018, 8:47 AM

Facebook "likes" can signal a lot about a person. Maybe even enough to fuel a voter-manipulation effort like the one a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm stands accused of — and which Facebook may have enabled.

The social network is under fire after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to influence elections.

Monday was a wild roller coaster ride for Facebook, whose shares plunged 7 percent in its worst one-day decline since 2014. Officials in the EU and the U.S. sought answers, while Britain's information commissioner said she will seek a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica's servers because the British firm had been "uncooperative" in her investigation. The first casualty of that investigation was an audit of Cambridge that Facebook had announced earlier in the day; the company said it "stood down" that effort at the request of British officials.

Adding to the turmoil, the New York Times reported that Facebook security chief Alex Stamos will step down by August following clashes over how aggressively Facebook should address its role in spreading disinformation. In a tweet, Stamos said he's still fully engaged at Facebook but that his role has changed.

It would have been quieter had Facebook likes not turned out to be so revealing. Researchers in a 2013 study found that likes on hobbies, interests and other attributes can predict personal attributes such as sexual orientation and political affiliation. Computers analyze such data to look for patterns that might not be obvious, such as a link between a preference for curly fries and higher intelligence.

Chris Wylie, a Cambridge co-founder who left in 2014, said the firm used such techniques to learn about individuals and create an information cocoon to change their perceptions. In doing so, he said, the firm "took fake news to the next level."

"This is based on an idea called 'informational dominance,' which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of information around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what's actually happening," Wylie said Monday on NBC's "Today." It's not yet clear exactly how the firm might have attempted to do that.

Late Friday, Facebook said Cambridge improperly obtained information from 270,000 people who downloaded an app described as a personality test. Those people agreed to share data with the app for research — not for political targeting. And the data included who their Facebook friends were and what they liked — even though those friends hadn't downloaded the app or given explicit consent.

Cambridge got limited information on the friends, but machines can use detailed answers from smaller groups to make good inferences on the rest, said Kenneth Sanford of the data science company Dataiku.

Cambridge was backed by the conservative billionaire Richard Mercer, and at one point employed Stephen Bannon — later President Donald Trump's campaign chairman and White House adviser — as a vice president. The Trump campaign paid Cambridge roughly $6 million according to federal election records, although officials have more recently played down that work.

The type of data mining reportedly used by Cambridge Analytica is fairly common, but is typically used to sell diapers and other products. Netflix, for instance, provides individualized recommendations based on how a person's viewing behaviors fit with what other customers watch.

But that common technique can take on an ominous cast if it's connected to possible elections meddling, said Robert Ricci, a marketing director at Blue Fountain Media.

Wylie said Cambridge Analytica aimed to "explore mental vulnerabilities of people." He said the firm "works on creating a web of disinformation online so people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites etc. that make them think things are happening that may not be."

Wylie told "Today" that while political ads are also targeted at specific voters, the Cambridge effort aimed to make sure people wouldn't know they were getting messages aimed at influencing their views.

The Trump campaign has denied using Cambridge's data. The firm itself denies wrongdoing, and says it didn't retain any of the data pulled from Facebook and didn't use it in its 2016 campaign work.

Yet Cambridge boasted of its work after another client, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, won the Iowa caucus in 2016.

Cambridge helped differentiate Cruz from similarly minded Republican rivals by identifying automated red light cameras as an issue of importance to residents upset with government intrusion. Potential voters living near the red light cameras were sent direct messages saying Cruz was against their use.

Even on mainstay issues such as gun rights, Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix said at the time, the firm used personality types to tailor its messages. For voters who care about tradition, it could push the importance of making sure grandfathers can offer family shooting lessons. For someone identified as introverted, a pitch might have described keeping guns for protection against crime.

It's possible that Cambridge tapped other data sources, including what Cruz's campaign app collected. Nix said during the Cruz campaign that it had five or six sources of data on each voter.

Facebook declined to provide officials for interview and didn't immediately respond to requests for information beyond its statements Friday and Monday. Cambridge also didn't immediately respond to emailed questions.

Facebook makes it easy for advertisers to target users based on nuanced information about them. Facebook's mapping of the "social graph" — essentially the web of people's real-life connections — is also invaluable for marketers.

For example, researchers can look at people's clusters of friends and get good insight as to who is important and influential, said Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. People who bridge different friend networks, for example, can have more influence when they post something, making them prime for targeting.

Two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news on social media, according on Pew Research Center. While people don't exist in a Facebook-only vacuum, it is possible that bogus information users saw on the site could later be reinforced by the "rabbit hole" of clicks and conspiracy sites on the broader internet, as Wylie described.

© 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-facebook-cambridge-analytica/
CBS NEWS March 20, 2018, 12:40 AM
What you need to know about Facebook & Cambridge Analytica

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are the two main actors in an enormous data privacy scandal that touches on the Trump campaign, 50 million Facebook users and even two presidential elections in Kenya. It's complicated, so here's a breakdown.

Why are Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in the news?

In a nutshell, because the personal data of 50 million people was pulled from Facebook by a company contracted by Cambridge Analytica and used for ... we're not sure exactly what. The third-party firm (Global Science Research) used a clicky personality quiz to get people to interact with the app, which then used a loophole to pull all the behind-the-scenes data of that user, and also the same data relating to all their friends -- typically 200-300 other people per user.

Facebook issued a press release Friday saying they had banned Cambridge Analytica, Aleksandr Kogan and Christopher Wylie from its platform because they had improperly shared and failed to delete that data, but that seems to have been a pre-emptive move. Late on Friday, The Guardian published a detailed interview with whistleblower Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica staffer, who was involved in building its data operations to scrape user data from Facebook.


The Guardian claims Facebook threatened to sue to keep the story under wraps, while Cambridge Analytica said it was working within the terms and conditions of Facebook's platform, and that the third party was to blame for any breach of trust or privacy.

On Monday, Channel 4 News, a U.K. outlet, published a video in which they went undercover, posing as a prospective client of Cambridge Analytica, who pitched its election-influencing capacity to Channel 4, complete with bribery stings, social media manipulation and truth-bending propaganda.


Who's the bad guy in all this?

Depends on your point of view. Cambridge Analytica, through a third party contractor, definitely made the most of the tools available to them to mine Facebook for every ounce of data it could reach without breaking the law, and may have used that data beyond the scope of what was permissible.

Global Science Research, that third party, were the ones who crafted the personality quiz for maximum efficacy, and actually did the data extraction.

But the spotlight is certainly on Facebook for permitting that loophole to exist in the first place, for failing to protect its users' personal data, and for not acting, nor being transparent about it when they knew there had been problems. They knew in 2015 -- Friday's statement was their first acknowledgement there was a problem, more than two years later.


Who is Christopher Wylie?

Christopher Wylie is the whistleblower, an early employee of Cambridge Analytica who detailed their data-scraping techniques in a bombshell interview with The Guardian from his experience putting it into practice. Wylie was one of the actors banned from the platform by Facebook, something he says is regrettable.

"They seem really pissed off," Wylie told CBS News on Monday. "I don't think they've handled it well -- they haven't done anything on this for two years, And now they have banned me."

Wylie said that he was seeking to cooperate with Facebook ahead of the article going live. "We were going to work on this in a cooperative manner -- there's obviously a lot of issues that need to be discussed -- but you know, I didn't set out to crusade against Facebook -- suddenly they issue this press release and ban me."

Was this a data breach?

Not in the classic, sense, no, in that the data wasn't stolen in a hack. Nobody broke into somebody's account and pilfered data. But that's what makes it so worrying -- they didn't have to. Facebook, through its app protocols at the time, allowed an organization to rifle through users' accounts willy-nilly and take their personal data without any real informed consent.

Democratic senator calls on Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress

Facebook executives earned widespread internet scorn for trying to defend the company on that technicality. Sure, it may be correct to say it wasn't a breach, by dictionary definition, but for 50 million end users, the net effect was the same. Their data was taken without their knowledge, potentially to be used against them.


Should I be worried?

That depends on your point of view. Facebook says it's working to ensure that all the data extracted is no longer in circulation, or stored anywhere that could be hacked. But what's more important is to stay informed on what the apps you use do with your data. Facebook profiles its users, their likes and interests in minute detail to help advertisers and other groups -- like political action groups -- reach them and convince them to vote, buy things and take certain actions. If that seems concerning to you, learn about your security settings and consider limiting your use of platforms that allow more access to your information than you're happy with.

Here are some things you can do, per TechRepublic's Dan Patterson, to keep your data secure:

Enable two-factor authentication on all of your accounts.
Don't click links in your email and instead copy/paste URLs.
Check your email header to make sure inbound email is from known URLs.
Beware of phishing attacks that look legit.
Don't enter your username and password anywhere.
Use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password to create and store long complex passwords.
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


FACEBOOK IS LOSING MONEY – “ALMOST 5 BILLION”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/03/20/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-lost-almost-5-billion/441109002/
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost almost $5 billion in wealth in one day
David Carrig, USA TODAY Published 9:52 a.m. ET March 20, 2018 | Updated 6:57 p.m. ET March 20, 2018

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated what country Spain's Amancio Ortega was from.

The scandal surrounding Facebook and the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica is hitting close to home for Mark Zuckerberg.

The Facebook co-founder and CEO lost $4.9 billion in wealth Monday as shares of the social network giant tumbled more than 6% in one of its worst days since 2012.

The plunge continued Tuesday, with investors sending Facebook shares down another 2.6% to close at $168.15, which translated into another $1.8 billion loss for Zuckerberg.

The two-day loss of $6.7 billion put Zuckerberg’s net worth at $68.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He is listed as the world’s fifth wealthiest person behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, and Spain's retail magnate Amancio Ortega.

More: Can Facebook be trusted with your personal info?

More: How to delete your Facebook account (and the pros and cons of doing so)

Zuckerberg's financial hit could have been even worse.

He likely avoided millions of dollars more in losses by selling more than 7.3 million in Facebook shares since September of 2017, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show.

The transactions were part of the plan Zuckerberg announced that month to sell 35 million to 75 million Facebook shares over an 18-month period. The sales are designed to fund philanthropic goals in education, science and advocacy for Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, the filings show.

More: Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan to spend $3B to cure disease

More: These 3 couples donated $1B or more to their foundations in 2017

Zuckerberg still held more than 8.2 million Facebook shares after the most recent sale this month, the filings show.

Facebook shares sank 6.8% Monday on news that a data-mining firm connected to the Trump presidential campaign was able to get personal information on tens of millions of the social network’s users and use that data to create detailed profiles and target voters.

The company suspended Cambridge Analytica for the transmission of the data which Facebook says is a violation of its rules.

The scandal has raised serious privacy concerns among its users and fears among investors that Facebook could be facing an increase in regulatory scrutiny.


TWO THINGS I REALLY HATE TO HEAR SAID BY SOMEONE NEAR THE TOP OF A HUGELY PROFITABLE COMPANY LIKE FACEBOOK, ARE: “I MADE A MISTAKE” WHEN HE MADE A TOTALLY CONSCIOUS POLITICAL AND BUSINESS DECISION; OR “I WAS JUST TEASING.” THEY NEED TO GO TO A GOOD DICTIONARY AND LOOK UP THE TERMS “MISTAKE” AND “TEASING.” A MISTAKE IS ACCIDENTAL AND TEASING IS NOT MEANT TO DO HARM. THIS SITUATION APPEARS TO ME TO BE A SALE OF DATA RATHER THAN A MISTAKE. I’VE HEARD FOR YEARS ABOUT VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS SELLING THEIR DATA.

LIKEWISE, MOST THINGS CLASSED BY THE PERPETRATOR AS “TEASING,” ARE NOT THAT AT ALL. WHAT FACEBOOK DID IS A BREACH OF CONTRACT WITH THE USERS, WHO AS A MANDATORY PART OF THAT DEAL HAVE GIVEN FACEBOOK THEIR PERSONAL INFORMATION. THAT ISN’T MEANT, TO MOST PEOPLE, TO BE FOR SALE TO THOSE WHO WOULD MARKET IT, ESPECIALLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF BEING CONTACTED OR TARGETED IN A POLITICAL SITUATION. FOR ZUCKERBERG TO CALL HIS LUCRATIVE BUSINESS DECISION A MISTAKE, IS DISGUSTING AT LEAST, IF NOT A CRIME.

FACEBOOK JUST DOESN’T WANT TO BE PUNISHED FOR IT. AFTER THE PUBLIC USERS FINISH SUING THEM FOR THIS, I WONDER HOW WEALTHY A COMPANY THEY WILL BE? MAYBE THAT’S WHAT WAS MEANT BY THE TERM “MISTAKE.” AND FOR THEIR “ALLOWING DATA ABOUT USERS TO END UP” WITH A WELL-KNOWN RIGHT WING POLITICAL FIRM TO USE IN A HIGHLY CORRUPT MANNER, THAT IS ALSO DESPICABLE, BUT PROBABLY NOT ILLEGAL BECAUSE THEY STILL DO IT.

THEY SOLD IT TO TRUMP ET AL AS AN ELECTION-RELATED COMPUTER SERVICE CALLED CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA. WHY IS THAT COMPANY ALLOWED TO CONTINUE TO EXIST? FACEBOOK NEEDS TO LOOK UP “SOLD” AS WELL; AND DONALD TRUMP NEEDS TO LOOK UP “ELECTORAL FRAUD.” HE PURCHASED THAT SERVICE FOR ONE REASON, TO SWINDLE THE PUBLIC OUT OF THEIR FREEDOM OF CHOICE AS A VOTER. IF WE PLACED THE VALUE OF THAT FREEDOM WHERE IT GOES AT THE TOP OF A DEMOCRACY, ALONGSIDE THE REQUIREMENT TO VOTE RESPONSIBLY, WE WOULD SEE THIS FROM A BETTER ANGLE. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THIS MEANS TO ME IS TO KEEP ABREAST OF THE NEWS SO AS TO HAVE A LOGICAL REASON FOR OUR VOTES; AND TO REFRAIN FROM CLASSING PEOPLE AS ACCEPTABLE OR NOT ACCORDING TO WEALTH, RACE, RELIGION, EDUCATIONAL LEVEL, GENDER, OR OTHER GROUPING.

SEE THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE BELOW ON ELECTORAL FRAUD, WHICH SAYS: “IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS, SUCCESSFUL ELECTORAL FRAUD CAN HAVE THE EFFECT OF A COUP D'ÉTAT OR CORRUPTION OF DEMOCRACY.” AND: “... BUT CONSIDERED MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE, OUTSIDE THE SPIRIT OF AN ELECTION OR IN VIOLATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY.”

BUSINESS AND POLITICS HAVE BOTH GROWN SO CORRUPT THAT, “ANYTHING GOES” IS THE RULE OF THUMB. FROM ONE ANGLE, WE DESERVE WHAT HAPPENS TO US, BECAUSE THE DECISION TO GO WITH THE CROWD IS A MORAL ONE, OR IN THIS CASE AN AMORAL ONE. I CAN SPEAK OUT ABOUT IT, BUT I CAN’T CHANGE IT EXCEPT THROUGH GROUP ACTION; OR MAYBE BY WRITING ON THESE SUBJECTS IN A CHALLENGING MANNER, HOPEFULLY TO CHANGE SOME OPINIONS OR MAKE PEOPLE THINK.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-crime-to-hack-a-Facebook-account
Nitesh Singh, Bca Bachelor of Computer Applications Degrees, Indira Gandhi National Open University (2018)
Answered May 4, 2017

“Hacking is a crime and is not at the same time, depending upon what you hack and your intentions. If you are hacking under the law i.e. white hat hacking, no it’s not a crime. But on the other hand if you are hacking against the law to harm someone, steal secret information or even hacking for fun without consent of target, you are committing a crime and it’s punishable by govt. law.”

Here are some of the reasons people hack

Hacking Reasons:

# 27% Fun
# 31% Economic Reason
# 6% Security
# 27% Social Status
# 6% Academic
# 3% Never

None of the reasons can be justified as legal or illegal, but its legality is completely dependent upon if you are doing it under the law or not.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
Electoral fraud
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electoral fraud, election manipulation, or vote rigging is illegal interference with the process of an election, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both. What constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country.

Many kinds of election fraud are outlawed in electoral legislation, but others are in violation of general laws, such as those banning assault, harassment or libel. Although technically the term 'electoral fraud' covers only those acts which are illegal, the term is sometimes used to describe acts which are legal, but considered morally unacceptable, outside the spirit of an election or in violation of the principles of democracy.[1] Show elections, in which there is only one candidate, are sometimes classified as electoral fraud, although they may comply with the law and are presented more as referendums.

In national elections, successful electoral fraud can have the effect of a coup d'état or corruption of democracy. In a narrow election, a small amount of fraud may be enough to change the result. Even if the outcome is not affected, revelation of fraud can have a damaging effect, if not punished, as it can reduce voters' confidence in democracy.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-says-facebook-made-mistakes-cambridge-analytica-195318615--finance.html?soc_trk=gcm&soc_src=ceafb8ea-13ba-326e-8577-780d7df5b520&.tsrc=notification-brknews
Zuckerberg says Facebook 'made mistakes' on Cambridge Analytica
Reuters March 21, 2018

Photograph – FILE PHOTO - Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that the social media company made mistakes that allowed data about users to end up with the analytics firm Cambridge Analytica and said the company would make changes.

Zuckerberg, in his first comments since the company disclosed on Friday the misuse of personal data, said in a post on Facebook that the company "made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it."

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Toni Reinhold)


https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-is-what-facebook-powered-election-cheating-looks-like.html
THE INDUSTRY
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal Is What Facebook-Powered Election Cheating Looks Like
The Trump campaign’s data firm got its hands on 50 million Facebook users’ information—and then reportedly lied about deleting it.
By APRIL GLASER
MARCH 17, 20187:37 PM

Photograph -- Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive officer, Alexander Nix.
AFP Contributor/Getty Images

On Friday night, as Americans began settling into the weekend, Facebook dropped a pretty substantial piece of news: The company said in a detailed blog post that it had suspended from its platform the political-data firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, after learning the company hadn’t deleted Facebook user data it had obtained in violation of the social network’s policies.

Facebook said that a Russian-American psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan had obtained user data through a personality app he built in 2014 called “thisisyourdigitallife,” which scraped data from the profiles of people who took the quiz as well as that of their friends—something that was allowed under Facebook’s policy for third-party apps at the time. Although only about 270,000 people took the survey, the New York Times reports that Kogan was able to obtain data on 50 million users, likely through connections between friends on the network. While the project promised users the data collection was only for research purposes, it nevertheless funneled the data to Cambridge Analytica, which had funded the development of the app to the tune of $800,000. Kogan had also received funding from the Russian government for his research into the psychology of Facebook users, the Guardian reported.

We don’t yet know how effective Cambridge Analytica’s targeting, based on psychological profiles its CEO has described as its “secret sauce,” truly was, but after working with Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in the Republican primary, Cambridge Analytica was tapped by the Trump campaign. The company also did data analytics work on the successful Leave.EU campaign that resulted in a vote for Britain to exit the European Union. What we do seem to have, following these revelations about the source of some of the company’s data, is yet another in a long string of instances and coincidences—like the meetings between Trump campaign staff and Russian operatives—that look a lot like a willingness to cheat to win the White House, possibly in violation of the law. And in this case, cheating with data that was taken through Facebook’s front door.

Cambridge Analytica isn’t your typical data analytics firm. Its primary backer is Robert Mercer, the secretive billionaire and former CEO of the New York investment firm Renaissance Technologies whose family is also one of the main funders of Breitbart News and was the largest donor to Trump-backing Super PACs during the 2016 election. Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, was the vice president of Cambridge Analytica’s board at the same time he was chairman of Breitbart News.

The data firm started partnering with U.S. political campaigns around 2015 with the promise that it had the ability to do what it called “psychographic” targeting, which allowed Cambridge Analytica to create psychological profiles to “effectively engage and persuade voters using specially tailored language and visual ad combinations” that appeal to each person on an emotional level, according to Cambridge Analytica’s website. The company claims it’s able to build these profiles by leveraging “up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters.” That last number is a lot bigger than the 50 million people reported in the New York Times, and it’s unclear where that remaining data came from.

Cambridge Analytica began contracting for Trump’s campaign in June 2016, roughly six months after the Guardian reported that the company, when working for Cruz, was targeting voters using data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge. Facebook confirmed in August 2016 that data from Kogan’s app collected and misused data from the company and that Facebook was taking efforts to delete it. Still, Facebook didn’t alert users that their data had potentially ended up in the hands of Republican operatives.

The personality quiz created by Kogan appeared in 2014 on a platform for freelancers run by Amazon called Mechanical Turk.* The quiz, posted by Kogan’s company Global Science Research, offered to pay participants $1 or $2 to complete it and also required participants to download an app and consent to sharing data about themselves and their social network. At the time the quiz and app were running, Facebook permitted app developers to access data about a person’s network, like the names of their friends, as well as their likes and other personal details about themselves and their network, according to Facebook’s head of security, Alex Stamos, in a series of now-deleted tweets. The company says it has now updated its policies to let users decide what information Facebook can share about them.

Facebook says, however, that when Kogan passed the data he collected to Cambridge Analytica, he violated the company’s rather permissive data collection rules and in 2015 demanded that Kogan and everyone he handed the data to destroy it and certify that they did so. Facebook says it received certifications that the data was deleted from both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica, as well as from Christopher Wylie, who helped to found Cambridge Analytica. (Wylie and other former employees of the company gave interviews to the New York Times and the Guardian about Cambridge Analytica.) But apparently not all the data was deleted, and the New York Times reports that it was able to view a portion of the Facebook user data that still exists. The contract that Kogan initially had with Cambridge Analytica also allowed him to keep a copy of the data he scrapped for his research.

Kogan claimed in an email to Cambridge Analytica in 2014 that the data he was collecting would be able to predict a person’s neuroticism, political views, agreeableness, and interests in things like militarism, horoscopes, and the environment. These data points could be what Cambridge Analytica is referring to when it claims that it’s capable of psychologically targeting American voters.

“Without Facebook, we wouldn’t have won,” said Theresa Hong, a member of the digital arm of Trump’s presidential campaign, in an interview with the BBC last year when giving a tour of Trump’s digital campaign headquarters, dubbed Project Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas. Alamo was the name of the dataset used by Cambridge Analytica, according to Hong, who said Cambridge Analytica shared offices with the Trump campaign’s digital efforts and confirmed Facebook and Google sent liaisons to their offices to help Trump’s campaign. Hong showed the BBC how Cambridge Analytica could identify if, say, it was targeting a working mother concerned about childcare: She probably wouldn’t be interested in “a war ridden destructive ad” popping up in her Facebook app, but might respond to something more “warm and fuzzy,” lacking Trump’s voice, Hong said. “It wasn’t uncommon to have about 35 to 45 thousand iterations of these types of ads everyday.”

Cambridge Analytica also bragged publicly about its use of data and voter modeling during the election, which sparked the interest of David Carroll, a professor at Parsons School of Design who studies media, data targeting, and campaigns. In January 2017, he requested under the U.K.’s data protection law to see if any of his personal data had been shipped to Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories, based in London. Last year, Carroll learned that Cambridge Analytica had given him scores on a scale of 1 to 10 on certain hot-button political categories, like a “gun rights importance rank.” Based on these scores, he was ultimately listed as “unlikely” to vote Republican. On Friday, the same day Facebook moved to suspend Cambridge Analyica’s account, Carrol filed a legal claim in the U.K. to learn what the company did with his data and if it was handed to anyone else.

Cambridge Analytica was roped into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election this past December when it requested to see employee emails, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. The firm also may be in hot water with the Federal Election Commission, which has rules about how non-U.S. persons are allowed to work on political campaigns. Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, is British and many of the company’s employees were either European or Canadian.

On Saturday, Cambridge Analytica responded to Facebook’s allegations and the reports in the New York Times and Guardian, writing that Wylie was a contractor and not a founder of the company and claiming that all of the Facebook data provided by Kogan was erased as soon as the company learned it was obtained illegitimately.

17 Mar

Cambridge Analytica
✔
@CamAnalytica
Replying to @CamAnalytica
Obama's 2008 campaign was famously data-driven, pioneered microtargeting in 2012, talking to people specifically based on the issues they care about. 6/8


Cambridge Analytica
✔
@CamAnalytica
This isn’t a spy movie. We’re a data analytics company doing research & analysis on commercial, public and data sets for clients 7/8

2:49 PM - Mar 17, 2018
280
996 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy

In his now-deleted Twitter thread, Facebook’s Stamos said that Kogan’s handing of Facebook user data to Cambridge Analytica wasn’t technically a breach, since he “didn’t break into any systems, bypass technical controls, or use a flaw in our system to gather more data than allowed.” All of which means Kogan took a startling amount of user data that he was permitted to take—even if he wasn’t supposed to hand it over to a voter-targeting operation after taking it. Other app developers may have harvested data from users in the way Krogan and Cambridge Analytica did under Facebook’s old rules, too, and there’s no telling where that data might have ended up. Since 2015, Facebook has changed its policies, limiting the amount of user data third-party apps can siphon from the network—although it still allows sophisticated political targeting through its advertising platform, the kind which the Trump campaign was able to use, likely abetted by the Cambridge Analytica data set. None of this is surprising, of course, but it should be galling. Facebook’s primary job is making money, after all—and even careful policies can’t always control for the scrupulousness of how its customers use its primary product: our data.

Correction, March 19, 2018: This article originally misspelled the name of the platform Mechanical Turk.


HERE IS ANOTHER OF THOSE STORIES THAT MAKE ME THINK THAT BUSINESS IS INNATELY DISHONEST. READ IT SADLY.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43480138
BMW headquarters searched by police in emissions raid
March 20, 2018 4:47 PM

Photograph -- Police and prosecutors searched the firm's Munich offices on Tuesday

German prosecutors have raided the headquarters of BMW as part of an investigation into the suspected use of emissions cheating software.

About 100 police and law enforcement officials searched the luxury carmaker's Munich headquarters and a site in Austria, prosecutors said.

They opened an investigation last month over suspected fraud.

"There is an early suspicion that BMW has used a test bench-related defeat device," prosecutors said.

The facility searched in Austria was BMW's engine plant in Steyr, where the company employs about 4,500 staff and assembles 6,000 engines a day, Reuters news agency reported.

Rival German carmaker Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to using "defeat device" software in the US to cheat diesel engine emissions tests, plunging the company into scandal.

Since then, emissions irregularities have surfaced at several major carmakers, although none were found to be as serious as at Volkswagen.

BMW said prosecutors were looking into "erroneously allocated" software in about 11,400 vehicles of the BMW 750d and BMW M550d luxury models.

BMW said the findings did not reveal a "targeted manipulation" of emissions.

Last month BMW recalled 11,700 cars to fix an engine management software issue.

The news comes ahead of the publication of BMW's 2017 annual results on Wednesday.


1.7 MILLION LIVE VIEWERS – DONALD TRUMP, THIS IS BIG AUDIENCE – A YYUUGE AUDIENCE, IN FACT.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-economic-inequality-town-hall-million-viewers_us_5ab08fb6e4b0e862383ab6b4
POLITICS 03/20/2018 01:28 am ET
Bernie Sanders’ Economic Inequality Town Hall Draws 1.7 Million Live Viewers
The Vermont senator is using his reach to try to shape a national progressive narrative.
By Daniel Marans

Video -- BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, on March 9.

WASHINGTON ― Sen. Bernie Sanders’ televised town hall on economic inequality drew about 1.7 million live viewers during an online broadcast Monday night.

The panel-discussion-style event, called “Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class,” exceeded the viewership of Sanders’ first live town hall on single-payer health care in January.

The broadcast provided the Vermont independent with an opportunity to expand his new alternative media revue beyond “Medicare for all” to the broader issue of economic inequality, which he maintains that commercial media outlets frequently ignore.

“What I would say to our friends in the corporate media: Start paying attention to the reality of how many people in our country are struggling economically every single day ― and talk about it,” Sanders declared at one point during the discussion.

Not content to wait for the cable television channels and newspapers to take him up on his advice, Sanders partnered with The Guardian, The Young Turks, NowThis and Act.tv to do just that for about an hour and a half on Monday night.

Three co-hosts aided Sanders in his efforts: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), New School economist Darrick Hamilton and filmmaker Michael Moore.

Together they interviewed three guests with specialized knowledge of the economic and political structures suppressing economic mobility and funneling wealth upward. Catherine Coleman Flowers*, a founder of the anti-poverty Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corp., spoke about the destitute poverty of the rural black community in Lowndes County, Alabama, where exposure to untreated sewage prompted a rare outbreak of hookworm.

Cindy Estrada, a vice president of the United Auto Workers, addressed the role of organized labor in raising living standards ― and how its decline has lowered them. And Gordon Lafer, a political scientist from the University of Oregon, explained how corporate interests neutralized public opposition through campaign donations and massive lobbying efforts.

An audience of about 450 people attended the town hall in person in the U.S. Capitol auditorium. An additional 100 people viewed the event on monitors in an overflow room.

The rest of what Sanders’ staff estimates were 1.7 million live viewers saw the event online. (HuffPost’s back-of-the-envelope tally from the social media pages of Sanders, Warren and the various digital partners produced a similar figure.)

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Billed as a seminar on the causes of, and solutions to, rising income and wealth inequality, the town hall often doubled as a progressive pep rally for social democratic reforms.

During Estrada’s appearance, for example, Warren’s homage to labor unions elicited thunderous applause. “Unions built America’s middle class. It’ll take unions to rebuild America’s middle class,” she said.

For his part, Moore focused on the failure of the Democratic Party, which fashions itself as the party of working people, to stand true to its mission. This line of inquiry took Moore first into a discussion of the ostensibly Democratic leanings of the three wealthiest men in the country ― Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos ― and later into a riff on the Democrats who voted to authorize the Iraq War exactly 15 years earlier.

Moore appeared to be saying that letting Democrats off the hook had contributed to the collapse of the middle class.

“It’s so important that we hold the people who say they’re for the people ― hold their feet to the fire! And if they’re not going to do the job they say they’re going to do, let’s get somebody else,” he concluded to loud ovation.

The origins of American inequality that Sanders and his allies sketched on Monday are by now familiar to left-leaning activists immersed in the works of Robert Reich and Jacob Hacker, among other progressive thinkers.

In this history, former President Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era of corporate domination with his symbolic decision to fire striking air traffic controllers in August 1981. The move was the opening salvo in a prolonged war against organized labor that steadily diminished unions’ ranks and reduced their clout, according to numerous liberal scholars.

A host of tax breaks, deregulatory measures, corporate-skewed trade agreements and safety net reductions backed by members of both parties in subsequent decades served to heighten the inequality generated in the 1980s. The result, Sanders said in his introductory remarks, is a country where “the top 10th of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 99 percent.

“In recent years, we have seen incredible growth in the number of billionaires, while 40 million Americans continue to live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth,” he continued.

A prominent feature of the evening’s analysis that Sanders’ critics have sometimes accused him of downplaying was an explicit breakdown* of the racial roots of American poverty.

Flowers, who invited the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty to witness the squalid conditions in Lowndes County, argued that state authorities have failed to address the issue of inadequate sewage systems because of entrenched racist views.

“Some of those same types of attitudes that existed prior to the 1960s, the structural racism that was reinforced by racial terror, is still in existence today,” Flowers said.

Hamilton suggested that the universal programs Sanders favors would not erase the racial inequities that follow black Americans at every level of socioeconomic and educational attainment. He noted that a black household headed by a college graduate has, on average, less wealth than a white household headed by a high school dropout.

“So when Sen. Sanders proposes that we should have tuition-free public education ― absolutely, but as an end unto itself. We exaggerate the returns from education, particularly to marginalized groups,” Hamilton said.

Sanders, Warren and Moore all endorsed relatively well-known left-leaning solutions to inequality, including a $15 minimum wage, stronger unions, free college education and paid family leave policies.

Perhaps in keeping with his intersectional focus*, Hamilton embraced more radical measures. His preferred solutions included the creation of trust funds for every American at birth, a federal job guarantee, the replacement of private payday lenders with postal banking* and an end to academic tracking in grade school, which he argued often replicates racial segregation, even within relatively integrated schools.

“To really get beyond our race problem, when we’re ready as a nation to come together, we need to come to grips with reparations,” Hamilton concluded, prompting cheers from the crowd.

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HuffPost
BEFORE YOU GO
PHOTO GALLERY
2017 Scenes From Congress & Capitol Hill

Daniel Marans
Reporter, HuffPost


POSTAL BANKING*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

Postal savings systems provide depositors who do not have access to banks a safe and convenient method to save money. Many nations have operated banking systems involving post offices to promote saving money among the poor.

History[edit]


A page with a pre-printed table. It has handwritten entries showing amounts of deposits and withdrawals, and the balance. Each entry has a post office date stamp.


This 1869 deposit book would be carried by the customer, and is a typical record of a British Post Office Savings Bank savings account.
In 1861, Great Britain became the first nation to offer such an arrangement. It was supported by Sir Rowland Hill, who successfully advocated the penny post, and William Ewart Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who saw it as a cheap way to finance the public debt. At the time, banks were mainly in the cities and largely catered to wealthy customers. Rural citizens and the poor had no choice but to keep their funds at home or on their persons.

The original Post Office Savings Bank was limited to deposits of £30 per year with a maximum balance of £150. Interest was paid at the rate of 2.5 percent per annum on whole pounds in the account. Later, the limits were raised to a maximum of £500 per year in deposits with no limit on the total amount. Within five years of the system's establishment, there were over 600,000 accounts and £8.2 million on deposit. By 1927, there were twelve million accounts—one in four Britons—with £283 million (£15,502 million today) on deposit.[1]

The British system first offered only savings accounts. In 1880, it also became a retail outlet for government bonds, and in 1916 introduced war savings certificates, which were renamed National Savings Certificates in 1920.[2] In 1956, it launched a lottery bond, the Premium Bond, which became its most popular savings certificate.[2] Post Office Savings Bank became National Savings Bank in 1969, later renamed National Savings and Investments (NS&I), an agency of HM Treasury. While continuing to offer National Savings services, the (then) General Post Office, created the National Giro in 1968 (privatized as Girobank and acquired by Alliance & Leicester in 1989).

Many other countries adopted such systems soon afterwards. Japan established a postal savings system in 1875 and the Netherlands government started a systems in 1881 under the name Rijkspostspaarbank (national postal savings bank), this was followed by many other countries over the next 50 years. The later part of the 20th century saw a reversal where these systems were abolished or privatized.

LIST OF NATIONS WHO HAVE OR HAVE HAD POSTAL SAVINGS ARRANGEMENTS, WHICH DOES INCLUDE THE USA, WITH THE FOLLOWING COMMENT:

United States[edit]

In the United States, the United States Postal Savings System was established in 1911 under the Act of June 25, 1910 (36 Stat. 814). It was discontinued by the Act of March 28, 1966 (80 Stat. 92).


*FLOWERS:
Catherine Coleman Flowers*, a founder of the anti-poverty Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corp


ABOUT THE TERM “INTERSECTIONALITY*, INTERSECTIONAL FOCUS,” READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AT THEIR WIKIPEDIA WEBSITE -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

I ONLY BEGAN SEEING THIS TERM IN THE LAST YEAR OR SO. I AGREE WITH IT’S APPLICATION IN THINKING OF OUR SOCIETY, AND I THINK WE NEED TO WORK ON THE WHOLE POVERTY/CLASS/RACE PROBLEM RATHER THAN JUST ONE ASPECT. BERNIE SANDERS’ FOCUS ON POVERTY AS A FINANCIAL PROBLEM MAINLY, IS ONE WHICH HAS DRAWN FIRE FROM SOME MEMBERS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY, AS OPPOSED TO HILLARY CLINTON WHO IS LIONIZED BY THE SAME GROUP FOR NO APPARENT REASON. THE BLACKS THEMSELVES KNOW WHY, BUT I’M NOT PRIVY TO IT. I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE ORIGINAL REASON FOR IT IS, EXCEPT THAT BILL CLINTON WAS VERY POPULAR WITH BLACKS.

I PERSONALLY DO THINK THAT THE GREATEST PROBLEM THAT THE BLACK POPULATION HAS IN THE USA IS THEIR RAMPANT POVERTY, BUT RACE IS A CLOSE SECOND. I MEAN BY THIS THAT EVEN IF THEY BUY NEW AND CLASSICALLY STYLED CLOTHES, DON’T WEAR STRONGLY SCENTED PRODUCTS, GO TO A GOOD [NOT NECESSARILY IVY LEAGUE] COLLEGE AND GET A DEGREE, DROP THE HOSTILE “GHETTO” TALK AND SWAGGER, BECOME A PROFESSIONAL OR A TEACHER, PERHAPS RUN FOR OFFICE, THEY WILL STILL BE THE PREY OF A TRULY HIDEBOUND RACIST, UNFORTUNATELY, AND THERE ARE ENOUGH OF THOSE TO MAKE TROUBLE. THAT WAS PROVEN IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA JUST RECENTLY. MOST WHITES ARE NOT, HOWEVER, KKK MEMBERS. OF THAT, I FEEL CERTAIN. MOST WORKING-CLASS WHITES ARE JUST “HUMBLE” PEOPLE. AND MANY WHITES OF ALL CLASSES ARE QUITE HAPPY TO WORK WITH AND DO OTHER ACTIVITIES WITH BLACK PEOPLE. IT ISN’T FAIR TO THEM TO TREAT THEM BADLY. THAT’S WHAT I MEAN BY APPROACHING PEOPLE AS INDIVIDUALS FIRST AND THEIR SKIN COLOR SECOND.

I’M HOPEFUL, TOO, BECAUSE I JUST DON’T THINK THAT MOST AMERICANS ARE THAT DEEPLY RACIST AT THIS TIME IN OUR COUNTRY, AS OPPOSED TO THE 1920S OR BEFORE. THERE WAS A FRIGHTENING DOCUMENTARY ON YOUTUBE RECENTLY ABOUT THE KKK IN THE 1920S MARCHING DOWN STREETS IN NORTHERN CITIES IN FORMATION – THOUSANDS OF THEM. IT BREAKS DOWN BY CLASS, EDUCATIONAL LEVEL AND TYPE OF DIPLOMA, RELIGIOSITY, AND POLITICAL PARTY, ALSO. SOME PEOPLE ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BE ATTRACTED TO RACISM AND FASCISM. “WORKING CLASS” WHITES ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE PURELY RACIST VIEWS, BUT NOT ALL OF THEM DO BY ANY MEANS, AND THERE ARE THOSE AMONG THE WEALTHY AND MIDDLE CLASS WHO ARE ALT-RIGHT AS WELL.

RACISM IS ONE OF THOSE ATTITUDES THAT IS PERSONAL IN NATURE, AND THAT TENDS TO TAKE ROOT WHEREVER THERE IS A PLACE INSIDE OUR PERSONALITIES FOR IT TO GROW; IT IS FED BY FEAR, CLOSED MINDS, LACK OF EDUCATION, OUR OWN INDIVIDUAL GUILT, WHITE POVERTY, GENERAL LEVEL OF MENTAL HEALTH, ETC. IT’S A HUGE, COMPLEX AMERICAN PROBLEM BOTH AMONG BLACKS AND WHITES, AND THOUGH IT SOMETIMES SEEMS TO BE, IT IS NEVER DEAD.

WE MUST UNDERSTAND, TOO, THAT THERE ARE BLACK RACISTS AS WELL, WHO WILL NEVER ACCEPT A WHITE PERSON AS A MEMBER OF THEIR PERSONALLY ACKNOWLEDGED HUMAN RACE. AS FOR “WHITE PRIVILEGE,” IT DOES EXIST, BUT THE WHITE PERSON CAN’T STOP IT EXCEPT BY REMOVING HERSELF FROM THE RANKS OF WHITE SOCIETY, OR BY OPENLY ASSOCIATING ON A FRIENDLY BASIS WITH MEMBERS OF OTHER RACES. THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO SEE. THAT’S WHAT I SAW IN CHAPEL HILL AT UNC AND IN WASHINGTON, DC., AND I MISS IT.

NEW LAWS SINCE 1968 OR SO HAVE MADE OPEN RACISM ILLEGAL IN MANY CASES, IN JOB SETTINGS ESPECIALLY, AND IT IS MEASURED CAREFULLY ON A PERCENTAGE BASIS; BUT LITTLE BY LITTLE IT IS BEING ADDRESSED. THAT’S BECAUSE LAWS WERE MADE TO ENFORCE IT, OF COURSE. THE GULF BETWEEN SOME BLACKS AND WHITES IS TRULY STEEP AND WIDE – ONLY A CHANGE OF HEART CAN CURE IT. THERE IS A GREAT MOVIE ON THIS SUBJECT FROM THE 1990S CALLED “GRAND CANYON.” I RECOMMEND IT TO ALL.