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Google goes for the wow at I/O, but what about privacy?
These are the 3400 Facebook ads purchased by Russia's online trolls around the 2016 election
US 'net neutrality' rules will end on June 11 -FCC

Google goes for the wow at I/O, but what about privacy?

Posted: 10 May 2018 05:00 AM PDT

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on stage at Google I/O 2018 — Google CEO Sundar Pichai made a number of announcements at the I/O developer conference, but didn't talk about privacy.
James Martin/CNET

Google invited thousands of software developers and reporters to its I/O developer fest at Shoreline Amphitheater, right in its backyard in Silicon Valley. It pitched its biggest projects around artificial intelligence, virtual reality and Android, the company's mobile operating system.

But while there were some jaw-dropping announcements -- a new AI tech called Duplex that works with Google's virtual Assistant is worth listening to -- what we didn't get was a whole lot of insight into how the world's biggest search company is thinking about its approach to privacy and data collection. ZDNet, CNET's sister site, points out that there was no mention of privacy, and only one mention of security during the entire two-hour keynote on Tuesday, led by CEO Sundar Pichai. It came during the section on Android, teasing a security session on Thursday.

The scene at I/O stands in stark contrast to F8, Facebook's developer conference, held just down the road last week in San Jose, California. During his keynote, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent half an hour apologizing for Facebook's Cambridge Analytica debacle. The scandal, which began in March, left Facebook exposed to questions about data collection and privacy after the UK-based consultancy inappropriately accessed data on up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

But while Facebook is taking the brunt of the blame in discussions over user privacy, Google is in a similar boat when it comes to data collection.

Google makes a lot of money from what it knows about you. It knows your hobbies from your search history. It knows your favorite restaurants and the routes you travel from Google Maps. It knows who you email thanks to Gmail and what your favorite Steph Curry highlights are from that YouTube video you can't stop watching. Google uses that kind of information to let marketers target you with specific (and lucrative) ads. It made $95.4 billion in ad sales last year.

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"We tell Facebook all about ourselves, but Google knows the real us," says Brian Solis, an analyst at the Altimeter Group. "That's why it's so incredible -- and also so dangerous at the same time."

He says glossing over privacy issues was probably intentional. "There was such a significant wow factor [in the announcements] that they felt it could distract" from other issues.

Those privacy concerns

But some Googlers did address security and privacy issues on the sidelines at I/O and in other conversations.

The company hopes its Google Assistant will be the next evolution of search, as people ask questions both by voice and by typing on their phones. One new technology called Duplex, which will be released to a limited number of users this summer, uses AI to let the Assistant, a rival to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri, make phone calls on your behalf to schedule appointments and book reservations. The virtual assistant sounds impressively human, using verbal tics like "uh" and "um" and pausing before answering questions. When Pichai unveiled it during the keynote, the demo left the 7,000 attendees in the audience stunned. (You can listen to it here.)

But that evolution in search also means Google may collect even more intimate information about you.

"Our principles here have always been to give users control over that information," Nick Fox, who heads up product design for the Assistant, told me last week just ahead of I/O. "The last few weeks have underlined that this is incredibly important. But we've always known it's important. It's healthy for us to get that reinforcement."

Google also announced it's opening up Google Photos to developers for the first time. Ben Greenwood, product manager for the photo storage and sharing service, said the company decided it's important for Photos to restrict the kind of info developers can access.

Google Photos "is entrusted with these really precious memories," Greenwood said, adding that the service never shares data with developers without explicit user consent. It also makes developer partners go through verifications and periodic checks.

And when it comes to Android, Vice President of Engineering David Burke said he's "very conscious" of privacy concerns. He mentioned the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, a European rule that gives people more control over their personal data. It goes into effect May 25.

"A lot of what GDPR brings to the table we've already been doing, and I think that it's great that there's a standard," Burke said. "That's important."

CNET's Jessica Dolcourt contributed to this report.

'Hello, humans': Google's Duplex could make Assistant the most lifelike AI yet.

Cambridge Analytica: Everything you need to know about Facebook's data mining scandal.

Google I/O 2018

Let's block ads! (Why?)

These are the 3400 Facebook ads purchased by Russia's online trolls around the 2016 election

Posted: 10 May 2018 07:04 AM PDT

Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents, displayed during a congressional hearing with representatives of tech companies. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released about 3,400 Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents around the 2016 presidential election on issues from immigration to gun control, a reminder of the complexity of the manipulation that Facebook is trying to contain ahead of the midterm elections.

The ads, which span from mid-2015 to mid-2017, illustrate the extent to which Kremlin-aligned forces sought to stoke social, cultural and political unrest on one of the Web’s most powerful platforms. With the help of Facebook's targeting tools, Russia’s online army reached at least 146 million people on Facebook and Instagram, its photo-sharing service, with ads and other posts, including events promoting protests around the country.

The release of the ads comes months after top executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter testified at a trio of congressional hearings about Russia’s propaganda efforts, a campaign waged by the Kremlin-sponsored Internet Research Agency, or IRA. Those companies since have pledged to vet political ads more aggressively, and Facebook in particular has said it would begin labeling ads about political candidates as well as some hot-button political issues.

In the meantime, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said lawmakers would continue probing Russia’s online disinformation efforts. In February, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia and the 2016 election, indicted individuals tied to the IRA for trying to interfere in the presidential race.

“They sought to harness Americans’ very real frustrations and anger over sensitive political matters in order to influence American thinking, voting and behavior,” Schiff said in a statement. “The only way we can begin to inoculate ourselves against a future attack is to see first-hand the types of messages, themes and imagery the Russians used to divide us.”

For its part, Facebook stressed in a statement: "This will never be a solved problem because we're up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries. But we are making steady progress."

In total, ads purchased by agents tied to the Kremlin-backed IRA reached about 10 million U.S. users around the 2016 presidential election, according to Facebook’s own estimates. But the ads are only part of the story: They sought to hook American voters into clicking “Like” or following Russia-created Facebook profiles and pages, which published organic content, like status updates, videos and other posts, which would later appear in users’ News Feeds.

Facebook previously estimated that Russia-tied profiles and pages generated 80,000 pieces of organic content around the 2016 election – either directly in their news feeds or because their friends had shared it. Another 20 million saw IRA-generated content on Instagram. House lawmakers did not make organic posts on Facebook or Instagram available Thursday.

In many cases, the Kremlin-tied ads took multiple sides of the same issue. Accounts like United Muslims of America urged viewers in New York in March 2016 to “stop Islamophobia and the fear of Muslims.” That same account, days later, crafted an open letter in another ad that accused Clinton of failing to support Muslims before the election. And other accounts linked to the IRA sought to target Muslims: One ad highlighted by the House Intelligence Committee called President Barack Obama a “traitor” who had acted as a “pawn in the hands of Arabian Sheikhs.”

For two years, Russian agents proffered similar ads around issues like racism and causes like Black Lives Matter. They relied on Facebook features to target specific categories of users. An IRA-backed account on Instagram aimed a January 2016 ad about “white supremacy” specifically to those whose interests included HuffPost’s “black voices” section.

At times, Russian agents also sought to influence Facebook users’ offline activities: One ad from the IRA-aligned page Black Matters promoted a March 26, 2016, rally against “confederate heritage,” which had 161 people saying they would attend. Another by Heart of Texas urged viewers to “honor your ancestors” and join a rally for the state to secede – a post that had been shared 266 times before Facebook removed Russian-generated content.

Russian Instagram advertisements released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence show both pro and anti-Beyonce rallies.

On Instagram, one of the IRA’s ads in February 2016 sought to target people believed to be police officers, firefighters and military officers, urging them to appear at a protest of Beyoncé outside of NFL headquarters. At the same time, another account -- targeting black users -- directed viewers to a pro-Beyoncé protest at the same location. Neither effort appeared to gain any traction, according to data supplied by the social giant to Democratic lawmakers. But it offered just one example of the extent to which Russian trolls sought to exploit both sides of major national debates – including football players who knelt during the national anthem to bring attention to issues of racism.

The documents released Thursday also reflect that Russian agents continued advertising on Facebook well after the presidential election. Until August 2017, Russian-aligned pages and profiles advertised their opposition to immigrants, targeting a range of users, including those who appear to like Fox News. They marketed a page called Born Liberal to likely supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the data show, an ad that had more than 49,000 impressions into 2017. Together, the ads affirmed the fears of some lawmakers, including Republicans, that Russian agents have continued to try to influence U.S. politics even after the 2016 election.

Russian ads released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence show images on both sides of the immigration debate.

Russian agents also had created thousands of accounts on Twitter, and in January, the company revealed that it discovered more than 50,000 automated accounts, or bots, with links to Russia. It notified about 1.7 million users that they had fallen victim to Russian propaganda during the 2016 election. And Google discovered a small number of ads purchased by the IRA on YouTube, its video platform.

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US 'net neutrality' rules will end on June 11 -FCC

Posted: 10 May 2018 06:10 AM PDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Communications Commission said in a notice on Thursday that landmark 2015 U.S. open-internet rules will cease on June 11, and new rules handing providers power over what content consumers can access will take effect.

FILE PHOTO: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) logo is seen before the FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington, U.S., February 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

The FCC in December repealed the Obama-era “net neutrality” rules, allowing internet providers to block or slow websites as long as they disclose the practice. The FCC said the new rules will take effect on June 11.

A group of states and others have sued to try to block the new rules from taking effect. The revised rules were a win for internet service providers like AT&T Inc (T.N) and Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) but are opposed by internet firms like Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O).

“The agency failed to listen to the American public and gave short shrift to their deeply held belief that internet openness should remain the law of the land,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said Thursday. “The FCC is on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American people.”

The U.S. Senate is set to vote as early as next week on whether to reject the FCC repeal of the net neutrality rules - but that effort faces an uphill battle.

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Proponents currently have the backing of 47 Democrats and two independents who caucus with Democrats, as well as Republican Senator Susan Collins. With the prolonged absence of Republican Senator John McCain due to illness, proponents believe they will win on a 50-49 vote.

Senator Ed Markey said it was “likely” the vote will take place in the middle of next week. On Wednesday, senators officially filed a petition to force a net neutrality vote and 10 hours of floor debate under the Congressional Review Act.

Following the FCC announcement, Markey wrote on Twitter, “the Senate must act NOW and pass my resolution to save the internet as we know it.”

The FCC voted 3-2 to reverse Obama-era rules barring service providers from blocking, slowing access to or charging more for certain online content.

Once they take effect, the new FCC rules would give internet service providers sweeping powers to change how consumers access the internet but include new transparency requirements that require them to disclose any changes to consumers.

If the Senate approves the measure, it would not likely pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. If the legislation were to pass the House, President Donald Trump would be expected to veto it.

In February, a coalition of 22 state attorneys general refiled legal challenges intended to block the Trump administration’s repeal of net neutrality.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has often said he is confident the agency’s order will be upheld.

Democrats have said they believe the issue would be key in November’s midterm congressional elections, especially among younger internet-savvy voters.

Republicans have said the FCC repeal would eliminate heavy-handed government regulations, encourage investment and return the internet to pre-2015 rules.

Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis

Let's block ads! (Why?)