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Josh Hawley: FTC Settlement ‘Utterly’ Fails to Penalize Facebook for Privacy Violations

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has “utterly” failed to penalize Facebook “in any effective way” for violating Americans’ privacy.

The FTC formally approved a $5 billion settlement Wednesday with Facebook over the social media giants’ privacy policies. The fine serves as the largest ever imposed by the agency against a tech company for privacy violations. The FTC previously fined Google in 2012 for $22.5 million.

The FTC settlement stipulates that Facebook will have to create an independent privacy committee on its board of directors to remove “unfettered control” by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg over user privacy decisions.

Zuckerberg will have new responsibilities to comply with the order; however, the Washington Post reported that the FTC did not question the CEO as part of the agency’s investigation, and regulators were divided over whether to hold Zuckerberg more directly accountable for the company’s privacy violations.

Sen. Hawley, one of the Senate’s leading tech critics, said that the FTC “utterly” failed to penalize Facebook for its privacy violations.

“This is very disappointing,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday. “This settlement does nothing to change Facebook’s creepy surveillance of its own users & the misuse of user data. It does nothing to hold executives accountable. It utterly fails to penalize Facebook in any effective way.”

Sens. Hawley and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) previously said that a $5 billion settlement would serve as a “bargain.” Facebook reached $55 billion in revenue in 2018.

Even though the agency gave out the largest fine ever for violating Americans’ privacy, Sens. Hawley and Blumenthal contend that the fine would send a signal to other technology companies that they can continue to “push the boundaries” with privacy.

“If the FTC is seen as traffic police handing out speeding tickets to companies profiting off breaking the law, then Facebook and others will continue to push the boundaries,” the senators wrote to the agency.

The senators wrote to the FTC, “Even a fine in the billions is simply a write-down for the company, and large penalties have done little to deter large tech firms.”

Sen. Hawley also said that Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute (OMI), made a good point that the FTC failed to prosecute Facebook’s privacy violations fully, noting that the FTC did not question Zuckerberg.

Stoller said that the federal government should abolish the FTC and “turn the building over to the National Gallery.”

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

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“Hope He Doesn’t Say That Under Oath!” – BOOM – Trump Calls Out Mueller for Lying About Applying for FBI Job “We Have Numerous Witnesses”

Robert Mueller could be in big trouble for that statement.

Earlier today as Cristina Laila reported this morning — President Trump tweeted out this morning that he has witnesses that Mueller applied for the job as FBI Chief.

President Trump: It has been reported that Robert Mueller is saying that he did not apply and interview for the job of FBI Director (and get turned down) the day before he was wrongfully appointed Special Counsel. Hope he doesn’t say that under oath in that we have numerous witnesses to the interview, including the Vice President of the United States!

But during his testimony today Special Counsel Robert Mueller disputed the president’s claim that he applied for the job as FBI Chief.

Via KMOV:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is disputing President Donald Trump’s claim that Mueller was rebuffed in a bid to fill the post of FBI director.

Facing questions from congressional lawmakers, Mueller said he spoke with Trump about the FBI job before he was named as special counsel, but “not as a candidate.”

Then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has said that while the White House invited Mueller to speak to the president about the FBI and thought about asking him to become director again, Mueller did not come in looking for a job.

Trump tweeted Wednesday that there are “numerous witnesses,” including Vice President Mike Pence, who could say that Mueller applied and interviewed for the job and was “turned down” for it.

This could be devastating for Mueller.
It would be awful if he ended up in isolation on Riker’s Island.

The post “Hope He Doesn’t Say That Under Oath!” – BOOM – Trump Calls Out Mueller for Lying About Applying for FBI Job “We Have Numerous Witnesses” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Trump Mocks Democrats Over Disastrous Mueller Hearing

President Donald Trump mocked Democrats on Wednesday over the U.S. House of Representatives hearing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which has been described by some as a political "disaster" for the party.
Trump tweeted: "I would like to thank the Democrats for holding this morning’s hearing. Now, after 3 hours, Robert Mueller has to subject himself to #ShiftySchiff – an Embarrassment to our Country!"

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Going Nuclear! New Antitrust Initiative Launched Against Big Tech

The reckoning may be coming for Big Tech companies from the Department of Justice. The U.S. Department of Justice launched a massive antitrust investigation of Big Tech and whether they engage in anti-competitive behavior on Tuesday July 23. The Wall Street Journal described this as an incoming “threat for companies such as Facebook Inc., Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.” It cited the review will specifically target platforms that dominate “internet search, social media and retail services.”

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NYC’s Uber restrictions found to adversely impact poorest New Yorkers

The municipal government in New York City has made no secret of the war they’ve been waging against gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft for the past several years. They’ve passed one bill after another designed to support their traditional donors in the taxi industry and their unions, making it increasingly difficult for ride-sharing drivers to make a living. But what impact is that having on the community? Uber has been looking into it and found (to nobody’s surprise) that it’s the poorest New Yorkers, particularly in minority communities who are paying the price. (NY Post)

The San Francisco company says city and state regulations reining in ride-hailing services like Uber are only making life difficult for lower income neighborhoods — while having zero impact on more affluent New York City riders.

“The data suggests that the TLC’s regulations may be impacting low-income New Yorkers, especially in communities that are poorly served by yellow taxis,” Chad Dobbs, Uber’s head of rides in the city, told The Post.

Dobb’s statement comes ahead of a hearing before the Taxi Limousine Commission Tuesday to consider more regulations, including extending the current NYC freeze on for-hire vehicles.

Wage requirements and other regulations have driven up the minimum cost of taking an Uber or Lyft in the city considerably. On top of that, the government passed a freeze on the addition of any new for-hire vehicles. As drivers drop out, this leads to fewer cars being available, so surge pricing often goes into effect, driving up costs further. The result is that affluent riders probably don’t notice it all that much, but low income, economically disadvantaged residents are being priced out of the system.

As a result, Uber says that the number of rides being requested in lower-income neighborhoods has grown only three percent in the past year while affluent regions have seen growth of 50% or more.

It’s not as if getting a ride in some of the city’s rougher neighborhoods was easy to begin with. There are areas with higher crime levels where the yellow cabs simply refuse to go for pickup or drop off of passengers. Ride-hailing drivers are more likely to venture into those neighborhoods because they’re not be randomly flagged down by unknown individuals who may be waiting to rob them. Riders have to have a registered account on their phone, so they are less likely to commit a crime in the car with their name on the system’s record of ride requests.

The result of all this is that too many people have a hard time getting a ride. And if you can’t predictably find transportation to get back and forth, it’s kind of hard to hold down a job, adding to the economic woes many of these communities already suffer under.

So who exactly is benefitting from this dogpile of new regulations being hurled at Uber and Lyft? It’s not the city’s poorest residents. It’s the cab companies, their unions and their lobbyists who have the ear of the Mayor and the City Council. And they pay richly for that access. It might be nice if someone pointed all of this out during next year’s elections in the Big Apple.

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Prime Minister Johnson Purges Hardline Remainers from Cabinet, Prepares to Deliver Brexit in 99 Days’ Time

Ministers and candidates for Cabinet are set to walk through the door of 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister Boris Johnson appoints his government.

A dozen ministers have already been fired or resigned. As well as Remainers leaving government, some Brexiteers, a number of which who backed May’s deal or Johnson’s leadership rival Jeremy Hunt, have also exited the Cabinet on Wednesday, as Breitbart London has reported.

According to Sky News, there is not one minister left in Cabinet who was appointed by former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, following today’s firings and resignations.

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg remarked that “This is officially the biggest clear out of Cabinet without a change of party in power — more than half of them gone — [this is] not a reshuffle it’s a new government.”

Media has been speculating the composition of Boris’s top table of ministers, with it being expected to be comprised of between half to two-thirds of Brexiteers.

This liveblog is being updated as Cabinet appointments are announced. Stay tuned for updates…

UPDATE 7:25pm — Ben Wallace has been appointed as defence secretary, Liz Truss international trade secretary

With a military background, the Johnson ally is taking over from Jeremy Hunt.

While Liz Truss has become international trade secretary.

UPDATE 7:20pm — Michael Gove has been appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 

Taking over from David Lidington, Mr Gove has become the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a senior Cabinet office role and effectively a minister without portfolio.

UPDATE 7:05pm — Stephen Barclay maintains job as Brexit secretary 

The third Brexit secretary appointed originally under Mrs May, Mr Barclay reportedly got into a heated conversation with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, telling the French bureaucrat five times that Mrs May’s soft Brexit withdrawal treaty was “dead”.

UPDATE 6:55pm — Dominic Raab appointed foreign secretary, first secretary of state

Taking over from Jeremy Hunt, this would be a return for Mr Raab to the Cabinet. Formerly the Brexit secretary, Mr Raab resigned from government over Mrs May’s handling of Brexit. Like Ms Patel, Mr Raab is considered one of the more right-wing candidates and also comes from the Vote Leave campaign.

Also appointed first secretary of state, Mr Raab is the de facto deputy prime minister.

UPDATE 6:45pm — Priti Patel appointed home secretary

Taking over from Mr Javid, recently appointed chancellor of the exchequer, it would see a return of Ms Patel to the government. The minister was fired in 2017 from her role as the international development secretary by Theresa May for meeting with Israeli officials whilst on holiday without informing the prime minister.

Ms Patel formerly campaigned with Boris Johnson with Vote Leave in 2016; it is expected that Mr Johnson will appoint a number of Vote Leave alumni to the Cabinet and other rolls.

Earlier, Breitbart London reported that Dominic Cummings, one of the architects of the Vote Leave campaign, became Mr Johnson’s senior advisor, while VL’s Robert Oxley and James Starkie have joined the Number 10 media team.

Liz Truss, who had been vying for the role of chancellor, was seen entering Number 10.

UPDATE 6:36pm — Sajid Javid appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer

It was confirmed that the first appointment is that of Sajid Javid, formerly the home secretary, who has been appointed chancellor of the exchequer, taking over from Philip Hammond, the Remain-supporter who resigned earlier today.

Mr Javid and Liz Truss were both said to be vying for the role. Mr Javid was the first minister to be seen going into Downing Street, signalling he was in line for a top role. The minister had “reluctantly” voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, and now says he fully backs the Tory government pledge to take the UK out of the EU.

Followed by Mr Javid into Number 10 was Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, both formerly from the government, suggesting that shortly, there will be announcements that they will have been returned to the frontbench, as well.

Others seen entering Number 10 are Michael Gove, Stephen Barclay, and Ben Wallace, a long-time ally of Johnson.

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Expert: China’s AI Algorithms Reject ‘Western’ Values of ‘Fairness, Transparency, Individual Rights’

Financial Times innovation and technology editor John Thornhill on Monday touched upon the relationship between human values and computer algorithms by asking whether artificial intelligence will be shaped more profoundly by the values of the Western world or Communist China, which is pushing hard for a leading position in AI technology.

“Computer algorithms encoded with human values will increasingly determine the jobs we land, the romantic matches we make, the bank loans we receive and the people we kill, intentionally with military drones or accidentally with self-driving cars,” Thornhill noted.

The most cynical AI theorists might add that we need to think about who we’re going to kill deliberately with self-driving cars. Any such system will inevitably include crisis situation judgments that prioritize the well-being of some humans over others. Does the self-driving car swerve to avoid a child in the middle of the road if that means plowing into a table full of diners outside a cafe?

“How we embed those human values into code will be one of the most important forces shaping our century. Yet no one has agreed what those values should be. Still more unnerving is that this debate now risks becoming entangled in geo-technological rivalry between the U.S. and China,” Thornhill proposed.

The Financial Times editor pointed out that at least 50 different codes of ethics for artificial intelligence have been published to date. The contributions from Chinese corporations and universities are markedly different from those put forth by Western entities:

Codes of principles written in the west tend to focus on fairness, transparency, individual rights, privacy and accountability. But Song Bing, director of the Berggruen Institute China Centre, argued at the seminar that this jars with Chinese sensibilities. “These values are mostly western in origin. That does not mean that there is no resonance in China and the rest of the world. But are they the right set of rules for a global normative framework?” she asked.

Ms Song said that Chinese AI ethicists prioritise values that are open, inclusive and adaptive, speak to the totality of humanity and reject zero-sum competition. Summarising this philosophy, she told the seminar said that they add up to “great compassion and deep harmony”. Collective good is just as important as individual rights.

However, Liu Zhe, a philosopher from Peking University, said it would be wrong to believe that there was any one Chinese value system, mixing as it does elements of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. That range of values would militate against a universal approach to AI within China, let alone elsewhere.

Zeng Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing also questioned the need for a global set of principles. “They should not compete with each other, but complete each other to provide a global landscape for AI,” he said.

Liu Zhe may have forgotten that China is an authoritarian collectivist society, and increasingly a one-man dictatorship under President Xi Jinping. The Communist Party is unlikely to allow conflicting sets of rules to frolic among the philosophical wildflowers of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. It doesn’t even allow people to embrace those philosophies when they conflict with Communist Party dogma, let alone semi-autonomous machines.

Zeng Yi’s notion of competing ethical systems jousting with each other until the perfect code of conduct for AI appears is interesting in theory, but unrealistic in a highly interconnected world. Chinese AI will interact in a consequential manner with Americans, and American AI will affect the lives of Chinese citizens. 

China is not exactly shy about feeding huge amounts of information about both its own nationals and foreigners into AI systems, a point Thornhill illustrated by citing American concerns about Chinese ownership of the gay dating app Grindr. There will be strong demand around the world for at least a minimal set of universal ethical guidelines.

Zeng also commented that Chinese researchers think of humans as “the worst animals in the world,” so inferior human ethical standards should not be applied to artificial intelligence. Thornhill reported that Western participants in the seminar where he spoke found this a “false and dangerous premise.” Teaching intelligent machines to regard humans as the worst beings in all creation? What could go wrong?

Long before we have to worry about self-aware computers treating humanity as a virus to be cured, we must concern ourselves with the contrast between Western privacy concerns and China’s “techno-utilitarian” model, which essentially means prioritizing the “greatest good for the greatest number” over the “moral imperative to protect individual rights.”

Thornhill found it a distressingly short hop for techno-utilitarianism to go from facial recognition scanners on grocery store shopping carts (so convenient for the customers!) to the nightmarish surveillance state China has established in the restless Xinjiang province. 

The Chinese believe techno-utilitarianism gives them a huge advantage in technologies such as self-driving cars because they have few privacy scruples about assembling the massive databases that fuel AI development, they tend to deploy new technology quickly and deal with complications later, and they don’t have to worry about political resistance against government support for programs that would be intensely opposed in the U.S. or Europe. 

Time will soon tell if Western concerns for privacy and individual rights are as much of an obstacle to AI development as the Chinese think… and whether those concerns are ultimately overridden in a hyper-connected world where techno-utilitarianism is the prevailing ideology.

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Dr. Robert Epstein: Google’s Ephemeral Experiences Manipulate People on a ‘Massive Scale’

Dr. Robert Epstein, the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, appeared on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss Google’s latest tactics in election manipulation and how to combat them with host Alex Marlow. 

Dr. Robert Epstein appeared on Breitbart News Daily this week alongside host and Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow to discuss the current state of Google and how the company could use its technology to influence voters. 

Host Alex Marlow discussed Epstein’s research saying: “I think you put out some pretty hard data on how many votes you think were moved in the 2016 election and I think you estimated it was over two million or so, is that not the case?” Epstein responded: “Well it was at least 2.6 million and it could have been as many as 10.4 million depending on how aggressive google was in using the various tools they have available to them to shift votes. I can’t pin it down exactly but I know it’s in that range.”

Discussing the need for a system designed to track Google search results and suggestions, Epstein stated: “We need big monitoring systems in place, I’m so far the only person that’s created monitoring systems, I did one in 2016 and one in 2018. I’m trying now to raise funds to build a very big monitoring system for 2020 and to monitor a lot more than Google search results, to monitor newsfeeds, answers that people are getting from their personal assistants.”

Epstein explained why monitoring search results and auto-suggest terms is so important when monitoring election interference, stating: “If you don’t monitor, you can’t go back in time and figure out what these companies were showing people because what they’re showing people is ephemeral. That’s the term that Google’s own employees use internally, they’re showing ephemeral experiences, those really short-lived experiences that kind of appear before your eyes and then disappear, like search results for example.”

Epstein continued: “They’re using ephemeral experiences to manipulate people on a massive scale, people don’t know they’re being manipulated, and there’s no record kept of those experiences, they’re just generated for you on the fly and then they disappear.”

Listen to the full interview on Breitbart News Daily here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

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Mueller Gets Nailed When Jim Jordan Catches Him in Whopper of a Lie About Where Intel Came from

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on Wednesday grilled former special counsel Robert Mueller, who was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Throughout the hearing, Mueller declined to answer questions multiple times. But Jordan appeared to catch Mueller in a big lie when he asked about…

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