Chinese Government Decides It's Done Fucking Around, Forces Hong Kong To Engage In 'Patriot-Only' Elections

from the flag-humping-now-mandatory dept

Hong Kong is now just China. The last pretense of the region being anything but another Chinese province has been washed away.

It's been a steady erosion since China took possession of the region from the British government back in 1997. Despite an agreement to steer clear of direct control of Hong Kong's government until 2047, the Chinese government immediately began meddling, amping things up when Hong Kong residents engaged in sustained pro-democracy protests.

Over the past couple of years, the Chinese government has turned protesting into a crime with life sentences attached and restyled the Hong Kong government in its own image. It has also used the greatest excuse ever invented for governmental power grabs -- "national security" -- to make it easier to jail opponents, eject problematic government officials, and control the flow of information, along with the information itself.

Control of the internet has been handed over to Hong Kong police, an entity which is entirely subservient to its new masters. As if that wasn't enough, the Chinese government, with the assistance of the complicit remnants of Hong Kong's government, converted the burgeoning police state into a literal police state by making a police commissioner the region's Secretary of Security (the same police commissioner who presided over numerous acts of violence against pro-democracy activists) and elevating the former Secretary of Security to fully-compromised Chief Executive Carrie Lam's second-in-command.

The latest move -- enabled by a law passed earlier this year -- cuts Hong Kong residents out of the election loop. Only certain people are allowed to vote for their new representatives and officials, and they've been preapproved by the Chinese government.

Hong Kong's political elite began selecting a powerful committee on Sunday which will choose the city's next leader and nearly half the legislature under a new "patriots only" system imposed by Beijing.

[...]

The first poll under that new system -- carrying the slogan "Patriots rule Hong Kong" -- took place on Sunday as members of the city's ruling classes cast votes for a 1,500-seat Election Committee.

In December, that committee will appoint 40 of the city's 90 legislators -- 30 others will be chosen by special interest groups and just 20 will be directly elected. The following year, it will pick Hong Kong's next Beijing-approved leader.

China is at least being honest about why it's instituted a new election system that ensures China will be well-represented in Hong Kong's government.

Beijing insists the new political system is more representative and will ensure "anti-China" elements are not allowed into office.

Carrie Lam, the current head of Hong Kong, made it clear she agrees with the new system inflicted on her region with a statement that sounds like it was crafted by a North Korean government official/Donald Trump speechwriter:

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam told reporters Sunday: "The Election Committee elections are very meaningful as it is the first elections held after we have improved the electoral system to ensure that only patriots can take office."

A caricature in a political satire couldn't have said it better. And that's all Lam is at this point. Unfortunately, she presides over a region that has to pay for this buffoonish kowtowing with their lives and liberties. To be sure, self-preservation is a powerful motivating force for most politicians, but Lam's abdication of her role as a servant of Hong Kong residents means people are going to end up dead at the hands of her new overseers.

And, to be sure, Lam herself wants to live an unencumbered life, but she's going to have to step over the bodies of the "non-patriots" she used to serve to do it. The same can be said for everyone in the Hong Kong government who has decided it's better to serve oppressors than fight to live free.

This bogus, jingoistic election is the end of Hong Kong as we know it. China will be more than happy to profit from the region's immense wealth, but it's never going to restore rights to the people who made Hong Kong what it is.

Filed Under: china, civil rights, elections, hong kong, patriots

ISPs Already Fighting FCC Plan To End Anti-Competitive Landlord Broadband Deals

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Earlier this month we noted how the FCC announced it would be taking a closer look at the dodgy deals big ISPs make with landlords to hamstring broadband competition. While the FCC passed rules in 2008 outlawing strict exclusivity agreements, big ISPs have, for years, tap-danced around the loose wording of the restrictions, often by simply calling what they're doing... something else. ISPs also still do stuff like charging door fees just to access the building (making it tougher on less wealthy, small ISPs), or striking deals that ban any competitors from even advertising in the building.

Obviously the broadband industry loves these sorts of deals, as they effectively give them a building-by-building monopoly over broadband access. As such they're already trying to apply pressure on the FCC while claiming such arrangements are secretly a really good thing:

"Comcast, Charter, Cox, and NCTA–The Internet & Television Association (the cable industry's primary lobbying group) met with FCC staff to discuss the topic on September 2, according to an ex parte filing submitted last week by NCTA. During the meeting, NCTA "described the benefits of continuing to allow providers to enter into exclusive wiring agreements with MTE owners. Exclusive wiring agreements do not deny new entrants access to MTEs. Rather, exclusive wiring agreements are pro-competitive and help ensure that state-of-the-art wiring will be deployed in MTEs to the benefit of consumers," the filing said."

Granted this is the same industry that has a severe allergy to acknowledging that the U.S. broadband market has any flaws whatsoever, so of course Comcast's policy and lobbying arm thinks anti-competitive building deals are covertly a great thing. While the FCC's original rules tried to open up competitor access to in-building ISP wiring (often the property of a cable giant like Comcast), ISPs simply tap-danced around the restrictions by deeding ownership of those wires to a landlord in exchange for exclusive access to the wires. Because they're no longer technically owned by the ISP, exclusivity deals no longer violate the FCC rules.

It's all a very stupid affair, and highlights not only the lengths ISPs are willing to go to to hamstring competition, but the perpetual failure of U.S. telecom regulators to maintain baseline levels of competency. Not only were the original rules terribly written and constructed, ISPs have been exploiting that initial failure for more than a decade with absolutely no meaningful penalty. And while FCC does occasionally admit there's a problem here, the net result is usually little more than a few meetings.

This time the FCC is opening up the public commenting system for input from the public and ISPs that are harmed by these practices. But again, there's no guarantee the process actually survives ISP lobbying and ends with meaningful improvements to the rules. And because the Biden camp still hasn't appointed a permanent boss, the agency still lacks the voting majority necessary to implement actual reform anytime soon anyway.

Filed Under: apartment buildings, broadband, competition, fcc, isps, landlords
Companies: charter, comcast, cox, ncta

Turner Entertainment Forces Name Change Of 'Surrender Dorothy' Beer, Which Isn't Actually Referencing Wizard Of Oz

from the surrender-indeed dept

It won't come as a total surprise that we have covered intellectual property stories involving The Wizard of Oz in the past. Both the book and film are iconic to say the least, so it would perhaps be a bit strange if such issues didn't arise from time to time. That being said, the relevant players here tend to be on the extreme end of the enforcement spectrum, which leads to extreme cases such as Warner Media opposing a trademark filing by a self-proclaimed "wicked witch" for some reason.

The point is that the IP holders for the film tend to see anything remotely resembling a reference to the film as infringement of some kind or another. A recent example of this is Turner Entertainment, part of Warner Media, forcing 7 Locks Brewing to change its name and branding of its beer "Surrender Dorothy."

What was originally known as “Surrender Dorothy” is now simply called “Surrender.” The Wicked Witch won and 7 Locks had to throw in the bar towel. In this case, it was Turner Entertainment that was no friend of Surrender Dorothy. Its lawyers dropped a house on 7 Locks Brewing’s effort to trademark the name of their signature beer. (I think I may have mixed metaphors there.)

“Basically, Turner owns the rights to ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” said Keith Beutel, co-founder of 7 Locks. “They claimed that we were using the term ‘Surrender Dorothy’ and they didn’t want any confusion with their branding.”

It wasn’t just the name. It was the design on the can, too, which featured a curvy yellow thoroughfare that the media giant insisted was too similar to the “Yellow Brick Road.”

So, "Surrender Dorothy," a yellow road, and also on the label that road leads to a castle or palace with several large spires. I know what you're thinking: those sure sound like references to Oz. But, no, it's actually a reference to a famous story and prank that occurred in the DC area, where 7 Locks is located. The castle spires aren't Oz; they're the Mormon temple. The yellow road isn't the yellow brick road; it's the Beltway. And the Dorothy? Well, that was the prank I mentioned.

A refresher for anyone unfamiliar with how the beer got its name: For years starting in the 1970s, graffiti would show up on a railway bridge over the Capital Beltway just west of Georgia Avenue. As motorists drove around the Outer Loop, the Oz-like spires of the Mormon temple looming ahead, they’d see “Surrender Dorothy.” It was a bit of whimsy, refreshed whenever it was painted over by CSX, the railroad whose trains use the bridge.

I’ve never been able to find out who first daubed the bridge with that expression, but I did find their inspiration: Catholic schoolgirls who had earlier created a temporary “Surrender Dorothy” message by stuffing wadded-up newspaper in the chain-link fence of a nearby vehicle bridge.

So there's a semblance of a reference to Dorothy from Oz, but it's a 2nd degree reference at best. It's not the brewery's fault that the temple and beltway look so much like Oz that they served as this inspiration. And that's not actually the point of 7 Locks' label. The point is in homage to a local legend of sorts.

But, because trademark bullying works, and even though some commentators believe the brewery could prevail if it fought, the "Surrender Dorothy" branding has been, well, surrendered. But not without a bit of a middle finger on the brewery's new label.

So the new beer is called simply Surrender. The image on the can — unveiled early in the summer — still features the Mormon temple, but the Beltway is gray, not yellow. And the graffito on the bridge over it is being painted over by a man in a hard hat. All you can see are the letters “DORO . . .”

What a great victory for Warner Media...

Filed Under: beer, surrender dorothy, trademark, wizard of oz
Companies: 7 locks, turner entertainment, warner media

Massachusetts' Top Court Says Police Need Warrants To Search Body Camera Recordings

from the no-rummaging-through-the-servers dept

Body-worn cameras were supposed to usher in a new era of police accountability. That hasn't happened. At best, they've generated a ton of additional footage of interactions and arrests that may prove valuable to criminal defendants and people filing civil rights lawsuits. "May" is the operative word. Cops still control the footage, which limits public access and increases the odds that unflattering/unhelpful (to police) footage rarely ends up in the hands of the public. The end result is that prosecutors have been the biggest beneficiary of this so-called accountability tech.

A case in Massachusetts has raised some interesting constitutional questions about body cameras and recordings. Officers responding to a domestic violence call recorded the interior of a home with their body cameras. Weeks after that call, they accessed the footage to find corroborating evidence that was used to apply for a search warrant. One of these is a constitutional violation, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court has ruled. (via Courthouse News)

Here's what happened during that domestic disturbance call, as recounted in the opinion [PDF]:

After the first responding officers had entered the apartment, another officer arrived who was equipped with a bodyworn camera, which recorded the areas of the home through which he moved, as well as his interactions with the defendant, his sister, and others in the apartment, including a number of police officers. The video footage obtained shows that when the officer arrived at the home, the door was ajar; he entered the living room, where at least two other officers were present…

The officer wearing the camera walked past the defendant's sister and ascended the stairs. Standing at the top of the staircase, he spoke with the defendant, who was standing at the threshold of a bedroom. Through the open bedroom door, the camera captured a woman in the background. The woman was zipping her coat. Floral-printed curtains adorned the bedroom window just behind the area where the woman was dressing.

The sister shouted from downstairs, and the defendant yelled "shut up." He explained to the officer with the camera that the girlfriend could not be rushed, as she was getting dressed, but that they would leave shortly. Once dressed, the girlfriend and the defendant moved toward the stairs; they were stopped by the officer.

The "floral-printed curtains" would later prove instrumental in building a case against the defendant. The officer who uploaded the photo informed detectives about its existence, since the defendant was one of several suspects being investigated by the Boston PD's gang task force. He was already under surveillance by the BPD, with a couple of officers managing to successfully "friend" the defendant on Facebook, giving them access to his posts.

Here's where the distinctive curtains resurfaced:

Two weeks after the domestic disturbance call, the detective noticed that the defendant had posted what the officer believed to be a recently created video recording of the defendant holding a firearm in a bedroom, with floral-printed curtains visible in the background. After he saw the posted recording, the detective retrieved the DVD containing the body-worn camera footage from his colleague and reviewed it.

Peering into the defendant's home caught on the body-worn camera footage, the detective saw the defendant's girlfriend zipping her coat in the defendant's bedroom, while standing next to what the detective believed were the same distinctive curtains visible in the posted video recording. This was significant to the detective because it established the location of the posted video recording that had showed the defendant apparently holding a firearm.

Using this information gleaned from the BWC recording made two weeks earlier, detectives obtained a search warrant for home, specifically noting the curtains seen in both the social media post and the officer's camera footage. The house was searched, resulting in the discovery of weapons and some marijuana.

The defendant argued the initial recording violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The court disagrees, noting that the recording of areas in plain view of the officer merely duplicated what the officer could see with his own eyes.

We conclude that, where, as here, the officer was lawfully present in the home and the body-worn camera captured only the areas and items in the plain view of the officer as he or she traversed the home, in a manner consistent with the reasons for the officer's lawful presence, the recording is not a search in the constitutional sense and does not violate the Fourth Amendment or art. 14. This conclusion follows from our jurisprudence regarding the photographic preservation of a crime scene.

Even though a recording is more "permanent" than an officer's memory, there's still no violation. Precedent says officers can document crime scenes and domestic disturbances fall on the long list of criminal acts officers are sent to respond to. The recording was not a violation, even though it could be accessed at any point past its creation by investigators.

However, the court says viewing the footage a few weeks later was unconstitutional.

[W]e conclude that while the plain view observation doctrine extended to the officer's recording of his interactions in the defendant's home in response to the domestic disturbance call, that doctrine cannot be stretched to sanction the subsequent review of the footage for reasons unrelated to the call.

The 21st century is no time to bring back some of the worst aspects of British rule, says the court.

The ability of police officers, at any later point, to trawl through video footage to look for evidence of crimes unrelated to the officers' lawful presence in the home when they were responding to a call for assistance is the virtual equivalent of a general warrant.

The BPD can't do that without a warrant, given the lack of connection between the domestic disturbance and any suspected gun/drug criminal activity.

Moreover, the subsequent review of the footage in connection with the unrelated investigation of the defendant falls outside the rationale justifying the recording in the first instance. Such a review is divorced from protecting police officers from false accusations of misconduct, ensuring police accountability, or preserving a record of police-civilian interaction. Instead, the use of body-worn camera footage in this manner, after the fact, for investigatory purposes unrelated to the domestic disturbance call, had the effect of allowing the gang unit detective to peer into the defendant's home for evidence to support an unrelated criminal investigation.

The government tried to salvage its warrantless search by claiming it was only a very small unconstitutional search. This argument is rejected as well.

[T]he Commonwealth contends that the BPD review of the body-camera footage was not extensive, and that the review was targeted at one specific detail, the floral-printed curtains in the defendant's bedroom. But the constitutional protection against unreasonable, warrantless searches is no less applicable to a targeted search than it is to a more extensive one.

With that detail removed from the warrant, the warrant most likely does not contain enough probable cause to justify the search of the house. The motion to suppress is granted and the case is kicked back down to the lower court, which will give the Boston PD one more chance to salvage its unconstitutionally gotten gains. But the line is clear. Recordings: good. Digging into saved recordings to aid in unrelated investigations: no good… not without a warrant.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, body cameras, massachusetts, recordings, warrant

Hongkongers Battle Supporters Of Beijing For The Soul Of The Chinese-Language Wikipedia

from the beyond-edit-wars dept

When Wikipedia was first launched 20 years ago, it was widely derided as an impossible project, bound to fail or, at best, to produce worthless rubbish. And yet today, along with open source software, it is undoubtedly the best demonstration that a distributed team of volunteers can produce work that is not just free but arguably better than anything created for profit using traditional, top-down management approaches. But beyond that, Wikipedia has become something else: a unique repository of validated information and thus, implicitly, a store of "truth" about the past and the present. That has turned many pages of Wikipedia into a battleground, as people with different views fight in sometimes fierce "edit wars" over what counts as "verified". The choice of information and even how things are phrased often have considerable social, economic or political importance. No surprise, then, that there is a struggle taking place over what Wikipedia should say is happening in the contested space of Hong Kong. Back in July, an article in the Hong Kong Free Press explained:

As Hongkongers reckon with the closure of one of the city's mainstream news outlets [Apple Daily], drastic political changes and a sweeping national security law, the city's keyboard warriors on Wikipedia are also coming under pressure.

Battles between competing editors of the crowd-sourced encyclopaedia's articles about Hong Kong political events have been a daily occurrence since the beginning of the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests.

As increasing numbers of mainland Chinese contribute to the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia, those in Hong Kong worry that their perspectives will be lost:

In the war to set narratives using news sources that may have political biases, whether pro-Hong Kong or pro-China, the question of which news outlet gets a seal of "reliability" becomes a key battleground.

Since then, the situation has become so serious that the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and operates all the different language editions of Wikipedia, has been forced to step in. Maggie Dennis, the Wikimedia Foundation's Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability, wrote this week of "infiltration" of Wikimedia systems, "including positions with access to personally identifiable information and elected bodies of influence." Dennis claims that "we know that some users have been physically harmed as a result. With this confirmed, we have no choice but to act swiftly and appropriately in response." The actions were as follows:

We have banned seven users and desysopped [removed administrator privileges from] a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China. We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors.

Setting the narrative for these politically-sensitive events is so important to the Chinese government that it is unlikely that Wikimedia's moves will put an end to this "infiltration". On the contrary: we can probably expect the organization to come under even more pressure to tell things the way Beijing wants them portrayed, and to hell with Wikipedia's cherished neutral point of view.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: beijing, china, culture, hong kong, shared knowledge, truth
Companies: wikipedia

Russian Government Abuses IP Law, Regular Law To Shut Down Alexey Navalny's 'Smart Voting' App

from the hashtag-just-Putin-things dept

The Russian government sent KGB 2.0 (the FSB) to kill opposition leader Alexey Navalny late last summer. That effort failed. Navalny survived the poisoning attempt to continue to be a thorn in Putin's side. So, the Russian government did the next best thing. It tossed Navalny in jail, revoking his suspended sentence to imprison him in a "corrective labor colony."

That still hasn't managed to silence Navalny to the Russian ruling party's satisfaction. He's still capable of moving masses and shaping elections despite being confined. One of his efforts -- Smart Voting -- continues to make things difficult for the dominant "United Russia" party. Debuting in November 2018, Smart Voting aids in the consolidation of opposition votes in areas where parliamentary races are close enough they can possibly be swung in favor of opposition candidates.

The effort to silence Navalny continues, with the Russian government trying to kill off his Smart Voting project. Its first move was to secure a court order forbidding Google and Yandex from returning search results for the term "smart voting." Enjoy this incredibly bold blast of extreme shadiness that does everything but provide a phonetic pronunciation of the word "corruption."

The Moscow Arbitration Tribunal issued an injunction prohibiting Google and Yandex from creating a list of results for the search query “Smart Voting”. The relevant decisions were made on the website published by the court.

The documents showed that the lawsuit against both companies was brought by Woolintertrade. The main activity of the company is the wholesale of agricultural raw materials. Woolintertrade deals with the purchase and processing of unwashed sheep’s wool in order to sell it. In the summer, the company received approval from Rospatent to register the “Smart Voting” trademark.

So, through the magic of government intervention, a company that has nothing to do with "smart" and/or "voting" managed to secure a trademark during the run-up to an election and talk a court into issuing an injunction that would prevent voters from working together to elect opposition candidates.

This bullshit still didn't satisfy the Russian government, which has now ordered Google and Apple to boot Navalny's Smart Voting app from its stores.

Russia demanded this month that Apple and Google remove the app from their stores, saying a refusal to do so would be treated as meddling in its parliamentary election.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Thursday, Russia said official approaches had been made to the two companies' chief executives.

The demands worked. The apps were removed. And the worst possible outcome for both companies has been achieved: the gratitude of the thuggish Russian government.

During a daily briefing Friday, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin welcomed Google and Apple’s decisions to comply with the Russian government’s lawful orders.

“Both platforms received a notification and they have apparently decided [to delete the Navalny apps] in accordance with the letter and spirit of the law,” Peskov told reporters.

“We dislike [Smart Voting]. This is just another absolutely provocative attempt that actually harms voters. There’s no other way of treating this,” Interfax quoted Peskov as saying.

Yep, giving Russian citizens the power to loosen United Russia's grip on national governance is definitely "provocative." However, it's definitely not "harmful" to voters… unless Peskov was insinuating those who voted for opposition candidates will be subjected to retaliatory actions by the government they failed to unseat.

As for Apple and Google, refusing to comply was always an option. Why they didn't refuse remains unclear. I mean, both companies could have just told the Russian government to put it on their respective tabs.

Google, Apple and social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Telegram have been subject to several months of court-imposed fines totaling several million U.S. dollars for their failure to delete content that Moscow deems illegal, including calls to attend unsanctioned protests.

The only difference here was the dangling threat of criminal prosecution, which may have forced the companies to make the wrong decision for the right reasons: to keep their Russian-based employees from being rounded up and sent away to penal colonies to spend a few years with Navalny and his supporters.

Finally, there's this censorial cherry on top:

Following a request from Russian authorities, YouTube has blocked access to a video posted by Alexei Navalny’s team with a list of anti-Kremlin candidates it wants voters to back in nationwide parliamentary elections currently underway

That's right. A complete "fuck you and your YouTube video too" from a government obviously afraid it can't win a parliamentary election without pulling out all the stops to silence the imprisoned leader of its opposition.

Filed Under: alexey navalny, app stores, content moderation, corruption, court orders, russia, smart voting, voter suppression, voting apps
Companies: apple, google

As We're Told That No New Social Media App Can Make It, TikTok Surpasses Facebook Downloads & YouTube Watch Time

from the huh,-look-at-that dept

While I am concerned about the power wielded by giant tech companies and am interested in creating more competition, I'm always a little perplexed by the arguments that people make that, somehow, the "big four" companies of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are so dominant that no new competitor can ever catch up to them. It's one thing to point to similar articles about Myspace that totally dismissed Facebook as a possible competitor to that platform, but it's another thing altogether to see new social media apps... actually doing pretty well.

TikTok really only launched in 2017 (yes, there were some predecessors, but what we now think of as TikTok was launched in 2017, and really only took off after purchasing Musical.ly in late 2018), by which point we were already told that Facebook and Google had locked down the market entirely. Hell, remember the original FTC complaint against Facebook didn't even mention TikTok? And then the amended complaint (after the initial one was tossed) barely mentions it and only does so to insist that it's somehow different.

But, last month it came out that in 2020, TikTok was downloaded more than Facebook. Now, you could maybe try to make the argument that this is because everyone already has Facebook on their phones, but it still is noteworthy. Perhaps even more noteworthy is another report noting that TikTok has overtaken YouTube in average watch time in both the US and UK.

That report does note that YouTube still has more viewers, and thus greater overall time watched, but on a per user basis, users are spending more time on TikTok than YouTube.

There can still be reasonable concerns about practices from the big companies, if they're shown to be suppressing competition. But it seems harder and harder to buy the line that it's "impossible" for there to be new entrants in the market these days. Because that's clearly not the case.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, downloads, new entrants, social media
Companies: facebook, tiktok, youtube

Daily Deal: NYTSTND QUAD MagSafe Wireless + USB-C Charging Station

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

NYTSTND QUAD lets you charge up to 4 devices all at once. You can wirelessly charge 3 devices at once with the 5-coil full surface area and the built-in Genuine Apple Watch Magnetic charger. An integrated USB-C connector is available for charging another compatible device. This charging dock packs in protection protocols to keep your device and the charger itself safe. NYTSTND QUAD combines aesthetics and performance in a compact, elegant design. Made of premium Amish sourced wood and high-quality real leather, NYTSTND QUAD is designed to blend into any environment. It comes in four different colors and is on sale for $213.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

American Malware Purveyor That Did Nothing To Limit Misuse Now Horrified To Find Gov't Of India Misused Its Products

from the who-could-possibly-have-seen-this-inevitable-outcome dept

Another malware purveyor is shocked, SHOCKED to discover its products have been used to do Very Bad Things. Thomas Brewster has more details for Forbes. Here's the setup:

Earlier this year, researchers at Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky witnessed a cyberespionage campaign targeting Microsoft Windows PCs at government and telecom entities in China and Pakistan. They began in June 2020 and continued through to April 2021. What piqued the researchers’ interest was the hacking software used by the digital spies, whom Kaspersky had dubbed Bitter APT, a pseudonym for an unspecified government agency. Aspects of the code looked like some the Moscow antivirus provider had previously seen and attributed to a company it gave the cryptonym “Moses.”

More digging by Kaspersky and others discovered who was actually behind these deployments. And the source wasn't some state-supported hackers or a malware purveyor with a malleable set of morals. No, the exploits -- which were deployed to indiscriminately target people in Pakistan and China -- were sold (in a way) to the government of India by an American firm, Exodus Intelligence.

Operating out of Austin, Texas, Exodus doesn't craft many exploits of its own, but rather provides access to information about known exploits, including where to obtain them, and how they can be utilized and leveraged.

Exodus, when asked by Five Eyes countries (an alliance of intelligence-sharing countries that includes the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) or their allies, will provide both information on a zero-day vulnerability and the software required to exploit it. But its main product is akin to a Facebook news feed of software vulnerabilities, sans exploits, for up to $250,000 a year. It’s marketed primarily as a tool for defenders, but customers can do what they want with the information on those Exodus zero days—ones that typically cover the most popular operating systems, from Windows to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.

The government of India chose to leverage this knowledge to indiscriminately assault China and Pakistan entities in hopes of hitting targets of interest. That wasn't what Exodus Intelligence's info feed was designed to do. It's only what it ended up being used for. And now the CEO of Exodus is acting like a parent disappointed a child has exceeded the boundaries he never bothered to set.

That feed is what India bought and likely weaponized, says 37-year-old Exodus CEO and cofounder Logan Brown. He tells Forbes that, after an investigation, he believes India handpicked one of the Windows vulnerabilities from the feed—allowing deep access to Microsoft’s operating system—and Indian government personnel or a contractor adapted it for malicious means. India was subsequently cut off from buying new zero-day research from his company in April, says Brown, and it has worked with Microsoft to patch the vulnerabilities. The Indian use of his company’s research was beyond the pale, though Exodus doesn’t limit what customers do with its findings, Brown says, adding, “You can use it offensively if you want, but not if you’re going to be . . . shotgun blasting Pakistan and China. I don't want any part of that.”

While it's great the CEO doesn't want any part of that, not placing limits on end users is always going to result in things like this. And while it's unlikely writing up a new ToS is going to deter customers from "shotgun blasting" people with the weaponry you've provided, it at least allows you to terminate contracts and access without having to engage in a bunch of costly litigation or fruitless negotiations.

And, if you're going to be in the business of selling exploits (or indirect access to exploits), you need to be way more proactive on the security front.

Brown is also now exploring whether or not its code has been leaked or abused by others. Beyond the two zero days already abused, according to Kaspersky, “at least six vulnerabilities” made by Moses have made it out “into the wild” in the last two years.

Whoops. That doesn't look good. But, in all fairness, even the NSA and CIA have seen their tech tools and exploits leaked, resulting in the infliction of misery worldwide by people a shade more malicious than the entities belatedly bemoaning the unplanned distribution of their digital secrets.

Speaking of belated, here's some regret from the cofounder of Exodus Intelligence, Aaron Portnoy.

[T]oday, the 36-year-old self-taught hacker, who dropped out of Northwestern to carve his own career in cybersecurity, worries that he never knew who had access to his code or how they used it. He now regrets relinquishing control over his zero days to salespeople. “It's almost like I was being taken advantage of . . . It felt very much like I was a tool that was being used for a bigger purpose that I really had no insight into,” says Portnoy, now plying his trade at Randori, a Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm.

Sure, but not so concerning Portnoy didn't leap from Exodus to defense contract Raytheon, and from there to startup Boldend, which partnered with Raytheon to (and I'm directly quoting here) "accelerate cyber operations with greater force."

While it's great that Exodus has revoked the Indian government's access to its exploit feed, the larger problem remains. American companies are aiding and abetting mass surveillance, targeting of dissidents and activists, and other human rights abuses by not being more selective of who they sell to or placing limits on how their products are used. This puts them in the same shady neighborhood as overseas malware merchants like NSO Group and Hacking Team. Sooner or later, it's going to put them on the wrong end of UN sanctions or DOJ investigations. Until then, it appears it will be risky business as usual, making the United States home to plenty of proxy human rights violators.

Filed Under: china, cybersecurity, india, malware, pakistan, security, zero days
Companies: exodus intelligence

FCC's Carr Still Pushing A Dumb Telecom Tax On 'Big Tech'

from the misdirection-ahoy dept

A few months back we noted how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had taken to Newsweek to dust off a fifteen year old AT&T talking point. Namely that "big tech" companies get a "free ride" on telecom networks, and, as a result, should throw billions of dollars at "big telecom" for no real reason. You'll recall it was this exact argument that launched the net neutrality debate, when former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre proclaimed that Google wouldn't be allowed to "ride his pipes for free." Basically, telecom giants have long wanted somebody else to fund network builds they routinely leave half finished despite billions in subsidies.

Carr, who has been trying to seed this idea in the press and policy circles for months, was back at it again last week, pointing to a new Oracle-funded study that suggests funding broadband expansion via a tax on advertising revenue:

As usual with Carr, there are a few problems here.

The study in question took a look at the FCC's USF system, which helps subsidize broadband expansion and provides some small broadband, wireless, or phone discounts (a paltry $9.25 per month, to be specific) to low income Americans. At no point does the study actually suggest companies like Google get a "free ride" on the internet. Nor does it suggest "big tech" alone is responsible for funding the program. It does recommend that taxing bloated adtech revenues in general might be a good way to shore up lagging USF contributions.

But the study also recommends several other things, like helping ensure broadband subsidies are useful by raising the FCC's current pathetic definition of broadband (25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up) to something modern and useful, something Carr has actively opposed. Why has he opposed it? Because the telecom industry opposes it. Why does the telecom industry oppose it? Because a higher standard would reveal market failure, a lack of competition, and how that results in substandard and expensive service. It's a story as old as time at this point.

There are a few things that are true. One, the USF does need more funding. As the report notes, the flatlining level of broadband subscriber growth (because of a saturated market) means that just levying USF fees on broadband and phone lines doesn't scale with funding needs. It's not unreasonable to consider expanding the contribution base to the profit-rich adtech sector in general, but again that's just one idea of several. And Carr distorts it in strange ways that signal he's not really approaching any of this in good faith.

One, the idea that Google gets a "free ride" on the internet is a bullshit, antiquated talking point telecom giants have been pushing for years. A company like Google spends billions of dollars on their own transit, cloud, and broadband infrastructure. Hell, Google even owns its own residential ISP (Google Fiber). And as the freshly unredacted version of Epic's antitrust lawsuit against Google shows, Google has (stupidly, frankly) been paying wireless carriers billions of dollars since 2009 simply to not compete with its app store. There's no free ride with U.S. telecom. Ever. Claims to the contrary are just nonsense.

If you're familiar with telecom problems and serious about fixing them (and again, Carr is not), your first impulse should not be "make Netflix and Google throw money at it." Your first topic of discussion should be the endless tax breaks, subsidies, and regulatory favors (see: killing net neutrality) we throw at telecom giants for little to nothing.

Time after time after time entrenched telecom giants promise they'll cover the world in cheap, next-generation broadband and amazing jobs if only they get "X," be that merger approval, more subsidies, deregulation, whatever. And time after time after time those promises prove absolutely hollow. Hell, Carr and Trump's FCC majority is fresh off a scandal in which it doled out more than $9 billion dollars to companies that were gaming the entire FCC process, nabbing huge sums of money by making promises that made no coherent sense.

Carr not only doesn't bring any of that up here, he never brings it up. He always actively ignores all of telecom's warts, including the indisputable fact that U.S. broadband is heavily regionally monopolized, resulting in high prices that harm everybody, particularly low income Americans. Like Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai, he's literally incapable of acknowledging the telecom sector has any such flaws, which should set off alarm bells. If you're a telecom regulator who can't admit the telecom sector has major flaws, yet is always incessantly fixated on the flaws of companies telecom has a beef with and you don't regulate (Pai had this very same mysterious habit), I'd say that's a pretty solid warning sign you may not be operating consistently and objectively as a policymaker.

Again, I think the telecom and media (Rupert) industries have been working hard in DC for several years to exploit the recent (and usually very valid) animosity against big tech to push several agendas. One is to saddle companies whose ad revenues they covet with additional layers of obligation and regulation, while removing oversight of their own sectors (see: the elimination of media consolidation and net neutrality rules by Carr and Pai). The other is, which is a 20 year old ploy at this point, to push the idea that other companies and industries should be giving them billions in additional dollars for networks that mysteriously always wind up only half deployed.

Filed Under: advertising, big tech, brendan carr, fcc, free ride, net neutrality, tax, universal service fund
Companies: facebook, google, oracle