Music is changing lives in some American prisons, where guitars and songwriting are sparking creativity in inmates. Mike O’Sullivan reports from a state prison in Norco, California, about the music program Jail Guitar Doors.
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Month: March 2018
On the same day Facebook bought ads in U.S. and British newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media site faced new questions about collecting phone numbers and text messages from Android devices.
The website Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages.
Facebook said Sunday the information is uploaded to secure servers and comes only from Android users who opt-in to allow it. Spokeswomen say the data is not sold or shared with users’ friends or outside apps. They say the data is used “to improve people’s experience across Facebook” by helping to connect with others.
The company also says in a website posting that it does not collect the content of text messages or calls. A spokeswoman told the Associated Press that Facebook uses the information to rank contacts in Messenger so they are easier to find, and to suggest people to call.
Users get the option to allow data collection when they sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite, the Facebook posting said. “If you chose to turn this feature on, we will begin to continuously log this information,” the posting said.
The data collection can be turned off in a user’s settings, and all previously collected call and text history shared on the app will be deleted, Facebook said.
The feature was first introduced on Facebook Messenger in 2015 and added later on Facebook Lite.
Messages were left Sunday seeking comment about security from Google officials, who make the Android operating system.
Reports of the data collection came as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took out ads in multiple U.S. and British Sunday newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The ads say the social media platform doesn’t deserve to hold personal information if it can’t protect it.
According to the ads, a quiz app built by a Cambridge University researcher leaked Facebook data of millions of people four years ago. Zuckerberg said this was a “breach of trust” and that Facebook is taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Facebook’s privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated political consulting firm, got data inappropriately. The social media platform’s stock value has dropped over $70 billion since the revelations were first published.
Among the newspapers with the ads were The New York Times and The Washington Post in the U.S., and The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph in the United Kingdom.
The ads said Facebook is limiting the data apps received when users sign in. It’s also investigating every app that had access to large amounts of data. “We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected,” the ads stated.
Cambridge Analytica got the data from a researcher who paid 270,000 Facebook users to complete a psychological profile quiz back in 2014. But the quiz gathered information on their friends as well, bringing the total number of people affected to about 50 million.
The Trump campaign paid the firm $6 million during the 2016 election, although it has since distanced itself from Cambridge.
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Photo Courtesy: Kohenoor News. Caption: Marvia Malik, Pakistan’s first transgender news anchor
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Thousands of Venezuelans have paid homage to Jose Antonio Abreu, parading past the coffin of the economist turned visionary musical educator who created a network of youth orchestras that has been replicated around the world.
His coffin was delivered with military honors Sunday morning to the headquarters of the program, where the concert hall was converted into a chapel. Students of varying ages took turns playing pieces by Bach, Beethoven and other composers.
The death of the 78-year-old Abreu was announced Saturday by his family. No cause was given, but he had been known to be battling several illnesses since he retired a few years ago from running the musical education program known as El Sistema.
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A senior Chinese official is warning that a trade war would hurt all sides and set off a “greater conflict.”
“A trade war serves the interests of none. It will only lead to serious consequences and negative impact,” Vice Premier Han Zheng said at a development forum in Beijing Sunday. “We believe trade protectionism, against the trend, will lead to nowhere.”
Han did not mention the United States or President Donald Trump by name, whose announcement of stiff tariffs on imported Chinese steel and aluminum was answered with tariffs and duties on a list of U.S. imports.
Han appealed to all global trading partners to “cooperate with each other like passengers in the same boat … make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.”
Fears of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies have sent world markets tumbling.
The United States has accused China of unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft and dumping Chinese goods on the global marketplace to make U.S. goods appear more expensive.
China has denied the U.S. charges, and Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call Saturday that China is ready to defend its interests.
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President Donald Trump’s favorite TV network is increasingly serving as a West Wing casting call, as the president reshapes his administration with camera-ready personalities.
Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, is a former U.N. ambassador, a White House veteran – and perhaps most importantly a Fox News channel talking head. Bolton’s appointment, rushed out late Thursday, follows Trump’s recent attempt to recruit Fox guest Joseph diGenova for his legal team.
Bolton went on Fox to discuss his selection and said it had happened so quickly that “I think I’m still a Fox News contributor.”
Another recent TV-land addition to the Trump White House is veteran CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow as top economic adviser. Other Fox faces on Trump’s team: rising State Department star Heather Nauert, a former Fox News anchor; communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp and Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh. The latter two are both former Fox commentators.
“He’s looking for people who are ready to be part of that television White House,” said Kendall Phillips, a communication and rhetorical studies professor at Syracuse University. “This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down.”
DiGenova, who has accused FBI officials of trying to “frame” Trump for nonexistent crimes, will not be joining the legal team because of “conflicts,” said Trump counsel Jay Sekulow on Sunday. Sekulow, however, said diGenova and his wife, attorney Victoria Toensing, also a frequent commentator on Fox, would not be prevented from helping Trump “in other legal matters.”
Trump’s affinity for Fox News is by now well-documented. He has bestowed more interviews on the network than any other news outlet and is an avid viewer. People close to the president say he thinks Fox provides the best coverage of his untraditional presidency. It also provides him a window into conservative thinking, with commentary from Republican lawmakers and right-wing thinkers – many of who are speaking directly to the audience in the Oval Office.
On-air personalities Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are favorites of the president, who also speaks to them privately. This past week Trump promoted Hannity on Twitter, saying: “@seanhannity on @foxandfriends now! Great! 8:18 A.M.”
The president’s early-morning tweets often appear to be reaction to Fox programming. On Friday, for example, Trump tweeted he was “considering” a veto of a massive spending bill needed to keep the government open not long after it was assailed on “Fox and Friends” as a “swamp budget.”
The critic in question was contributor Pete Hegseth, a favorite of the president who has been rumored to be a possible replacement for embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.
Fox News came in for criticism this past week from CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who on Thursday attacked the rival network by saying it has become a propaganda machine that is “doing an incredible disservice to the country.”
Zucker spoke at the Financial Times Future of News conference two days after a former Fox military analyst quit, claiming he was ashamed at the way the network’s opinion hosts were backing Trump. Zucker said that analyst, Ralph Peters, voiced what a lot of people have been thinking about Fox in the post-Roger Ailes era.
Still, in Trump’s Washington, lawmakers and influence-seekers know that the best way to get in Trump’s ear is often to get on Fox. Legislators routinely seek to get airtime when they are trying to push legislation or policy ideas, said congressional aides who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private thinking.
“A year ago, everyone was trying to figure out how to get into the building; now everyone is trying to figure out how to get on TV,” said Republican consultant Alex Conant.
This past week, for example, conservative lawmakers unhappy with the spending bill moving through Congress took to Fox. “This may be the worst bill I have seen in my time in Congress,” said Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Wednesday.
And when the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, prompted a national conversation on gun laws, Fox contributor Geraldo Rivera used his platform to urge the president to support raising the age requirement to buy assault-type weapons.
“You’ve gotta let me give my pitch,” he said on “Fox and Friends” several weeks ago, noting that he would see Trump that night. “Here in Florida and most states a kid cannot buy a beer … and yet he could buy an AR-15 legally.”
The hosts quickly pushed back. “Tell him to let the teachers carry concealed,” said one.
While the coverage varies by show, “Fox and Friends” tends to be Trump-friendly, with the chipper morning show spotlighting his achievements and bashing the “mainstream media.” On Friday, they featured a teen from the Florida high school where the shooting occurred who opposes gun control efforts, as well as a young conservative activist who interviewed Trump at a White House event the day before.
Also appearing Friday was White House counselor Kellyanne Conway – herself a constant presence on cable news – who pushed back at the idea Trump was focused on hiring TV personalities.
“The irony is not lost on me that you have a lot of quote ‘TV stars’ calling Larry Kudlow and John Bolton ‘TV stars,'” Conway said.
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Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg apologized Sunday in full-page ads in nine major British and U.S. newspapers for the massive “breach of trust” at the social media giant that revealed personal information of millions of Facebook users.
Zuckerberg did not mention the British firm accused of using the data, the voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica that obtained the cache of information from British researcher Alexsandr Kogan, who had been authorized by Facebook to collect the data as part of an academic study.
Cambridge Analytica was paid $6 million by President Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign for the White House to develop voter profiles.
Zuckerberg said in the ads, “This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time” when Kogan developed an app on which 270,000 Facebook users supplied information about themselves. “We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
In all, because of extensive links of friends and associates to the 270,000 Facebook users, 50 million Facebook users may have had their personal data compromised.
“We have a responsibility to protect your information,” Zuckerberg said. “If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.”
The ads ran in six British national newspapers, including the best-selling Mail, The Sunday Times and The Observer, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal in the U.S.
Zuckerberg said Facebook, with 2.2 billion users worldwide, is also investigating “every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected.”
A new Reuters-Ipsos poll in the U.S. released Sunday showed that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information, compared to 66 percent of trust in Amazon; 62 percent in Google; 60 percent in Microsoft and 47 percent in Yahoo.
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Scientists are monitoring a defunct Chinese space station that is expected to fall to Earth around the end of the month, the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade.
The head of the European Space Agency’s debris office, Holger Krag, says China’s Tiangong-1 space station will likely fall to Earth between March 30 and April 3.
Krag said it still not yet known where the space station will hit Earth, but said it would be extremely unlikely for anyone to be injured when it does.
Injury unlikely
“Our experience is that for such large objects typically between 20 and 40 percent of the original mass, of 8.5 tons, will survive re-entry and then could be found on the ground, theoretically,” he said.
“However, to be injured by one of these fragments is extremely unlikely. My estimate is that the probability to be injured by one of these fragments is similar to the probability of being hit by lightning twice in the same year,” Krag added.
He said the space station is expected to fall between the areas of 43 degrees south and 43 degrees north, and everything outside that zone is considered safe.
“Northern Europe including France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland are definitely on the safe side. Southern Europe, the southern part of North America, South Asia, Africa, Australia and also South America are still within the zone today,” he said.
Where will it hit?
Scientists say it is hard to predict where Tiangong-1 will hit Earth in part because of its low orbit and high velocity. They say the space station is traveling 17,400 mph and orbits Earth about every 90 minutes.
Tiangong-1 was launched into orbit in 2011 as China’s first space lab. It carried out orbit experiments in preparation for China’s plan to put a permanent space station into orbit by 2023.
Love from a cheek swab? That’s what founders of a new dating app are promising.
There always seems to be another dating app popping up with promises of helping find romance — just answer this, just swipe that — but one new online dating service is incorporating genetics into the mix and promising something other apps cannot: compatibility through genetics.
The app is called Pheramor, a cross between pheromone, the small molecules that are emitted from the body and are smelled by the people around us,and amour, the French word for love.
The Houston-based company competed in a recent Bay Area pitch competition, where they stood out with a charismatic presentation that included references to their own failed attempts at online dating.
“Who here is single as hell and tired of swiping on Tinder?” asked Brittany Barreto, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Pheramor.
“I am,” replied data scientist Asma Mirza, the company’s CEO and co-founder. Audience members also chimed in.
“What if I told you that with this genetic cheek swab, I could tell you who you’d be attracted to, and who is going to be attracted to you based on your cheek cells?” Mirza said.
The company claims their app is based on 40 years of research showing that there are 11 genetic markers proven by scientists to be “responsible for attraction.”
“Pheramor looks at genetics-based human attraction and social media metadata to help people increase their efficiency of dating,” said Mirza.
Rasmus Nielsen, professor of computational biology and human genetics at UC-Berkeley, said “the 11 genetic markers, or MHC type, that they are referencing are the same that have to do with protection against viruses and pathogens.”
Nielsen said research has shown that mice can recognize DNA that’s similar to their parents’ and avoid mating with their siblings.
“We’ve been looking into whether something like that is going on in humans. And there is some idea that maybe when we mate, we avoid individuals with the same MHC type. And that’s what they are basing it on. But the science is sketchy. It’s still very, very, very,very controversial as to whether humans can even do this. And there’s really very little science into whether it would help us predict mates,” Nielsen added.
On their website, Pheramor states, “We are constantly smelling each other’s pheromone profiles and deciding subconsciously how attractive that individual is to us.”
Pheramor cites a study done in the 1990s called “The Sweaty T-shirt Experiment.” In the study, women rated T-shirts worn consecutively for three days by specific men. The scientists found that women were more attracted to the scent of a man whose genetics were more diverse than their own.
But Nielsen argues the study has never really been replicated successfully.
“Our ability to predict anything from genetic data is relatively poor, and something like mate choice — who you are attracted to — you really cannot predict that at all. It’s to a certain degree like selling snake oil, because you can’t really do it. The genetics is not worked out well enough yet,” he said.
The founders say critics are focusing too much on the pheromones. They point out that the app doesn’t just look at genetics, it pairs the genetic information with your social media activity to get a fuller picture of your personality and interests.
Users are able to connect all of their social media activity to the app, which Pheramor uses with its proprietary algorithm to help match mates. And to discourage endless swiping, each match shows up as a blurred photo, placing the emphasis on the compatibility score, not physical appearance.
“So, you download the app, you purchase a kit, you instantly start to match with local singles based on the metadata from social media,” Barreto said. “When you swab your cheek, you send it back to us — it takes about two weeks for you — the genetic information will just enhance the compatibility scores.”
In addition to finding romance, the company said Pheramor is also helping save lives.
The same 11 genetic markers they are looking at are the same used to fight blood cancers. Pheramor has partnered with a national cancer registry called Gift of Life in which customers have the option of being added to the registry to potentially be a match for someone fighting leukemia, lymphoma or other blood disorders
For young, would-be lovers who want to throw their hats in the ring, the DNA test costs $19.99, with a $10-a-month service fee. It’s available oniOS and Android. Perhaps a small price to pay if their science has even the smallest possibility of leading to love?
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In Russia’s far north, the city of Vorkuta is slowly being reclaimed by the Arctic tundra. Its population has plummeted as the local coal mines have closed, and the very future of the city is in doubt. As Henry Ridgwell reports for VOA, Vorkuta’s fate reflects a wider population crisis across Russia’s far north as old Soviet industries have crumbled.
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There always seems to be another dating app popping up with promises of helping find romance — just answer this, just swipe that — but one new online dating service is incorporating genetics into the mix and promising something other apps cannot: compatibility through genetics.
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Tourist numbers in Indonesia swelled last year on the back of overseas advertising and infrastructure development. President Joko Widodo has said he wants to “create 10 tourist destinations like the island of Bali.” But the pleasing economic numbers also come with a social and environmental cost as rampant development threatens ecosystems and traditional livelihoods. Jack Hewson has this report.
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Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Even more so, when the invention is something a loved one needs. That was the case for a young Syrian woman who invented a GPS-equipped life vest. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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Increasingly popular wind turbines are getting bigger and making more power, but there is a limit to their size. At some point they become too big, too difficult to transport and install, and strong winds can bend them out of shape. But researchers led by scientists from the University of Virginia say there’s a way around it. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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What does it take to build a thriving technology company – and an environment in which black techies, their financial backers and their markets can flourish?
That question underpins the new VOA documentary “Beyond the Unicorn.” Subtitled “Africans Making IT in Silicon Valley,” it explores how some Africans and African-Americans are finding their way in the tech sector’s global capital in California.
The 26-minute documentary profiles several entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and how they overcome hurdles. Its screening Wednesday evening, at a VOA event at the San Francisco campus of the French university INSEEC U., served as a springboard for a panel discussion spanning market potential, funding gaps and hiring disparities.
First, a definition for the uninitiated. A unicorn is a private startup technology firm valued at $1 billion or more. Once rare, such companies have proliferated in the last few years, with almost 200 globally as of last May, according to Forbes.
Silicon Valley has spawned herds of unicorns, such as Uber and Airbnb.
Africa hasn’t. With less readily available investment funding, “a unicorn might be quite unrealistic for an entrepreneur in Africa to build very quickly,” said venture capitalist Mbwana Alliy, who appears in the documentary. He suggested its counterpart might be a “zebracorn.”
“Does that mean it’s a $100 million startup? Maybe that’s more achievable for an entrepreneur,” said Alliy, founder of the Africa-focused Savannah Fund. “And it’s still a major outcome.”
Panelist Stephen Ozoigbo proposed another term: gazelle, “something real and indigenous.”
“If it’s a gazelle, then you’re sure it would outrun, it would outhustle” the competition, said Ozoigbo, CEO of the African Technology Foundation.
Market potential
The continent has some fast-growing economies – think Ethiopia and Nigeria – and the world’s fastest-growing population. More than half of its countries are expected to double their head counts by 2050, the United Nations reports.
No wonder investment in African tech ventures is surging.
Figures vary: The Disrupt Africa news portal says African tech startups raised more than $195 million last year, up from almost $130 million in 2016.
Partech Ventures reports even stronger growth. The global venture capital firm, which has offices in San Francisco and Dakar, Senegal, reports that 124 tech startups drew $560 million in equity in 2017, up from almost $367 million for 74 startups the previous year.
Still, Africa gets only a very tiny share of global private equity capital, said Andile Ngcaba, a panelist and founder of the African tech investment management fund Convergence Partners.
That’s just one of the challenges for Africans and African-Americans in tech.
Lack of diversity
Blacks account for just 3 percent of the workforce among Silicon Valley’s top 75 tech companies, an underrepresentation so striking that it has drawn public condemnation and scrutiny by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a 2016 report.
The male-dominated tech sector can be even less welcoming to black females.
“Being an African woman in Silicon Valley … has been very difficult. I actually had an easier time in Nigeria,” said Bukola Akinfaderin, a senior developer – and the only black female mobile engineer – for the genealogy website Ancestry.com. She said her homeland’s tech sector has less of a gender imbalance.
Akinfaderin, featured in the documentary, finds support in groups such as dev/color, a nonprofit for black software engineers.
She gets encouragement to revive Jandus Radio, her app enabling the African diaspora to hear live radio from the continent. It had as many as 500,000 users by 2016, when the hosting company’s server malfunctioned and deleted the app’s database. She plans to reboot the app as KinFolk.
Akinfaderin touts the value of being an African woman engineer working in Silicon Valley. “When you’re building a product – especially if it’s a consumer-facing product, one that’s international – you are going to need perspective from everyone.”
Need for helping hands
Mentoring and networking can make all the difference in finding opportunities, said Nate Yohannes, a Microsoft business development director for artificial intelligence – and the evening’s keynote speaker.
“Coming to the United States as a child of [Eritrean] refugees,” he said, he couldn’t always rely on his parents’ guidance because of their unfamiliarity with the new setting. So, he sought out mentors, who helped shape his trajectory from law school to a Wall Street job to the U.S. Small Business Association to Microsoft.
“It’s on us” to help each other and connect the continents, Yohannes told the scores of people, including other Africans, in the screening room.
Other concerns
Africa’s rapid population growth heightens the need to educate African youths so they can compete for work globally, said Convergence Partners’ Ngcaba. He added that those aspiring to the tech sector will need training in, say, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“That’s the only way we can position ourselves in the global landscape,” Ngcaba said.
Skills, opportunity and capital are vital for entrepreneurs, agreed Yonas Beshawred, founder and CEO of StackShare, an online marketplace for comparing engineering tools and software.
But, he added, “I think the most important thing is that you have something that you’re passionate about and you start working on it … instead of just talking.”
A VOA showcase
The “Unicorn” screening event also served as a showcase for VOA’s commitment to “telling America’s story” along with providing accurate news and information to countries without independent media, VOA director Amanda Bennett said.
“And what is more American than the American diaspora, the people who come here from places around the world looking for something and looking to give something, looking to be someone? And what is more American than technology?” she asked rhetorically in her introductory remarks, pointing out that VOA opened a Silicon Valley office last spring.
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German business leaders are expressing concerns that President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel could affect the auto industry in the South.
WABE Radio reports Mercedes-Benz USA this month opened its new North American headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, for 1,000 employees.
The luxury car manufacturer is owned by Germany-based Daimler, but Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Dietmar Exler used the grand opening to remind the crowd of the brand’s U.S. presence.
German automakers in US
That includes operations in South Carolina and in Alabama.
“We are now in the midst of construction of our own factory here, which will open doors in the fall in Charleston, South Carolina, and we’ll make all of the Sprinter vans for North America right here,” Exler said at the grand opening of its headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta.
“Right next to me you have a member of the most successful SUV family, a GLE Coupe,” Exler said. “As you know, the GLE and the GLS are produced in Alabama. Last year, 280,000 cars were produced here not just for the U.S. market, but for markets all over the world.”
German car factories in the U.S. made more than 800,000 vehicles last year, and about half were sold overseas, according to the German Association of the Automotive Industry.
This month, Volkswagen of America Inc. announced plans to build a new five-passenger SUV at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where it manufactures other vehicles. Volkswagen AG is based in Wolfsburg, Germany.
“During my time as governor, I’ve watched Volkswagen Chattanooga flourish from a single vehicle producer, starting with the Passat, into what it is today — a thriving U.S. manufacturing operation that can produce three models, and counting,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said in a statement Monday, when plans were announced.
“We value Volkswagen as a committed partner, whose investments in the state have not only created new jobs, but have helped us build a skilled Tennessee workforce,” Haslam said.
Volkswagen Chattanooga also manufactures the Passat and the Atlas.
Trump proclamation, industry concern
Trump signed a proclamation last week to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel from every country except Canada and Mexico. The hope is to boost steel manufacturing in the U.S.
The concern among some industry experts is that tariffs on steel could hurt companies like Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Porsche, all of which have significant operations in the South, said Stefan Mair of the Federation of German Industries in Berlin.
“Do you see the cars outside? There’s a lot of steel in there,” Mair said at the grand opening of the Georgia headquarters complex. “We think there will be some additional percentage points on the prices of cars.”
That price increase could be enough to stop people from buying new cars, said Lisa Cook, who teaches economics and international relations at Michigan State University.
“If consumers are price sensitive, and they are for many types of cars, this could cause people to postpone their decision to purchase a car,” Cook said.
US steel in cars
A little more than a quarter of all U.S. steel is used to make cars in this country, according to the German American Chamber of Commerce for the southern U.S.
“Approximately 25 percent of all steel is used in automotive manufacturing and 10 percent in machinery and equipment; both industries that German companies have heavily invested in the U.S. over the years,” said Stefanie Ziska, president of GACC South.
Making cars more expensive to build and export could hurt U.S. jobs, said Jeffrey Rosensweig, who teaches international business at Georgia’s Emory University.
“That would not only cost us jobs, it would hurt the U.S. and could potentially harm the U.S. trade balance,” Rosensweig said. “Just the opposite of what President Trump thinks he’s trying to achieve.”
He said the steel tariffs could trigger a trade war that would go beyond the auto industry.
“These foreign nations that we’re going to put these import taxes on, these tariffs, are not stupid,” Rosensweig said. “They’re going to retaliate against our exports, and they’re going to hit us where it hurts, which is often our farm exports.”
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The semi-government agency behind India’s national identity card project on Saturday denied a report by news website ZDNet that the program has been hit by another security lapse that allows access to private information.
ZDNet reported that a data leak on a system run by a state-owned utility company, which it did not name, could allow access to private information of holders of the biometric “Aadhaar” ID cards, exposing their names, their unique 12-digit identity numbers and their bank details.
But the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the Aadhaar program, said “there is no truth in this story” and that it was “contemplating legal action against ZDNet.”
ZDNet could not immediately be contacted for comment on the UIDAI’s response.
“There has been absolutely no breach of UIDAI’s Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure,” the agency said in a statement late Saturday.
Even if the claim purported in the story were taken as true, it would raise security concerns about the database of the utility company and would have “nothing to do with the security of UIDAI’s Aadhaar database,” it said.
More than 1 billion users
ZDNet had reported that even though the security lapse was flagged to some government agencies over a period of time, it had yet to be fixed. It said it was withholding the name of the utility and other details.
Karan Saini, a New Delhi security researcher, said that anyone with an Aadhaar number was affected.
“This is a security lapse. You don’t have to be a consumer to access these details. You just need the Uniform Resource Locator where the Application Programming Interface is located. These can be found in less than 20 minutes,” Saini told Reuters.
In recent months, researchers and journalists who have identified loopholes in the identity project have said they were slapped with criminal cases or harassed by government agencies because of their work.
Aadhaar, a biometric identification card with over 1.1 billion users, is the world’s biggest database. But it has been facing increased scrutiny over privacy concerns following several instances of breaches and misuse.
Last Thursday, the CEO of UIDAI said the biometric data attached to each Aadhaar was safe from hacking because the storage facility was not connected to the internet.
“Each Aadhaar biometric is encrypted by a 2,048-key combination and to decode it, the best and fastest computer of our era will take the age of the universe just to hack into one card’s biometric details,” Ajay Bhushan Pandey said.
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Britain’s information regulator said Saturday that it was assessing evidence gathered from a raid on the office of data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, part of an investigation into alleged misuse of personal information by political campaigns and social media companies like Facebook.
More than a dozen investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office entered the company’s central London office late Friday, shortly after a High Court judge granted a warrant. The investigators were seen leaving the premises early Saturday after spending about seven hours searching the office.
The regulator said it would “consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions.”
“This is one part of a larger investigation by the ICO into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors,” it said.
Authorities in Britain as well as the U.S. are investigating Cambridge Analytica over allegations the firm improperly obtained data from 50 million Facebook users and used it to manipulate elections, including the 2016 White House race and the 2016 Brexit vote in Britain.
Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny wrongdoing.
Chief executive suspended
The data firm suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, this week after Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast footage that appeared to show Nix suggesting tactics like entrapment or bribery that his company could use to discredit politicians. The footage also showed Nix saying Cambridge Analytica played a major role in securing Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Cambridge Analytica’s acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, said Friday that he was sorry that SCL Elections, an affiliate of his company, “licensed Facebook data and derivatives from a research company [Global Science Research] that had not received consent from most respondents” in 2014.
“The company believed that the data had been obtained in line with Facebook’s terms of service and data protection laws,” Tayler said.
His statement said the data were deleted in 2015 at Facebook’s request, and he denied that any of the Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica obtained were used in the work it did on the 2016 U.S. election.
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