Day: October 7, 2022

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday designed to allay European concerns that U.S. intelligence agencies are illegally spying on them. It promises strengthened safeguards against data collection abuses and creates a forum for legal challenges. 

The order builds on a preliminary agreement Biden announced in March with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a bid to end a yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens’ data that tech companies store in the U.S. However, the European privacy campaigner who triggered the battle wasn’t satisfied that it resolved core issues and warned of more legal wrangling. 

The reworked Privacy Shield “includes a robust commitment to strengthen the privacy and civil liberties safeguards for signals intelligence, which should ensure the privacy of EU personal data,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters. 

Means of redress

“It also requires the establishment of a multilayer redress mechanism with independent and binding authority for EU individuals to seek redress if they believe they are unlawfully targeted by U.S. intelligence activities,” she added. 

Washington and Brussels have long been at odds over the friction between the European Union’s stringent data privacy rules and the comparatively lax regime in the U.S., which lacks a federal privacy law. That has created uncertainty for tech giants including Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta, raising the prospect that U.S. tech firms might need to keep European data out of the U.S. 

Industry groups largely welcomed Biden’s order but European consumer rights and privacy campaigners, including activist Max Schrems, whose complaint kicked off the legal battle a decade earlier, were skeptical about whether it goes far enough and could end up in the bloc’s top court again. 

Friday’s order narrows the scope of intelligence gathering — regardless of a target’s nationality — to “validated intelligence priorities,” fortifies the mandate of the Civil Liberties Protection Officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and directs the attorney general to establish an independent court to review related activities. 

Europeans can petition that Data Protection Review Court, which is to be composed of judges appointed from outside the U.S. government. 

The next step: Raimondo’s office was to send a series of letters to the 27-member EU that its officials can assess as the basis of a new framework. 

Improvements acknowledged

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, said the framework has “significant improvements” over the original Privacy Shield and it would now work on adopting a final decision clearing the way for data to flow freely between EU and U.S. companies certified under the framework. 

Raimondo said the new commitments would address European Union legal concerns covering personal data transfers to the U.S. as well as corporate contracts. A revived framework “will enable the continued flow of data that underpins more than $1 trillion in cross-border trade and investment every year,” Raimondo said. 

Twice, in 2015 and again in 2020, the European Union’s top court struck down data privacy framework agreements between Washington and Brussels. The first legal challenge was filed by Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Schrems, who was concerned about how Facebook handled his data in light of 2013 revelations about U.S. government cyber-snooping from former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. 

European consumer group BEUC said despite the extra safeguards, fundamental differences between American and European privacy and data protection standards are too wide to bridge. 

“However much the U.S. authorities try to paper over the cracks of the original Privacy Shield, the reality is that the EU and U.S. still have a different approach to data protection, which cannot be canceled out by an executive order,” said the group’s deputy director general, Ursula Pachl. “The moment EU citizens’ data travels across the Atlantic, it will not be afforded similar protections as in the EU.” 

Schrems said while his Vienna-based group, NOYB, would need time to study the order, his initial reading is that it “seems to fail” on some key requirements, including for surveillance to be necessary and proportionate under the EU’s Charter of Fundamental rights to avoid indiscriminate mass data collection. 

While the U.S. included those two words, Schrems said the two sides don’t seem to have agreed they have the same legal meaning. 

If it did, “the U.S. would have to fundamentally limit its mass surveillance systems to comply with the EU understanding of ‘proportionate’ surveillance,” Schrems said. 
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The Biden administration on Friday published a sweeping set of export controls, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. tools, vastly expanding its reach in its bid to slow Beijing’s technological and military advances. 

The rules, some of which go into effect immediately, build on restrictions sent in letters earlier this year to top toolmakers KLA Corp., Lam Research Corp. and Applied Materials Inc., effectively requiring them to halt shipments of equipment to wholly Chinese-owned factories producing advanced logic chips. 

The raft of measures could amount to the biggest shift in U.S. policy toward shipping technology to China since the 1990s.  

If effective, they could set China’s chip manufacturing industry back years by forcing American and foreign companies that use U.S. technology to cut off support for some of China’s leading factories and chip designers.

Cooperation needed 

In a briefing with reporters on Thursday previewing the rules, senior government officials said many of the measures sought to prevent foreign firms from selling advanced chips to China or supplying Chinese firms with tools to make their own advanced chips. They conceded, however, that they have not yet secured any promises that allied nations will implement similar measures and that discussions with those nations are ongoing. 

“We recognize that the unilateral controls we’re putting into place will lose effectiveness over time if other countries don’t join us,” one official said. “And we risk harming U.S. technology leadership if foreign competitors are not subject to similar controls.” 

The expansion of U.S. powers to control exports to China of chips made with U.S. tools is based on a broadening of the so-called foreign direct product rule. It was previously expanded to give the U.S. government authority to control exports of chips made overseas to Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and later to stop the flow of semiconductors to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. 

On Friday, the Biden administration applied the expanded restrictions to China’s IFLYTEK, Dahua Technology and Megvii Technology, companies added to the entity list in 2019 over allegations they aided Beijing in the suppression of its Uyghur minority group. 

The rules published on Friday also block shipments of a broad array of chips for use in Chinese supercomputing systems.  

The rules define a supercomputer as any system with more than 100 petaflops of computing power within a floor space of 6,400 square feet, a definition that two industry sources said could also hit some commercial data centers at Chinese tech giants. 

U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer welcomed the announcement, arguing the rules would “protect our country’s innovations from China’s predatory actions.” 

The Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents chipmakers, said it was studying the regulations and urged the United States to “implement the rules in a targeted way – and in collaboration with international partners – to help level the playing field.” 

‘Unverified list’

Earlier on Friday, the United States added China’s top memory chipmaker YMTC and 30 other Chinese entities to a list of companies that U.S. officials cannot inspect, ratcheting up tensions with Beijing and taking aim at a firm that has long troubled the Biden administration. 

The “unverified list” is a potential precursor to tougher economic blacklists, but companies that comply with U.S. inspection rules can come off the list. On Friday, U.S. officials removed nine such firms, including a unit of China’s Wuxi Biologics, which makes ingredients for AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine. 

The new regulations will also severely restrict export of U.S. equipment to Chinese memory chip makers and formalize letters sent to Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. restricting shipments to China of chips used in supercomputing systems that nations around the world rely on to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies. 

Reuters was first to report key details of the new restrictions on memory chip makers, including a reprieve for foreign companies operating in China and the moves to broaden restrictions on shipments to China of technologies from KLA, Lam, Applied Materials Nvidia and AMD.
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China’s annual Golden Week festivities wind down Friday under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic with sharply reduced travel, frequent COVID testing and tight security in the capital ahead of this month’s 20th Communist Party Congress.

As in the past two years, authorities have sought to discourage the popular practice of traveling to one’s hometown or village during the period surrounding the country’s national day in early October. At least 24 provinces and cities issued announcements urging people to “spend the holidays locally,” including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The advice has been followed by many Chinese, who prefer to stay close to home in order to avoid frequent COVID tests, ID checks and mandatory quarantines. Citizens were warned before the holiday to especially avoid 1,619 areas marked as “medium- or high-risk areas.”

“If you leave Beijing, even if just to the nearby Tianjin or Hebei Province, your health app on the phone could send you a message when you return, reminding you there were positive cases in the places you’ve been,” said Allen, a 51-year-old information technology worker who lives in Beijing. “Then you’d have to be quarantined at home. Traveling means trouble.”

Only 9.7 million people took to the nation’s railroads Oct. 1, the first day of the holiday, according to Shanghai’s Dragon TV. That compares to as many a 15 million rail passengers on the first day of pre-pandemic Golden Weeks. The Ministry of Transport had predicted that road traffic this week would drop by about 30% compared to the same period in 2021.

Many universities shortened the seven-day holiday season to three to five days, citing the risk of COVID.

The nation’s zero-COVID policy led to even more restrictions in a few locations. The government in northwestern Xinjiang stopped all passenger traffic out of the region on Tuesday. And in Xishuangbanna, a popular tourist destination in southern Yunnan province, residents and tourists were banned from leaving the city after a few positive cases were found.

Security measures further dampened the festive mood in Beijing, where 2,296 delegates will soon begin arriving for the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which starts Oct. 16.

Authorities are determined to avoid any disruption of the event, where President Xi Jinping is expected to be re-elected to a historic third term as general secretary of the party. Police patrols have increased, and IDs are being checked more frequently.

Anti-COVID measures have been stepped up at airports at the request of the Beijing municipal government. Travelers from areas with confirmed COVID cases within the past seven days have not been allowed to enter the capital at all.

Visitors already in Beijing have been advised not to attend social events or enter crowded public places within seven days after arrival. They are also required to be tested twice within three days of their arrival.

Allen, the information technology worker, told VOA Mandarin the atmosphere in Beijing’s neighborhoods always becomes tense ahead of major political events like the Communist Party Congress.

At such times, “community volunteers” with red armbands patrol residential neighborhoods looking for “suspicious people,” he said, and plainclothes public security officers are evident in large numbers in politically significant locations such as Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People.

Ms. Huang, a 42-year-old Beijing resident who works in the cultural innovation industry, said many people have grown numb to the incessant COVID testing they must undergo.

“In Beijing we have to do a test almost every 72 hours. Sometimes I forget when I’m busy with work, but when I take a subway or bus, or go shopping, my health app reminds me it’s time to do it again. It is quite inconvenient,” she said in an interview.

“People are becoming used to it, but it doesn’t mean people support it. There’s just nothing they can do about it,” she said.

Wu Se-Chih, deputy secretary-general of Strategy and Public Institute in Taiwan, said in an interview he believes the Chinese authorities have found the anti-COVID measures provide them with convenient methods of social control that will outlive the pandemic.

“The so-called stability maintaining measure will only become more frequent before the 20th Party Congress,” he said. “I even think after the congress, especially in early next year before the National People’s Congress in March, we won’t see any of these measures loosened at all.” 
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Australian scientists are trying to grow plants on the moon by 2025 in a new mission unveiled Friday that they said could help pave the way for a future colony.

Plant biologist Brett Williams, from the Queensland University of Technology, said seeds would be carried by the Beresheet 2 spacecraft, a private Israeli moon mission.

They would be watered inside the sealed chamber after landing and monitored for signs of germination and growth. 

Plants will be chosen based on how well they cope in extreme conditions and how quickly they germinate, he said. 

One likely choice is an Australian “resurrection grass” that can survive without water in a dormant state. 

“The project is an early step towards growing plants for food, medicine and oxygen production, which are all crucial to establishing human life on the moon,” the researchers said in a statement. 

Caitlin Byrt, an associate professor from the Australian National University in Canberra, said the research was also relevant to food security fears driven by climate change.  

“If you can create a system for growing plants on the moon, then you can create a system for growing food in some of the most challenging environments on Earth,” Byrt said in a statement.  

The Lunaria One organization is running the project, which involves scientists from Australia and Israel. 

 
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Lebanon reported its first case of cholera since 1993, Health Minister Firas Abiad said Thursday.

The case, recorded Wednesday, was from the rural northern province of Akkar, Abiad said, adding the infected person was a Syrian national who was receiving treatment.

Akkar province borders Syria, where a cholera outbreak has infected more than 10,000 people and killed at least 39, according to the Syrian Ministry of Health. The country declared an outbreak on September 10.

Richard Brennan, regional emergency director of the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, said, “Cross-border spread is a concern. We’re taking significant precautions.”

He said the WHO has been talking to officials in countries bordering Syria, including Lebanon, to bring in the supplies necessary to respond to possible cholera cases.

Cholera is caused by consuming water or food contaminated with cholera bacteria, often transmitted through poor sanitation methods, according to the World Health Organization. Symptoms can include severe watery diarrhea, vomiting and muscle cramps, the WHO said. It added that while cholera can kill within hours if untreated, most of those affected have no or mild symptoms.

Lebanon has suffered a series of hardships, starting nearly four years ago with an economic and financial crisis, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and a horrific explosion at the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020.

The resulting economic collapse has plunged three-quarters of Lebanon’s population into poverty.

Lebanon’s “low-grade infrastructure” includes “a dysfunctional electricity sector, water supply shortages, and inadequate solid waste and wastewater management,” the World Bank reported in October 2021.

Abiad said the health care system would struggle if there was a large-scale cholera outbreak.

“We have a very clear signal that the Lebanese healthcare system needs support to strengthen the system,” he told Reuters. “Otherwise … it won’t be able to hold.” 

The WHO’s Brennan said, “Protecting the most vulnerable will be absolutely vital.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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