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Reclaim The Net accepts no advertising and is funded entirely by the community. If you support free speech, the eradication of cancel culture, and restoring privacy and civil liberties, please become a supporter here. Thank you. SUPPORTERS How the US government uses data brokers to spy on citizensLocation data that users of mobile devices willingly surrender to a plethora of apps that request it is ending up in some places that a majority of those users are fully unaware of. And yet their every move can be retraced or monitored in this way, revealing their activities, inclinations, and personalities: where they live, work, what religious sites they visit, and which protests they take part in. But rather than being confined to the apps themselves to enable their functionality – which is how the need to harvest location data is explained in the first place – this information is sold and shared, changing hands from app developers to data brokers to advertisers, and lately more and more often with US law enforcement, including the military, and spy agencies. Become a supporter here. Get the post here. MASSIVE GROWTH  Brave Search announces record growth, new featuresPrivacy-friendly Brave browser’s search engine has announced that a year after development started, it is exiting the beta phase and introducing a new tool that allows users to “de-Google” their search results.The “Googled” results are carefully curated by Google, and almost every other search engine, which these days give prominence to ads over information, and then further algorithmically promote or downrank sites based on a variety of criteria, some of them highly controversial. Brave looks to fix this problem by allowing users to curate their own search results, instead of allowing the Big Tech behemoth and others to do it for them. Brave calls the new feature “Goggles” and says that its goal is to put users in charge. According to Brave Chief of Search Josep M. Pujol, cited in a blog post on the company’s site, using Goggles is a way to “open” search ranking and filtering.  Goggles allows anyone to create rules and filters that “constrain the searchable space” and can also be used to change the ordering of results.“Anyone could then choose to apply a Goggle – or extend it – to their view of Brave Search results. Essentially, Goggles will act as a re-ranking option on top of the Brave Search index,” Brave announced. Providing the opportunity to create multiple rankings instead of a single one is the point of the exercise here, doing away with bias – including that of political nature – that is present in Google, and also in Microsoft’s Bing, etc. One example shown in the post is creating a Goggle that will return results only from bloggers; and the same can be done to filter results coming from any site or media, as well as covering any specific topic. Goggles is still in its beta testing phase, and is used in Brave Search (included in the Brave browser, and accessible in others via search.brave.com) and then clicking the Goggles tab in the search results page. The code for this feature is available on GitHub (Goggles themselves must be hosted on GitHub or GitLab), and Brave says that any users can write their own or use Goggles created by others. Several examples are included as demos, showing the feature’s functionality and explaining how Goggles are created. Brave Search launched in June 2021. It started with 8.1 million searches and had 411.7 million searches in May 2022, a 5,000% growth.  The company believes the search engine has been more talked about than DuckDuckGo because of the popularity of its browser. Brave Search users receive 92% of their searches directly from Brave’s search index, not Google and Bing indexes. DuckDuckGo controversially uses Bing.“Search engines that depend too much or exclusively on Big Tech are subject to censorship, biases, and editorial decisions,” explains Brave in the blog post. “Brave Search is committed to openness in search. It does not manipulate its algorithm to bias, filter, or down-rank results (unless it’s compelled by law to do so).” The company has also introduced some features to customize searches. For instance, it introduced Discussions in April. The feature compiles results from forums. Reclaim The Net accepts no advertising and is funded entirely by the community. If you support free speech, the eradication of cancel culture and restoring privacy and civil liberties, please become a supporter here.MORE CENSORSHIP DEMANDS  New York Times complains that Big Tech may censor less “election misinformation” during the 2022 midtermsThe New York Times isn’t happy that Meta and Twitter may be scaling back their censorship of “election misinformation” during the 2022 US midterm elections.Before the 2020 US presidential election, Big Tech platforms deployed unprecedented levels of censorship by censoring then-President Donald Trump numerous times, banning popular pro-Trump groups, and more. Post-election, this mass censorship continued with President Trump being permanently banned by all the major tech platforms, discussions of “widespread fraud or errors” changing the 2020 US presidential election outcome being banned, free speech platform Parler (which many users had flocked to in an attempt to escape Big Tech’s censorship) being deplatformed by the tech giants, and more. The mainstream media and Big Tech used the vague, subjective term “election misinformation” to justify this silencing of a sitting US President and the mass censorship of election-related speech. But according to The New York Times, Meta’s election team, which censors election misinformation and had more than 300 people in 2020, has now been slashed to around 60 people. Additionally, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with the team regularly in 2020 but now the team meets with Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg instead of Zuckerberg. Twitter employees also told The Times that the pending sale of the company to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has resulted in it pulling back some of its focus on elections. And civil rights groups complained to The New York Times that Zuckerberg no longer discusses efforts to thwart election misinformation with them like he did in 2020. “I’m concerned,” President of the NAACP Derrick Johnson told The Times. “It appears to be out of sight, out of mind.” In its article, The New York Times claims that this potential reduction in censorship at Meta “could have far-reaching consequences as faith in the U.S. electoral system reaches a brittle point” and laments that dozens of political candidates who are running for election in 2022 and believe that President Trump was robbed of the 2020 election are reaching American voters through social media platforms. The Times also takes issue with the viral Dinesh D’Souza documentary “2000 Mules” reportedly getting more than 430,000 interactions Facebook and Instagram. These 430,000 interactions represent a fraction of the total views and interactions 2000 Mules has received on the alternative free speech platforms Rumble and Locals which hosted and provided censorship protection to the documentary. However, The Times points to these interactions as an example of election misinformation being “rampant online.” While The New York Times fears that users and political candidates could be allowed to speak more freely about elections on Big Tech platforms in the run-up to the 2022 midterms, Meta has responded by insisting that there will still be lots of censorship. Meta spokesman Tom Reynolds disputed The Times’ assertion that 60 people focused on election integrity and said hundreds of people across more than 40 teams focus on election work. He added that with each election, Meta is “building teams and technologies and developing partnerships to take down manipulation campaigns, limit the spread of misinformation and maintain industry-leading transparency around political ads and pages.” Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy also insisted that the company was continuing its efforts to “protect the integrity of election conversation” and noted that Twitter has labeled the accounts of political candidates for the midterms. BRAZIL IS CHALLENGING FREE SPEECH  Twitter complies with order to ban Brazil’s Workers’ Cause PartyTwitter on Wednesday blocked the account of Brazil’s PCO (“Workers’ Cause Party”), implementing the decision of the country’s Supreme Federal Court (TSE) Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued earlier this June.The same order to censor PCO has been given to Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Telegram, and YouTube. Thus far, only Twitter and TikTok complied, according to the Brazilian press. The party has been accused of taking part in spreading “fake news,” but PCO leader Rui Costa Pimenta rejected this, and accused the current authorities of behaving worse than military dictatorships have done in the past in this South American country. Some of the posts that earned the party the ire of the Supreme Court referred to Moraes as having fervor for dictatorship, being “a skinhead in a toga,” and, “a fascist toucan.” In addition, PCO called for the Court to be dissolved and accused the Superior Electoral Court of preparing to rig the general election in case former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins. Brazilians will head to the polls this October. Moraes, meanwhile, is in charge of the Court’s battle against “fake news” and reporting about entities that allegedly engage in the practice, and these reports have so far mostly targeted allies of President Jair Bolsonaro’s government. Moraes is a fierce critic of Bolsonaro and is considered his political rival. But after being called “a skinhead in a toga” and “a fascist toucan,” the jurist wrote in his order that he saw indications PCO was spreading “criminal statements” using the party infrastructure, as well as being behind “widespread repeated attacks on democratic institutions.” According to Pimenta, who was posting on Twitter from his own account, censorship used to be applied to individual news articles, but these days access to entire media sites is being blocked. He also warned that freedom of speech in Brazil is increasingly under attack. It is unclear if PCO’s Twitter account is blocked only in Brazil or globally. Reports out of this country say that TikTok, although accepting the decision made by Moraes, sent a protest note to the Supreme Court, arguing that it PCO is a legal political party and that blocking it “severely violates constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and access to information.” IRONIC  Even Meta pushes back against the UK’s online surveillance and censorship billIn a submission published Wednesday, Facebook, and WhatsApp owner Meta warned that the UK Online Safety Bill “risks people’s private messages being constantly surveilled and censored.”Meta noted that the draft bill proposes that social media companies and search engines should shield users from “legal but harmful content” on their user-to-user services. The Big Tech company argued that the definition does not differentiate platforms from messaging services, and would mean “scanning all private messaging.” We obtained a copy of Meta’s statements here. Meta has already been the target of criticism for its censorship policies and the UK bill would force even more. A spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, in a statement, focused only on the child abuse aspects, ignoring other concerns and said: “Tech firms have failed to tackle child abuse and end-to-end encryption could blind them to it on their sites while hampering efforts to catch the perpetrators. As a last resort, Ofcom has the power to make private messaging apps use technology to identify child sexual abuse material – this can only be used when proportionate and with strict legal privacy safeguards in place.” Meta’s submission is the latest in a long list of complaints about the draft bill that was first published in March. Twitter expressed concerns that the bill will hurt freedom of expression. The microblogging platform also noted that the bill’s journalism exemption could be exploited by “bad faith actors.” Google’s parent company Alphabet warned that the bill promotes “automated general monitoring, and over-removal, of content.” PRIVACY INVASION  Adelaide considers major facial recognition CCTV systemEven though collection and use of biometric data of citizens including through facial recognition is largely unregulated and has increasingly been raising privacy alarms in Australia, law enforcement in one of its states, South Australia, plans to deploy precisely this technology.Current privacy laws are viewed by experts as insufficient to properly cover this topic. For this reason, large retailers are among those using facial recognition without even needing to inform those subjected to this type of monitoring. And the police in Adelaide does not appear to share any of the concerns as it prepares to receive funding for a public 360-degree CCTV camera system with facial and number plate recognition capabilities. The City Council was last year opposed this, asking the police to delay the project until proper legal safeguards have been put in place. Now Councilor Phil Martin is the most vocal in pointing out that systems that carry with them such privacy concerns should only be used with clear rules in place. ABC News is reporting about this, noting that other members of the community are also against the plan, including because identification accuracy based on AI-processed biometrics drops when it comes to persons with darker skin. However, the police seem determined to go ahead with the scheme regardless. Martin’s position was cited by a statement issued by Monash University, which will on June 27 organize a public debate on facial recognition that will bring together academics, and government and industry representatives, where the school’s main argument is that the field needs consistent regulation. Adelaide City Council should vote on the proposal to fund the new surveillance system only a day later. If approved, it will cost city $2.1 million. Meanwhile, Adelaide Deputy Mayor Arman Abrahimzadeh is quoted as saying that the city is “comfortable” funding CCTV camera system upgrade as something necessary for public safety. Abrahimzadeh also revealed that Adelaide asked the South Australia Police to provide assurances they will “not turn on” the new system until proper legislation is there to regulate its use. But it appears no such assurance has yet arrived, or is about to. “There is no legislative restriction on the use of facial recognition technology in South Australia for investigations,” the the state’s police told ABC News, adding: “Should a facial recognition capability be available, investigators will consider the seriousness of the matter and evidentiary value when determining if it is appropriate to use the technology.” FIRST OF ITS KIND  US House subcommittee passes online privacy billA House Energy and Commerce subcommittee has passed a bipartisan bill addressing online privacy. The bill aims at limiting social media companies’ collection of personal data.The legislation would require tech companies to only collect the personal data that is required to provide their services. Sensitive information like Social Security numbers would also be required to have extra security when being stored and processed. We obtained a copy of the draft bill for you here. The subcommittee passed the bill and will now proceed to the full committee for review. The bill was sponsored by Democrat Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Frank Pallone and Republican Reps. Gus Bilirakis and McMorris Rodgers. “Today’s markup is another milestone towards our ultimate goal of enacting meaningful national privacy legislation,” said Pallone. Previous efforts to pass online privacy laws have been unsuccessful due to lobbying from tech companies, which insist that the cost of their free services is data collection for advertising. There is also the issue of whether federal laws would fall short of state laws, which are often stronger. Additionally, there is debate on whether users would be empowered to sue companies for privacy violations. Reclaim The Net exists because of readers like you. Keep us going and become a supporter. We appreciate your support.SupportThanks for reading, Reclaim The Net |
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