Month: May 2019

As anticipation builds for the next-generation mobile communications or 5G, security has become a heated topic. The U.S. government has launched an unprecedented campaign urging countries to ban one of the key makers of equipment for the new network, China-based telecom titan Huawei. But Huawei is vowing to refuse to assist any country in spying and even claims it would rather go out of business. VOA's Bill Ide recently visited the company's headquarters in China's southern city of Shenzhen. ...

The Afrobytes and Viva Tech conferences in Paris this week have provided an opportunity to look at the progress that high-tech startups have made in Africa, where fundraising is booming. According to Partech Africa, a venture capital firm, 146 startups in 19 African countries raised $1.16 billion for African digital entrepreneurs in 2018. Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa received 78% of the total funding, with Egypt close behind.  In French-speaking Africa, Senegal is the leading hub with $22 million raised in four deals. Compared with their Anglophone peers, Africa's Francophone countries operate in smaller markets, and lack capital and mentors.   A key: Seeking advice   Marieme Diop, a venture capital investor at Orange Digital Ventures, said that "unfortunately in Francophone Africa, it is not in our DNA. People who succeed in business or in electing positions do…

A Tesla Model S involved in a fatal crash with a semitrailer in Florida March 1 was operating on the company's semi-autonomous Autopilot system, federal investigators have determined. The car drove beneath the trailer, killing the driver, in a crash that is strikingly similar to one that happened on the other side of Florida in 2016 that also involved use of Autopilot. In both cases, neither the driver nor the Autopilot system stopped for the trailers, and the roofs of the cars were sheared off. The crash, which remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, raises questions about the effectiveness of Autopilot, which uses cameras, long-range radar and computers to detect objects in front of the cars to avoid collisions. The…

Joyce Huang contributed to this report. SHENZHEN, CHINA — One day after the United States effectively banned Chinese telecom titan Huawei from building next-generation "5G" mobile networks in the United States, the company warned the move would harm American workers. "It will do significant harm to the American companies with which Huawei does business," the company said, and "affect tens of thousands of American jobs." The company added it would quickly "find a resolution" to the ban and work to "mitigate" its impact. On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that bars American companies from using telecommunications equipment made by companies that pose a national security risk. The order, which declares a national emergency, is the first step toward formalizing a ban on doing business with Huawei.…

U.S. lawmakers are pushing legislation that would force the State Department to report what it is doing to control the spread of U.S. hacking tools around the world. A bill passed in a House of Representatives' appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday said Congress is "concerned" about the State Department's ability to supervise U.S. companies that sell offensive cybersecurity products and know-how to other countries. The proposed legislation, released on Wednesday, would direct the State Department to report to Congress how it decides whether to approve the sale of cyber capabilities abroad and to disclose any action it has taken to punish companies for violating its policies in the past year. National security experts have grown increasingly concerned about the proliferation of U.S. hacking tools and technology. The legislation follows a Reuters…

Beijing has broadened its block of online encyclopedia Wikipedia to include all language editions, an internet censorship research group reported just weeks ahead of China's most politically explosive anniversary. According to a report by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), China started blocking all language editions of Wikipedia last month. Previously, most editions of Wikipedia -- besides the Chinese language version, which was reportedly blocked in 2015 -- were available, OONI said in their report. AFP could not open any of Wikipedia's versions in China on Wednesday. "At the end of the day, the content that really matters is Chinese-language content," said Charlie Smith, the pseudonym of one of the co-founders of Greatfire.org, which tracks online censorship in China. "Blocking access to all language versions of Wikipedia for internet…

Facebook toughened its livestreaming policies Wednesday as it prepared to huddle with world leaders and other tech CEOs in Paris to find ways to keep social media from being used to spread hate, organize extremist groups and broadcast terror attacks. Facebook's move came hours before its executives would face the prime minister of New Zealand, where an attacker killed 51 people in March — and livestreamed parts of it on Facebook.   The CEOs and world leaders will try to agree on guidelines they will call the "Christchurch Call,'' named after the New Zealand city where the attack on a mosque took place.   Facebook said it's tightening up the rules for its livestreaming service with a "one strike'' policy applied to a broader range of offenses. Any activity on the…

San Francisco supervisors voted Tuesday to ban the use of facial recognition software by police and other city departments, becoming the first U.S. city to outlaw a rapidly developing technology that has alarmed privacy and civil liberties advocates.  The ban is part of broader legislation that requires city departments to establish use policies and obtain board approval for surveillance technology they want to purchase or are using at present. Several other local governments require departments to disclose and seek approval for surveillance technology.  "This is really about saying: 'We can have security without being a security state. We can have good policing without being a police state.' And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology,'' said Supervisor Aaron…

If you're fuzzy on next-generation 5G wireless connectivity, you aren't alone. Powerful U.S. lawmakers who help shape the legal framework for America's technological advances on Tuesday admitted ignorance and confusion about the highly-anticipated broadband system already being deployed in parts of the world. "I actually know very little about 5G," said Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Today, we're going to talk about something that I'm by no means an expert on," the panel's chairman, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said at a hearing where America's top cybersecurity officials testified on 5G's promise and looming perils. "It's really hard for people to get their heads around what we're talking about here," Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said. "First of all, what is…

Google opened a privacy focused engineering center in Munich, Germany, on Tuesday, its latest move to beef up its data protection credentials as tech companies' face growing scrutiny of their data collection practices. CEO Sundar Pichai said the Silicon Valley tech giant is expanding its operations in the southern German city, including doubling the number of data privacy engineers there to more than 200 by the end of 2019. The new Google Safety Engineering Center will make Munich a global hub for the company's "cross-product privacy engineering efforts," Pichai said in a blog post. Staff will work with Google privacy specialists in other cities to build products for use around the world, Pichai said, adding that Munich engineers built the Google Account control panel as well as privacy and security…

Spyware crafted by a sophisticated group of hackers-for-hire took advantage of a flaw in the popular WhatsApp communications program to remotely hijack dozens of phones, the company said late Monday.  The Financial Times identified the actor as Israel's NSO Group, and WhatsApp all but confirmed the identification, describing hackers as "a private company that has been known to work with governments to deliver spyware.'' A spokesman for the Facebook subsidiary later said: "We're certainly not refuting any of the coverage you've seen.'' NSO's spyware has repeatedly been found deployed to hack journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and dissidents. Most notably, the spyware was implicated in the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year and whose body has never been…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that an antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed. Consumers are suing the company, alleging Apple overcharges when downloading iPhone applications at the company’s App Store. Conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh joined with the four liberal judges in the 5-4 decision, agreeing with the plaintiffs that the 30% commissions Apple charges violate federal antitrust laws. Consumers allege Apple has monopolized the market by requiring apps be sold only through their stores.  Apple argued it is just a conduit between app developers and customers and that it is the developers who set the prices. "We're confident we will prevail when the facts are presented and that the App Store is not a monopoly by any metric," a company statement said.  Apple is also under scrutiny by Dutch…