Facebook seeks fresh legal delay to block order to suspend its transatlantic data transfers

Facebook is firing up its lawyers to try to block EU regulators from forcing it to suspend transatlantic data transfers in the wake of a landmark ruling by Europe’s top court this summer.

The tech giant has applied to judges in Ireland to seek a judicial review of a preliminary suspension order, it has emerged.

Earlier this week Facebook confirmed it had received a preliminary order from its lead EU data regulator — Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) — ordering it to suspend transfers.

That’s the logical conclusion after the so-called Schrems II ruling which struck down a flagship EU-US data transfer arrangement on the grounds of US surveillance overreach — simultaneously casting doubt on the legality of alternative mechanisms for EU to US data transfers in cases where the data controller is subject to FISA 702 (as Facebook is).

Today The Currency reported that Dublin commercial law firm, Mason Hayes + Curran, filed papers with the Irish High Court yesterday, naming Ireland’s data protection commissioners as defendant in the judicial review action.

Facebook confirmed the application — sending us this statement: “A lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would have damaging consequences for the European economy. We urge regulators to adopt a pragmatic and proportionate approach until a sustainable long-term solution can be reached.”

In further remarks the company did not want directly quoted it told us it believes the preliminary order is premature as it said it expects further regulator guidance in the wake of the Schrems II ruling.

It’s not clear what further guidance Facebook is hankering for, nor what grounds it is claiming for seeking a judicial review of the DPC’s process. We asked it about this but it declined to offer any details. However the tech giant’s intent to (further) delay regulatory action which threats its business interests is crystal clear.

The original complaint against Facebook’s transatlantic data transfers dates all the way back to 2013.

This kinda shows (a) how they will use every opportunity to block a case, even before there is a decision and (b) how it is wholly illusionary to get such a case through in a couple of weeks/months in the Irish legal system…

— Max Schrems (@maxschrems) September 11, 2020

 

Ireland’s legal system allows for ex parte applications for judicial review. So all Facebook had to do to file an application to the High Court to challenge the DPC’s preliminary order is a statement of grounds, a verifying affidavit and an ex parte docket (plus any relevant court fee). Oh and it had to be sure this paperwork was submitted on A4.

The DPC’s deputy commissioner, Graham Doyle, declined to comment on the latest twist in the neverending saga.

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TikTok fixes Android bugs that could have led to account hijacks

TikTok has fixed four security bugs in its Android app that could have led to the hijacking of user accounts.

The vulnerabilities, discovered by app security startup Oversecured, could have allowed a malicious app on the same device to steal sensitive files, like session tokens, from inside the TikTok app. Session tokens are small files that keep the user logged in without having to re-enter their passwords. But if stolen, these tokens can give an attacker access to a user’s account without needing their password.

The malicious app would have to exploit the vulnerabilities to inject a malicious file into the vulnerable TikTok app. Once the user opens the app, the malicious file is triggered, letting the malicious app access and send stolen session tokens to the attacker’s server silently in the background.

Sergey Toshin, founder of Oversecured, told TechCrunch, that the malicious app could also hijack TikTok’s app permissions, allowing it access to the Android device’s camera, microphone, and the private data on the device, like photos and videos.

TikTok said it fixed the bugs earlier this year after Oversecured reported the vulnerabilities.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to build the safest and most secure platform in the industry, we constantly work with third parties to find and fix bugs,” said TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide. “While the bugs in question would only pose a risk if a user had also downloaded a malicious application onto their Android device, we have fixed them. We appreciate the researcher reporting this issue to us so that we could fix it, and we encourage all of our users to download the latest version of the app.”

News of the bugs come just days before an anticipated ban on TikTok is set to take effect. The Trump administration declared the video sharing app a threat to national security earlier this year over its ties to China.

ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered parent company of TikTok, has denied the claims, and sued the federal government to challenge the allegations.

TikTok, which is not accessible in China, said it had “never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked.”

Android security bug let malicious apps siphon off private user data

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How to win an argument (at the US Supreme Court, or anywhere) | Neal Katyal

How to win an argument (at the US Supreme Court, or anywhere) | Neal Katyal

The secret to winning an argument isn't grand rhetoric or elegant style, says US Supreme Court litigator Neal Katyal -- it takes more than that. With stories of some of the most impactful cases he's argued before the Court, Katyal shows why the key to crafting a persuasive and successful argument lies in human connection, empathy and faith in the power of your ideas. "The question is not how to win every argument," he says. "It's how to get back up when you do lose."

https://ift.tt/35qDdqn

Click this link to view the TED Talk

Daily Crunch: Facebook launches a college-only network

Facebook returns to its college roots, Alexa gets a printing feature and we take a deep dive into Unity’s business. This is your Daily Crunch for September 10, 2020.

The big story: Facebook launches a college-only network

If you’re old and decrepit like me, you remember when Facebook was only for college students and required a college email address to join. Well, it seems everything old is new again, because the company is piloting a new feature called Facebook Campus … which is only for college students and requires a college email address to join.

Facebook’s Charmaine Hung argued that the product is particularly relevant now: “With COVID-19, we see that many students aren’t returning to campus in the fall. Now, classes are being held online and students are trying to react to this new normal of what it’s like to connect to clubs and organizations that you care about, when you’re not together.”

Of course, this could also be a way for Facebook to try to stay relevant to a younger demographic, before they move on to other apps.

The tech giants

Amazon launches Alexa Print, a way to print lists, recipes, games and educational content using your voice — The feature works with any second-generation Echo device or newer, as well as a range of printers.

Google says it’s eliminating Autocomplete suggestions that target candidates or voting — The company says that it will now remove any Autocomplete predictions that seem to endorse or oppose a candidate or a political party, or that make a claim about voting or the electoral process.

Microsoft Surface Duo review — Brian Heater calls it a beautiful, expensive work in progress.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Orchard real estate platform raises $69 million Series C led by Revolution Growth — Orchard (formerly Perch) launched in 2017 with a mission to digitize the entire experience of buying and selling a home.

How Unity built a gaming engine for the future — Eric Peckham offers an in-depth look at the company’s financials as it prepares to go public.

India’s Zomato raises $100M from Tiger Global, says it is planning to file for IPO next year — In an email to employees, CEO Deepinder Goyal said the food delivery startup has about $250 million cash in the bank, with several more “big name” investors preparing to join the current round.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Use ‘productive paranoia’ to build cybersecurity culture at your startup — We asked Casey Ellis, founder, chairman and chief technology officer at Bugcrowd, to share his ideas for how startups can improve their security posture.

What’s driving API-powered startups forward in 2020? — It’s not hard to find startups with API-based delivery models that are doing well this year.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Announcing the Startup Battlefield companies at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 — This is our most competitive batch to date.

$3 million Breakthrough Prize goes to scientist designing molecules to fight COVID-19 — David Baker’s work over the last 20 years has helped validate the idea that computers can help us understand and create complex molecules like proteins.

Recorded music revenue is up on streaming growth, as physical sales plummet — With vastly more people stuck inside seeking novel methods of entertainment, paid subscriptions are up 24% year-over-year.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Daily Crunch: Facebook launches a college-only network

Facebook returns to its college roots, Alexa gets a printing feature and we take a deep dive into Unity’s business. This is your Daily Crunch for September 10, 2020.

The big story: Facebook launches a college-only network

If you’re old and decrepit like me, you remember when Facebook was only for college students and required a college email address to join. Well, it seems everything old is new again, because the company is piloting a new feature called Facebook Campus … which is only for college students and requires a college email address to join.

Facebook’s Charmaine Hung argued that the product is particularly relevant now: “With COVID-19, we see that many students aren’t returning to campus in the fall. Now, classes are being held online and students are trying to react to this new normal of what it’s like to connect to clubs and organizations that you care about, when you’re not together.”

Of course, this could also be a way for Facebook to try to stay relevant to a younger demographic, before they move on to other apps.

The tech giants

Amazon launches Alexa Print, a way to print lists, recipes, games and educational content using your voice — The feature works with any second-generation Echo device or newer, as well as a range of printers.

Google says it’s eliminating Autocomplete suggestions that target candidates or voting — The company says that it will now remove any Autocomplete predictions that seem to endorse or oppose a candidate or a political party, or that make a claim about voting or the electoral process.

Microsoft Surface Duo review — Brian Heater calls it a beautiful, expensive work in progress.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Orchard real estate platform raises $69 million Series C led by Revolution Growth — Orchard (formerly Perch) launched in 2017 with a mission to digitize the entire experience of buying and selling a home.

How Unity built a gaming engine for the future — Eric Peckham offers an in-depth look at the company’s financials as it prepares to go public.

India’s Zomato raises $100M from Tiger Global, says it is planning to file for IPO next year — In an email to employees, CEO Deepinder Goyal said the food delivery startup has about $250 million cash in the bank, with several more “big name” investors preparing to join the current round.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Use ‘productive paranoia’ to build cybersecurity culture at your startup — We asked Casey Ellis, founder, chairman and chief technology officer at Bugcrowd, to share his ideas for how startups can improve their security posture.

What’s driving API-powered startups forward in 2020? — It’s not hard to find startups with API-based delivery models that are doing well this year.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Announcing the Startup Battlefield companies at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 — This is our most competitive batch to date.

$3 million Breakthrough Prize goes to scientist designing molecules to fight COVID-19 — David Baker’s work over the last 20 years has helped validate the idea that computers can help us understand and create complex molecules like proteins.

Recorded music revenue is up on streaming growth, as physical sales plummet — With vastly more people stuck inside seeking novel methods of entertainment, paid subscriptions are up 24% year-over-year.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Simulating the Future with Ansys’ Startup Program

Every year, there are thousands of businesses that are started by hopeful entrepreneurs. In fact, entrepreneurs are always looking at growing their businesses. Everyone who is part of the start-up ecosystem, be it an incubator, venture capitalist or even an incubator wants the success of their startup. But the truth is bitter. Statistics show that […]

The post Simulating the Future with Ansys’ Startup Program appeared first on ALL TECH BUZZ.

Twitter’s rules address worries over ‘peaceful transfer of power’ in US election

Twitter announced expanded efforts to fight misinformation ahead of the U.S. election — with at least a few hair-raising lines that throw November’s stakes into sharp relief.

The company is making a game plan for what happens if the results of the 2020 election are unclear or contested, with a handful of newly articulated policies set to go into effect on September 17.

Twitter now plans to either remove or attach a warning label to any claims of victory prior to election results being official. The policy change specifically mentions that it will take action on any tweets “inciting unlawful conduct to prevent a peaceful transfer of power or orderly succession” — a shocking phrase to read about an American election, but a relevant one nonetheless.

“We will not permit our service to be abused around civic processes, most importantly elections,” Twitter’s Safety team wrote. “Any attempt to do so — both foreign and domestic — will be met with strict enforcement of our rules, which are applied equally and judiciously for everyone.”

Plenty of President Trump’s critics have expressed fear that he might refuse to leave office if he loses in November, but so have the president’s former close allies. At a House Oversight Committee hearing last year, Trump’s own former attorney Michael Cohen expressed early concerns about that possible outcome.

“Given my experience working for President Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power,” Cohen said.

At a rally last month, Trump said that after winning another four years in office “we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign,” saying that he should have a “redo.” While his supporters might read the statement as a joke, Trump’s critics see a president again testing the waters with an outrageous and undemocratic claim.

Twitter also said that it will remove or add a label to any tweets presenting false or misleading information about laws around civic processes, and the officials and institutions overseeing them. That rule could pertain to a wide swath of voting-related misinformation, including false claims around who can vote and what documents they need to show, if any.

The company will also act on any “disputed claims” that might cast doubt on voting, including “unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results.”

Social networks are keenly aware of the looming threats to democracy lurking in November’s election, even if they’re rarely able or willing to come out and name them. Gaming out possible nightmare scenarios is a worthwhile exercise for Twitter and other platforms as they gird themselves for a flood of misinformation from users, foreign campaigns and political figures alike come November.

Bracing for election day, Facebook rolls out voting resources to US users

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Google says it’s eliminating Autocomplete suggestions that target candidates or voting

Ahead of the U.S. presidential election, Google says it’s taken a number of steps to improve the quality of information that it highlights across its various search and news products.

Google executives outlined these changes at an online press event today, as well as in a blog post. The biggest change seems to be in its policies around Autocomplete, the feature where Google suggests a search based on what you’ve typed so far.

The company says that it will now remove any Autocomplete predictions that seem to endorse or oppose a candidate or a political party, or that make a claim about voting or the electoral process. That would mean eliminating predictions like “you can vote by phone,” “you can’t vote by phone” or anything suggesting that you donate to a party or candidate.

At the same time, Google emphasized that this only applies to Autocomplete. Users will still be able to search for information around voting or candidates — you just won’t see those queries automatically, and it should become much harder for a candidate or party to use Autocomplete to drive users to make a desirable search.

David Graff, Google’s senior director of global policy and standards, said this is merely an extension of the company’s existing policies, and “not so much a completely new policy or philosophical approach.”

He added, “We’re acutely aware that with this upcoming election … people have strong opinions and given the backdrop of COVID, there’s a lot of questions about voting information and how that might play out against the backdrop of the pandemic.”

Graff also described this as a “conservative” approach, one in which some innocuous suggestions will probably be eliminated so that Google doesn’t risk allowing misinformation around the election from sneaking in.

Pandu Nayak, who heads Google’s search quality team, also said this policy will leave the vast majority of Autocomplete suggestions “completely untouched.”

“They get an outsized discussion around them, of course, but they’re actually a very small fraction of Autocompletes,” he said.

The other changes and progress that Google is highlighting today include the formation of an Intelligence Desk, a team of analysts that monitors the news and identifies “potential information threats”; the fact that Google can now identify breaking news moments in just a few minutes, compared to 40 minutes a few years ago; new programs designed to prevent vandalism on Wikipedia from sneaking onto the Knowledge Graph panels that appear alongside search results; and fact check labels in Google Images.

Twitter pledges to dial up efforts to combat election misinformation

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How to get two WhatsApp account on an iPhone Officially

Using two WhatsApp account on our phone can be really useful – one for personal and the other for work. Having two separate WhatsApp account for different purposes organizes the way you communicate and relieves you of the mess you get with a single WhatsApp account. Right now, almost all of the Android phones with […]

The post How to get two WhatsApp account on an iPhone Officially appeared first on ALL TECH BUZZ.