Amazon is holding a high stakes shareholder vote on whether or not to limit some of its cutting edge technology, Shareholders hold back their own company because of users’ privacy when they’re offline//Natasha Singer, The New York Times
An image on the Amazon website shows how its Rekognition software works with Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. Facial recognition software is coming… (Amazon via The New York Times)More
Facial recognition software is coming under increasing scrutiny from civil liberties groups and lawmakers. Now Amazon, one of the most visible purveyors of the technology, is facing pressure from another corner as well: its own shareholders.
As part of Amazon’s annual meeting in Seattle today, investors vote on whether the tech giant’s aggressive push to spread the surveillance software threatens civil rights — and, as a consequence, the company’s reputation and profits.
Shareholders have introduced two proposals on facial recognition for a vote. One asks the company to prohibit sales of its facial recognition system, called Amazon Rekognition, to government agencies, unless its board concludes that the technology does not facilitate human rights violations. The other asks the company to commission an independent report examining the extent to which Rekognition may threaten civil, human and privacy rights, and the company’s finances.
“This piece of equipment that Amazon has fostered and developed and is really propagating at this point doesn’t seem to us to be in the best interest of the common good,” said Sister Pat Mahoney, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, a religious community in Brentwood, New York, that is an Amazon investor and introduced the proposed sales ban. “Facial recognition all over the place just makes everyone live in a police state.”
The proposals are nonbinding, meaning they do not require the company to take action, even if they receive a majority vote.
Amazon fought to prevent the votes on facial surveillance. In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission in January, the company said that it was not aware of any reported misuse of Rekognition by law enforcement customers. It also argued that the technology did not present a financial risk because it was just one of the more than 165 services Amazon offered.
The agency disagreed, ultimately requiring Amazon to allow the facial surveillance resolutions to proceed.
In a statement, Amazon said it offered clear guidelines on using Rekognition for public safety — including a recommendation that law enforcement agencies have humans review any possible facial matches suggested by its system. The company added that its customers had used Rekognition for beneficial purposes, including identifying more than 3,000 victims of human trafficking.
President Donald Trump speaks during a event on medical billing, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on May 9, 2019. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said on May 10 that trade talks between China and the United States were continuing in a “very congenial manner” despite new tariffs Washington imposed on Friday on $200 billion in Chinese imports and Beijing’s vow to retaliate.
In a series of blustering morning tweets, Trump also claimed the new tariffs will help rather than hurt the United States and bring “FAR MORE wealth.” He offered a proposal he said would ease any negative impact on U.S. farmers from lost sales to China.
U.S. and Chinese negotiators planned to continue talks on Friday in an effort to resolve the standoff after the United States raised tariffs on Chinese imports, escalating tensions between the world’s two biggest economies and rattling stock markets around the world.
“Tariffs will make our Country MUCH STRONGER, not weaker. Just sit back and watch!” Trump tweeted.
The talks in Washington were thrown into disarray this week after top U.S. trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin accused the Chinese of reneging on commitments they’d made earlier.
“China should not renegotiate deals with the U.S. at the last minute,” Trump tweeted. “There is no need to rush through negotiations because ‘massive payments’ the Chinese are now paying go directly into the Treasury of the U.S.”
Trump suggested that money from the additional tariffs would allow the United States to buy more agricultural goods from American farmers and ship the produce to “poor & starving” countries.
Trump tweeted that if the United States bought $15 billion in agriculture from farmers it would be far more than China buys now. He also said the United States would have more than $85 billion left over for new American infrastructure, health care or other programs.
It was unclear what numbers Trump was using to make his point. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, China bought $9.2 billion in U.S. agricultural exports in 2018.
“Our Farmers will do better, faster, and starving nations can now be helped,” Trump tweeted. He provided no detail about what he meant. “Waivers on some products will be granted, or go to a new source!”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Beijing is hoping the Trump administration will meet China “halfway” in the dispute over trade. The spokesman, Geng Shuang, spoke just hours after the U.S. raised tariffs on Friday on $200 billion in imports from China to 25% from 10%.
China said it would take unspecified countermeasures.
In this Wednesday, May 8, 2019, photo, a barge pushes a container ship to the dockyard in Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong province. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff hikes on Chinese goods took effect Friday and Beijing said it would retaliate, escalating tensions in fight over China’s technology ambitions and other trade strains. (Chinatopix via AP)
American officials accuse Beijing of backtracking on commitments made in earlier rounds of negotiations –JOE McDONALD, Associated Press
BEIJING (AP) — President Donald Trump’s latest tariff hike on Chinese goods took effect Friday and Beijing said it would retaliate, escalating a battle over China’s technology ambitions and other trade tensions.
The Trump administration raised duties on $200 billion of Chinese imports to 25% from 10%. China’s Commerce Ministry said it would impose “necessary countermeasures” but gave no details.
The increase went ahead even after American and Chinese negotiators began more talks in Washington aimed at ending a dispute that has disrupted billions of dollars in trade and shaken global financial markets.
In this Wednesday, May 8, 2019, photo, a delivery man bearing U.S. commerce giant Amazon’s brand is seen in downtown Beijing. China said Thursday it will retaliate if President Donald Trump goes ahead with more tariff hikes in a fight over technology and trade, ratcheting up tensions ahead of negotiations in Washington. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
“The risk of a complete breakdown in trade talks has certainly increased,” said Michael Taylor of Moody’s Investors Service in a report.
American officials accuse Beijing of backtracking on commitments made in earlier rounds of negotiations.
The talks were due to resume Friday after wrapping up Thursday evening with no word on progress.
“China deeply regrets that it will have to take necessary countermeasures,” said a Commerce Ministry statement.
Shares in Asia were mixed Friday amid renewed investor jitters that global growth might suffer in the battle between the two biggest economies and international traders.
Business groups appealed for a settlement that will resolve chronic complaints about market barriers, subsidies and a regulatory system they say is rigged against foreign companies.
Companies disagree with tariff hikes but “are supportive of the idea in the short term if it helps us get to a strong, enforceable, long-term agreement that addresses structural issues,” said Greg Gilligan, the deputy chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China
This April 23, 2017, photo released by Xinhua News Agency, shows a container dock of Yangshan Port in Shanghai, east China. U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff hikes on Chinese goods took effect Friday, May 10, 2019 and Beijing said it would retaliate, escalating tensions in fight over China’s technology ambitions and other trade strains. (Ding Ting/Xinhua via AP)
The latest increase extends 25% duties to a total of $250 billion of Chinese imports. Trump said Sunday he might expand penalties to all Chinese goods shipped to the United States.
Beijing retaliated for previous tariff hikes by raising duties on $110 billion of American imports. But regulators are running out of U.S. goods for penalties due to the lopsided trade balance.
Chinese officials have targeted operations of American companies in China by slowing customs clearance for them and stepping up regulatory scrutiny that can hamper operations.
The latest U.S. increase might hit American consumers harder, said Jake Parker, vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council, an industry group. He said the earlier 10 percent increase was absorbed by companies and offset by a weakening of the Chinese currency’s exchange rate.
A 25 percent hike “needs to be passed on to the consumer,” said Parker. “It is just too big to dilute with those other factors.”
Despite the public acrimony, local Chinese officials who want to attract American investment have tried to reassure companies there is “minimal retaliation,” said Parker.
“We’ve actually seen an increased sensitivity to U.S. companies at the local level,” he said.
The higher U.S. import taxes don’t apply to Chinese goods shipped before Friday. By sea, shipments across the Pacific take about three weeks, which gives negotiators a few more days to reach a settlement before importers may have to pay the increased charges.
The negotiators met Thursday evening. Then, after briefing Trump on the negotiations, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin dined with the leader of the Chinese delegation, Vice Premier Liu He.
Liu, speaking to Chinese state TV on his arrival in Washington, said he “came with sincerity.” He appealed to Washington to avoid more tariff hikes, saying they are “not a solution” and would harm the world.
“We should not hurt innocent people,” Liu told CCTV.
At the White House, Trump said he received “a beautiful letter” from Chinese President Xi Jinping and would “probably speak to him by phone.”
The two countries are sparring over U.S. allegations Beijing steals technology and pressures companies to hand over trade secrets in a campaign to turn Chinese companies into world leaders in robotics, electric cars and other advanced industries.
This week’s setback was unexpected. Through late last week, Trump administration officials were suggesting that negotiators were making steady progress.
U.S. officials say they got an inkling of China’s second thoughts about prior commitments in talks last week in Beijing but the backsliding became more apparent in exchanges over the weekend. They wouldn’t identify the specific issues involved.
A sticking point is U.S. insistence on an enforcement mechanism with penalties to ensure Beijing lives up to its commitments. American officials say China has repeatedly broken past promises.
China wants tariffs lifted as soon as an agreement is reached, while U.S. officials want to keep them as leverage to ensure compliance.
“A real enforcement mechanism is critical,” said the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai in a statement.
Also Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Trump in a phone call to press China to release two Canadians who have been held for five months.
The men were detained in apparent retaliation after Canada arrested an executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei on U.S. charges of bank fraud.
Westover is self-taught, but her impact on the world has been to educate the rest of us—about the silos we live in and the obstacles faced by so many in our society. We all have teachers, some we know intimately, others who inspire from the page or the screen. This holds true even for the most accomplished people on earth. Our annual TIME 100 issue is filled with tributes from teachers to students; in many cases, the surprise is who is playing which role today.
Warren Buffett praises the leadership of LeBron James, whom he met (on a basketball court!) more than a decade ago. Legendary chef Alice Waters recounts how rising food-world star Samin Nosrat—who began her career working for Waters—helped show her how to cook with care. London Mayor Sadiq Khan calls New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s swift, compassionate response to the shootings at Christchurch mosques “an inspiration to us all.” Viola Davis reveals her lifelong admiration for fellow Oscar winner Regina King, praising her for elevating artists of colour and “making me feel seen.” And Bill Gates, whose upbringing could not be more different from Tara Westover’s, shares what she taught him about overcoming our divides.
Photographs by Pari Dukovic for TIME
In many ways, these connections—forged across and among industries—are the heart of the TIME 100, which now, in its 16th year, is far more than a list. It is a community of hundreds of global leaders, many of whom support and challenge one another. And at a time when so many of our problems require cross-disciplinary solutions, they are also uniquely positioned to effect change. “When you connect extraordinary people,” says Dan Macsai, editorial director of the TIME 100, “they can do even more extraordinary things.”
This year, for the first time, we have invited some members of our TIME 100 community to speak at a TIME 100 Summit in New York City. Joining us will be participants from the worlds of politics and business—including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former Senator Bob Corker—as well as amazing artists, scientists, actors and activists who reflect the remarkable breadth of the TIME 100. Our goal is to spotlight the progress these individuals are making and encourage collaboration toward a better world. “We are only as good as the people that we have around us,” says chef and activist José Andrés, a two-time TIME 100 honoree, who will speak at the summit about how to improve disaster relief. “TIME 100 makes all become one.”
Mark Zuckerberg leveraged Facebook user data, leaked documents show
For example, Facebook gave Amazon extended access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising and partnering with the social network on the launch of its Fire smartphone. In another case, Facebook discussed cutting off access to user data for a messaging app that had grown too popular and was viewed as a competitor, according to the documents.
All the while, Facebook was formulating a strategy to publicly frame these moves as a way of protecting user privacy.
Private communication between users is “increasingly important,” Zuckerberg said in a 2014 New York Times interview. “Anything we can do that makes people feel more comfortable is really good.”
But the documents show that behind the scenes, in contrast with Facebook’s public statements, the company came up with several ways to require third-party applications to compensate Facebook for access to its users’ data, including direct payment, advertising spending and data-sharing arrangements. While it’s not unusual for businesses that are working together to share information about their customers, Facebook has access to sensitive data that many other companies don’t possess.
Facebook ultimately decided not to sell the data directly but rather to dole it out to app developers who were considered personal “friends” of Zuckerberg or who spent money on Facebook and shared their own valuable data, the documents show.
Facebook denied that it gave preferential treatment to developers or partners because of their ad spending or relationship with executives. The company has not been accused of breaking the law.
A man poses for photos in front of the Facebook sign on the company’s campus in Menlo Park, California, in 2014.Jeff Chiu / AP file
About 400 of the 4,000 pages of documents have previously been reported by other media outlets, and also by a member of the British Parliament who has been investigating Facebook’s data privacy practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. However, this cache represents the clearest and most comprehensive picture of Facebook’s activities during a critical period as the company struggled to adapt to the rise of smartphones following its rocky debut as a public company.
The thousands of newly shared documents were anonymously leaked to the British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, who shared them with a handful of media organizations: NBC News, Computer Weekly and Süddeutsche Zeitung. Campbell, a founding member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, is a computer forensics expert who has worked on international investigations including on offshore banking and big tobacco. The documents appear to be the same ones obtained by Parliament in late 2018 as part of an investigation into Facebook. Facebook did not question the authenticity of the documents NBC News obtained.
The documents stem from a California court case between the social network and the little-known startup Six4Three, which sued Facebook in 2015 after the company announced plans to cut off access to some types of user data. Six4Three’s app, Pikinis, which soft-launched in 2013, relied on that data to allow users to easily find photos of their friends in bathing suits.
Facebook has acknowledged that it considered charging for access to user data. But Facebook has challenged the significance of those discussions, telling the Wall Street Journal last year and NBC News this month that the company was merely mulling various business models.
Facebook has also repeatedly said that the documents had been “cherry-picked” and were misleading. Facebook reiterated this stance when NBC News contacted the social media company for comment on the newly leaked documents.
“As we’ve said many times, Six4Three — creators of the Pikinis app — cherry picked these documents from years ago as part of a lawsuit to force Facebook to share information on friends of the app’s users,” Paul Grewal, vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said in a statement released by the company.
“The set of documents, by design, tells only one side of the story and omits important context. We still stand by the platform changes we made in 2014/2015 to prevent people from sharing their friends’ information with developers like the creators of Pikinis. The documents were selectively leaked as part of what the court found was evidence of a crime or fraud to publish some, but not all, of the internal discussions at Facebook at the time of our platform changes. But the facts are clear: we’ve never sold people’s data.”
NBC News has not been able to determine whether the documents represent a complete picture. Facebook declined to provide additional evidence to support the claim of cherry-picking.
Still, these freshly leaked documents show that the plans to sell access to user data were discussed for years and received support from Facebook’s most senior executives, including Zuckerberg, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, chief product officer Chris Cox and VP of growth Javier Olivan. Facebook declined to make them available for comment.
After NBC News contacted Facebook for comment, Facebook’s lawyers wrote to the judge in the Six4Three case, claiming that Six4Three had leaked the documents to a “national broadcast network” and seeking to depose Six4Three’s founders. NBC News received the documents from Campbell, who received them from an anonymous source. Six4Three denied leaking the documents.
When Facebook ultimately cut off broad access to user data in 2015, the move contributed to the decline of thousands of competitors and small businesses that relied on what Facebook had previously described as a “level-playing field” in terms of access to data. In addition to Pikinis, the casualties included Lulu, an app that let women rate the men they dated; an identity fraud-detecting app called Beehive ID; and Swedish breast cancer awareness app Rosa Bandet (Pink Ribbon).
The strategy orchestrated by Zuckerberg had some of his employees comparing the company to villains from Game of Thrones, while David Poll, a senior engineer, called the treatment of outside app developers “sort of unethical,” according to the documents. But Zuckerberg’s approach also earned admiration: Doug Purdy, Facebook’s director of product, described the CEO as a “master of leverage,” according to the documents.
Facebook declined to comment on these employee communications.
A PRIVACY MYTH
One of the most striking threads to emerge from the documents is the way that Facebook user data was horse-traded to squeeze money or shared data from app developers.
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018 and raising awareness of the Six4Three case, Facebook has attempted to frame changes it made to its platform in 2014 and 2015 as being driven by concerns over user privacy. In statements to media organizations, Facebook has said it locked down its platform to protect users from companies that mishandled user data, such as Cambridge Analytica, as well as apps that spammed users’ news feeds or were creepy, such as Six4Three’s bikini-spotting app Pikinis.
However, among the documents leaked, there’s very little evidence that privacy was a major concern of Facebook’s, and the issue was rarely discussed in the thousands of pages of emails and meeting summaries. Where privacy is mentioned, it is often in the context of how Facebook can use it as a public relations strategy to soften the blow of the sweeping changes to developers’ access to user data. The documents include several examples suggesting that these changes were designed to cement Facebook’s power in the marketplace, not to protect users.
In Six4Three’s case, for example, Facebook’s head of policy Allison Hendrix acknowledged in a June 2017 deposition obtained by NBC News that the social network never received any complaints about the Pikinis app, nor did Facebook send Six4Three any policy or privacy violation notices. Six4Three, Hendrix confirmed, was playing within the rules Facebook had set for developers.
Despite this, Six4Three’s access to data, specifically access to a user’s friends’ photos, was cut off in April 2015 as part of sweeping changes to Facebook’s platform announced a year earlier, which affected as many as 40,000 apps. Six4Three shut down the app soon afterward.
Ted Kramer, founder of Six4Three.Peter DaSilva / for NBC News
“Our case is about Zuckerberg’s decision to weaponize the reliance of companies on his purportedly neutral platform and to weaponize the private and sensitive data of billions of people,” said Six4Three founder Ted Kramer.
A TURNING POINT FOR FACEBOOK
Facebook recognized early on that working with third-party app developers could help make the social network more interesting and drive the platform’s expansion. Beginning in early 2010, Facebook created tools that allowed the makers of games (remember Farmville?) and other apps to connect with its audience in return for ensuring those users spent more time on Facebook.
Facebook achieved this through its “Graph API” (Application Programming Interface), a common means to allow software programs to interact with each other. In Facebook’s case, this meant that third-party apps such as games could post updates on people’s profiles, which would be seen by players’ friends and potentially encourage them to play, too. Beyond that, it allowed the makers of those games to access a slew of data from Facebook users, including their connections to friends, likes, locations, updates, photos and more.
The Graph API — and particularly the way it let third parties promote their products to and extract data from a user’s social connections — was a key feature of Facebook that Six4Three and thousands of other companies relied upon for viral marketing and user growth.
However, after a few years, Facebook decided the app developers were getting more value from the user data they extracted from Facebook than Facebook was getting out of the app developers, the documents show.
After Facebook went public in May 2012, its stock price plummeted, which Zuckerberg later characterized as “disappointing.” The company was in a desperate position, documents show, with users sharing fewer photos and posts on the platform as they spent more time on their cellphones. An internal Facebook presentation looking back at this period used the phrase “terminal decline” to describe the fall in engagement.
Facebook executives, including Zuckerberg and Sandberg, spent months brainstorming ways to turn the company around. An idea that they kept returning to: make money from the app partners, by charging them for access to Facebook’s users and their data.
‘SELL DATA FOR $”
Several proposals for charging developers for access to Facebook’s platform and data were put forward in a presentation to the company’s board of directors, according to emails and draft slides from late August 2012.
Among the suggestions: a fixed annual fee for developers for reviewing their apps; an access fee for apps that requested user data; and a charge for “premium” access to data, such as a user trust score or a ranking of the strongest relationships between users and their friends.
“Today the fundamental trade is ‘data for distribution’ whereas we want to change it to either ‘data for $’ and/or ‘$ for distribution,’” Chris Daniels, a Facebook business development director, wrote in an August 2012 email to other top leaders in the company discussing the upcoming presentation.
Discussions continued through October, when Zuckerberg explained to close friend Sam Lessin the importance of controlling third-party apps’ ability to access Facebook’s data and reach people’s friends on the platform. Without that leverage, “I don’t think we have any way to get developers to pay us at all,” Zuckerberg wrote in an email to Lessin.
In the same week, Zuckerberg floated the idea of pursuing 100 deals with developers “as a path to figuring out the real market value” of Facebook user data and then “setting a public rate” for developers.
“The goal here wouldn’t be the deals themselves, but that through the process of negotiating with them we’d learn what developers would actually pay (which might be different from what they’d say if we just asked them about the value), and then we’d be better informed on our path to set a public rate,” Zuckerberg wrote in a chat.
Facebook told NBC News that it was exploring ways to build a sustainable business, but ultimately decided not to go forward with these plans.
“I just can’t think of any instances where that data has leaked from developer to developer and caused a real issue for us.”
Zuckerberg was unfazed by the potential privacy risks associated with Facebook’s data-sharing arrangements.
“I’m generally skeptical that there is as much data leak strategic risk as you think,” he wrote in the email to Lessin. “I think we leak info to developers but I just can’t think of any instances where that data has leaked from developer to developer and caused a real issue for us.”
Facebook told NBC News that this was an example of a cherry-picked email designed to bolster Six4Three’s case.
Zuckerberg didn’t know it at the time, but a privacy bug affecting an unnamed third-party app would create precisely this kind of strategic risk the following year, according to a panicked chatlog between Michael Vernal, who was director of engineering, and other senior employees.
It’s not clear exactly what happened or which app was involved, but it appears that Zuckerberg’s private communications could have leaked from Facebook to the external app in an unexpected way.
Vernal said that it “could have been near-fatal for Facebook platform” if “Mark had accidentally disclosed earnings ahead of time because a platform app violated his privacy.”
“Holy crap,” replied Avichal Garg, then director of product management.
“DO NOT REPEAT THIS STORY OFF OF THIS THREAD,” added Vernal. “I can’t tell you how terrible this would have been for all of us had this not been caught quickly.”
Vernal and Garg did not respond to requests for comment.
‘GOOD FOR THE WORLD’ BUT NOT ‘GOOD FOR US’
In late November 2012, Zuckerberg sent a long email to Facebook’s senior leadership team saying that Facebook shouldn’t charge developers for access to basic data feeds. However, he said that access to Facebook data should be contingent on the developers sharing all of the “social content” generated by their apps back to Facebook, something Zuckerberg calls “full reciprocity.”
The existing arrangement, where developers weren’t required to share their data back with Facebook, might be “good for the world” but it’s not “good for us,” Zuckerberg wrote in the email.
He noted that though Facebook could charge developers to access user data, the company stood to benefit more from requiring developers to compensate Facebook in kind — with their own data — and by pushing those developers to pay for advertising on Facebook’s platform.
