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There's not really any dispute that the UK Liberal Democrats party sold voter data for 100,000 to the Remain campaign in 2016, though the Information Commissioner's Office tried to suppress that revelation until after the coming election; the Libdems say they did nothing wrong, but when Opendemocracy's Jim Cusick approached the party for a statement ahead of an article, he got no reply.

What happened next is...weird.

After Cusick's article went live, an aggrieved Libdem "senior official" wrote to Opendemocracy, demanding to know why their statement hadn't been included in the article. Cusick said it was because he'd never received a statement, but if they'd furnish one, he'd include it. But instead of a statement, Cusick got a legal threat from an expensive firm of solicitors, Goodman Derrick, demanding that the article be censored, either by removing "all derogatory and disparaging statements" (having read the article, I couldn't find any statements that qualified), or removal of the article altogether.

Given that the Libdems style themselves "the party of liberty," that is indeed weird.

But what happened next is weirder.

Opendemocracy asked the lawyers to provide a statement from the Libdems to include in their article, pointing out that they'd made three such requests without a response. In the absence of any statement from the Libdems (apart from the legal threat conveyed by their lawyers), Opendemocracy made a "surmise" about what the Libdems didn't like about their coverage and amended the article.

Then they heard from the lawyers again, stating that the Libdems had provided an "on the record" response to Cusick's article, on Nov 12, and they attached that email as proof.

Here's where the really weird stuff comes in.

Cusick didn't ask the Libdems for comment until Nov 13, which meant that the email the lawyers had attached as evidence had apparently been sent a full day before Opendemocracy wrote to the party seeking comment.

Opendemocracy wrote back to the lawyers, asking how this was possible.

When the lawyers did not reply, Opendemocracy wrote again, saying that they were about to publish a story about this and seeking comment. This time, someone from the Libdem press office called Opendemocracy and said a "mistake had been made" and said there was an investigation ongoing. So Opendemocracy generously gave the Libdems even more time to reply before publishing.

The party finally wrote back with a statement saying that "we have been made aware that the information openDemocracy subsequently received from the Liberal Democrats was incorrect. We have suspended a member of staff involved and are following due process."

But in addition to this, the Libdems' lawyers wrote back to Opendemocracy, repeating the threats over their coverage of the Libdems' data sale, and insisting that neither the lawyers nor the party had known about the fake email (Opendemocracy called it a "crude forgery"), despite the fact that Opendemocracy had painstakingly detailed their multiple attempts to solicit a comment from the party without a reply.

This is an embarrassment: as Opendemocracy points out, it doesn't rise to the level of open fraud committed by the Conservative Party and Boris Johnson, but the Tories don't style themselves "the party of liberty." Speaking as a former Libdem party member and campaigner (I'm a member of the Labour Party now), I don't believe the party should have flogged off voter data, but even moreso, I don't think that any party can be said to stand for "liberty" when its response to negative press coverage is to threaten to rain down expensive, punitive legal action from fancy lawyers.

First, why was the Lib Dem press office so desperate to discredit our story? In Jim Cusicks initial communications with them, he told them we had seen internal documents about the Lib Dems lucrative 2016 data sale. If, as they strongly maintain, the party had acted in accordance with the law at all times and had done nothing wrong, why did someone think it was important enough to repeatedly make false claims, including a faked document, via expensive lawyers?

What did our story reveal that prompted this level of duplicity?

Second, the replies from Goodman Derrick were issued on behalf of the party and of its leader, Jo Swinson. This assumes that senior figures were involved. Who sanctioned and signed off this aggressive legal pursuit, including the letter with the forged email? And how might Lib Dem supporters and donors feel about this appalling use of party funds?

Perhaps most importantly, though, what does this whole episode say about the so-called Liberal Democrats regard for fact-checking, accuracy and press freedom? We at openDemocracy are a small team. The distraction has cost us valuable staff time and legal bills, which could otherwise have been spent on doing actual journalism during the final weeks before the most important election in a generation.

What are Jo Swinsons Liberal Democrats so desperate to hide? [Mary Fitzgerald/Opendemocracy]

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Original post:
Opendemocracy: the Libdems tried to censor our article about their sale of voter data, then used a forged email to intimidate us - Boing Boing

A recent Reddit post details the danger of using a popular built-in tool in the iOS image editing menu. The tool, commonly referred to as the highlighter (its actually a chisel-shaped marker, dont @ me) is often used to cover sensitive information in screenshots or photographs such as credit card numbers or the address on a drivers license.

The problem is in the default opacity of the tool. Its meant to be used as a highlighter, not a tool to censor sensitive details, and as such its set with an opacity value under 100. That is to say, its semi-transparent. The lower the opacity value, the more see-through the markings become.

But even with an opacity near 100, a few quick photo editing tricks will reveal the information underneath.

Redditor u/M1ghty_boy, the threads original poster, first colored over the text using the highlight tool from the default toolset a pen, pencil, and marker/highlighter. After a few passes, it appears that the text is properly censored and unreadable. The user then opens the image in the default iOS photo editor and adjust settings like exposure, highlights, shadows, and contrast until the image again comes into view.

Here is why you shouldnt censor sensitive info with the black highlighter on iOS, this video shows just how easy it is to reveal sensitive info censored with the black highlighter from r/ios

If youre looking for a better way to censor information, weve got you covered. The easiest way would be just to use the same highlighter tool, but to turn the opacity to 100, meaning its fully opaque and no longer see-through.

Or, if you want a more foolproof method (in case you forget to adjust the opacity before covering the information), use a color-filled shape the rectangle tool, for example (found in the + menu) instead.

Read next: Study: Our universe may be part of a giant quantum computer

Read the original here:
This is why you shouldn't use Apple's highlighter tool to censor sensitive info - The Next Web

Beijing (AFP)

The Chinese billionaire behind teen phenomenon TikTok is a 36-year-old tech guru whose eye for youth trends and pioneering use of AI has blasted the app to global success -- while working hand-in-glove with censors to control content within China.

Zhang Yiming's Beijing-based startup Bytedance owns TikTok, whose kaleidoscopic feeds of 15 to 60-second clips feature everything from hair-dye tutorials to dance routines and jokes about daily life.

Since launching in 2017, TikTok has been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times, according to US-based research agency Sensor Tower. It has huge followings in India, the US, Indonesia and elsewhere.

But its rise has raised security fears and last month two senior US senators called for a government review of the app, saying it could leave users vulnerable to spying by Beijing.

Bytedance, which Zhang founded in 2012, prides itself on using artificial intelligence to personalise newsfeeds according to users' interests.

The company has had "huge and immediate success" because it pays close attention to its young users, said Bo Ji, assistant dean for the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

"The new generation... want to share their real feelings, whether good or bad. They are more direct and expressive," he said.

TikTok is Bytedance's most popular overseas app, while its other products in China and abroad include news aggregators and productivity tools.

Together they have taken Zhang -- a programmer before he became a businessman -- to the highest echelons of China's billionaire club.

In 2019, he was listed in the top 20 of the Hurun China Rich List with $13.5 billion in wealth, surpassing more established tech tycoons, such as the founder of search giant Baidu.

Zhang's fortunes were given a huge boost with Bytedance's 2017 acquisition of lip-syncing video app Musical.ly -- later merged with TikTok -- in a deal reportedly worth as much as $1 billion.

"Mr Zhang is unusual Chinese entrepreneur," said Bo.

"He built something for the world; he understands the young people and their psychology."

- Disruptive technology -

Liu Xingliang, dean of the DCCI research centre, told AFP that Zhang represents a new wave of entrepreneurs and a different breed to China's most famous tycoon, Alibaba's Jack Ma.

He is "more like a young Pony Ma," Liu said, comparing Zhang to the 48-year-old co-founder of Chinese internet giant Tencent.

This is because Zhang "used to be a programmer, paid more attention to products, and knew technology well", he said.

Bytedance also operates a Chinese version of TikTok, called Douyin. It is the top short video app in China, with over 400 million monthly active users, according to iResearch.

Douyin, launched in 2016, attracted users by bringing on board top celebrities like Chinese actor and singer Kris Wu.

But Bytedance's first flagship product was the immensely popular Chinese news aggregation app Jinri Toutiao, or "today's headlines".

"(Toutiao) has changed Chinese reading habits... they will know what you like to watch, and you will have the things you like to see recommended to you,' said Liu.

Aside from TikTok, Bytedance also runs TopBuzz in the US, an English-language news aggregation app that the company was reportedly trying to sell in September.

In 2016 it became a controlling stakeholder of BaBe, an Indonesian news app with more than 30 million downloads since its launch in October 2013.

Productivity app and Slack-competitor Lark is Bytedance's latest product, which features cloud storage, chat and calendar functions.

And according to recent reports, the company is also planning to launch its own music streaming service to compete with subscription models like Spotify and Apple.

- Chinese censorship -

In mainland China Bytedance employs thousands of censors to scrub out inappropriate content in its domestic platforms -- at a significant cost to the company.

It reportedly hired 2,000 censors in January 2018 after Beijing accused its news aggregation app of "spreading pornographic and vulgar information".

It then promised to increase its internal censorship staff to 10,000 after being temporarily banned by the government in a widening content crackdown.

Censorship is common in China where the internet is tightly controlled.

But going global has brought its own censorship challenges for TikTok, which is blocked in Bangladesh and was briefly banned by an Indian court over claims it was promoting pornography among children.

It was also hit with an enormous fine in the US for illegally collecting information from children.

One TikTok video that went viral this week contained criticism -- hidden within a clip that appeared to offer tips on eyelash curling -- of China's mass detention of Muslims in its Xinjiang region.

A Twitter account apparently belonging to the same teenager who posted the video said she had been suspended "for trying to spread awareness" -- a claim disputed by the app. The video was readily available on TikTok Wednesday.

TikTok has sought to distance itself from China, saying in October that it is "not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government."

But US senators have warned in a letter that TikTok's owner ByteDance could be forced to share user information with Chinese intelligence, and could also be used to influence upcoming US elections.

2019 AFP

See the original post:
Bytedance: The Chinese company behind global TikTok craze - FRANCE 24

TikTok's logo on a stand at The First International Artificial Products Expo Hangzhou on October 18, 2019 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.

VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images

TikTok's director of creator community brushed aside allegations of Chinese influence on the social media app Tuesday, as the app faces a U.S. national security investigation.

The U.S. government announced earlier this month that it was opening a national security investigation into TikTok's parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, after U.S. lawmakers expressed concern that the Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content, and raising questions about how it stores personal data.

Since then, TikTok executives have embarked on a campaign to refute the allegations. In an extensive profile published earlier this month, TikTok's chief executive Alex Zhu emphasized the autonomy of TikTok's U.S. operation from the headquarters in Beijing.

TikTok's director of creator community Kudzi Chikumbu on Tuesday echoed the words of his chief in an interview with Wilfred Frost and Courtney Reagan on CNBC's Closing Bell.

"We don't remove content based on sensitivities around China or other governments," he said. "What we're focused on is building a platform where people can express themselves freely, be creative, be joyful and that's kind of the main direction that's led to the growth of TikTok."

As he appeared on the show, the Washington Post reported that a 17-year-old user in New Jersey, Feroza Aziz, was locked out of her account after she posted a viral video criticizing the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur ethnic minority. The Chinese government's discriminatory treatment of the country's Muslim Uighur population is well documented.

Representatives from TikTok confirmed to CNBC that the user has been locked out of her account, but said it is not a matter of censorship as the video in question is still on the platform.

"TikTok does not moderate content due to political sensitivities," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. "A previous account belonging to this user had been banned after she posted a video of Osama Bin Laden, which is a violation of TikTok's ban on content that includes imagery related to terrorist organizations. Another account of hers, @getmefamouspartthree, and its videos including the eyelash video in question were not affected and the video continues to receive views."

But, in an interview with the Post, Aziz said the reference to bin Laden was a "joke." And it clearly was, here's the video that Aziz was locked out for:

See the article here:
TikTok says it doesn't censor content, but a user was just locked out after a viral post criticizing China - CNBC

Radford University, a taxpayer-supported institution that is located in southwestern Virginia, is in a public relations hole entirely of its own making. The question is: Just how deep will the schools administrators insist on digging?

In September, roughly 1,000 copies of the Tartan, Radford's student-run newspaper, disappeared from campus news racks after having been delivered hours earlier. The next day, administrators of the university summoned the paper's editor, junior Dylan Lepore, to a meeting at which they criticized as insensitive a photo that was published on the paper's front page.

However, the schools administrators appeared surprised to hear that most of the issues had been stolen from the 22 news racks that are located around the campus.

It turns out, after what campus police called an "in-depth" investigation, that a low-level university employee who was neither administrator nor professor was caught on video and admitted stealing papers from four of the news racks, as The Washington Post's Joe Heim reported.

The administration and police won't reveal the thief's identity, although they know it; they won't charge the employee because they say taking free newspapers is not a crime; and they won't offer an explanation of who swiped the papers from 18 other news racks. Nor will they offer a motive or explanation for the theft.

The university's strategy, if you can call it that, is tailor-made to prolong the college's embarrassment, calling into question its leadership's judgment.

The photo in question upset a few administrators and faculty members, including Radford's president, Brian Hemphill, but apparently no one else; Lepore, the editor, told us he received no criticism from fellow students or on social media.

The photo depicts Steve Tibbetts, a newly hired criminal justice professor who died suddenly at age 49 a few weeks after arriving on campus, and it was given to the Tartan for publication by Tibbetts' widow. In it, Tibbetts and his daughter are standing beneath a road sign that reads "Tibbetts St." and, next to it, "Dead End."

Radford said the thief has been disciplined and that the matter, along with incriminating police video, is a closed "personnel issue." The thief was not acting on anyone's direction, a university spokesman said.

That strains credulity. It is also hard to believe the employee acted alone; when the newspaper is delivered to campus each week, it takes two hours to distribute it by golf cart to all the news racks.

Nor, as campus police suggest, does the fact that the Tartan is distributed for free mean that no crime was committed. The paper, whose publication costs include a $750 printing bill, Lepore's salary and other expenses, is an object of value, whether it is sold or given away.

The question of whether publishing the photo was tasteful is a topic of legitimate debate. Stealing two-thirds of a student newspaper's press run is an act of theft and an affront to the First Amendment.

By its stonewalling, the university suggests that it takes neither matter very seriously.

GateHouse Media

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Other Voices: It was censorship by theft at a university - Lexington Dispatch