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The leaders of Google, Facebook and Twitter testified on Thursday before a House committee in their first appearances on Capitol Hill since the start of the Biden administration. As expected, sparks flew.

The hearing was centered on questions of how to regulate disinformation online, although lawmakers also voiced concerns about the public-health effects of social media and the borderline-monopolistic practices of the largest tech companies.

On the subject of disinformation, Democratic legislators scolded the executives for the role their platforms played in spreading false claims about election fraud before the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, admitted that his company had been partly responsible for helping to circulate disinformation and plans for the Capitol attack. But you also have to take into consideration the broader ecosystem, he added. Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg, the top executives at Google and Facebook, avoided answering the question directly.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle returned often to the possibility of jettisoning or overhauling Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that for 25 years has granted immunity to tech companies for any harm caused by speech thats hosted on their platforms.

These Big Tech companies are among the wealthiest in the world, and their lobbying power in Washington is immense. Besides, there are major partisan differences over how Section 230 ought to be changed, if at all. But lawmakers and experts increasingly agree that the tide is turning in favor of comprehensive internet regulation, and that would most likely include some adjustments to Section 230.

To get a sense of where things stand, I caught up by phone with Jonathan Peters, a professor of media law at the University of Georgia, who closely follows Big Tech regulation. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.

In her introductory remarks at the hearing today, Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois said, Self-regulation has come to the end of its road. What does she mean when she talks about an era of self-regulation on the internet? And how was that allowed to take hold?

The background of this hearing is that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and big parent companies like Google, have come to have an enormous amount of power over the public discourse. And the platforms routinely conduct worldwide private speech regulation, through enforcement of their content rules and their community guidelines, deciding what may be posted, when to honor any request to remove content and how to display and prioritize content using algorithms.

Another way of putting it is that they are developing a de facto free-expression jurisprudence, against the background of the platforms business and legal interest and their self-professed democratic values. That has proved extremely difficult in practice.

The internet exists on a layered architecture of privately owned websites, servers and routers. And the ethos of the web, going back to its early days, has been one governed by cyber-libertarianism: this theory that by design this is supposed to be a relaxed regulatory environment.

What these hearings are trying to explore is the question, as you mentioned: Have we reached the end of that self-regulatory road, where the government ought to have a greater role than historically it has had in this space?

With all of that in mind, is antitrust legislation from Congress likely? How does President Bidens arrival in the Oval Office change the prospects?

Its interesting: If you look at what Biden has said as a candidate and what Biden has done as president, theyre a little bit different. As a candidate, Biden said he would favor revoking Section 230. He does not have even the Democratic votes to go through with a full revocation of Section 230, although an amendment might be possible. I think hes facing the political reality that that is going to be a harder sell than he had initially thought.

In terms of whether broad antitrust legislation might pass this Congress, it does seem possible. Antitrust issues in the social media space have generated a lot more interest in the last couple of years than they have in the last 15 or 20 combined. If I could put that in just a little bit of historical context for you: 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of a monumental dissenting opinion in a Supreme Court case called Abrams v. United States. That was a case in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes really gave rise to our modern First Amendment, and the enduring concept of the value in a market of free trade in ideas.

With the rise of social media, our free-speech landscape today looks exceedingly different than it did when Holmes wrote those words. He was warning of the dangers of the governments ability to censor critics or other disfavored speakers, whereas now the entities best able to restrict our speech are nongovernmental internet and web platforms.

So, many traditional First Amendment principles dont map easily onto our reconstructed speech landscape. And I think the central concern at the heart of these antitrust cases is the power that is at the heart of what these companies do. Its not that they produce widgets; they play a significant role, every day, in public discourse on matters of public interest.

Have the events of Jan. 6 and the entire experience of the 2020 election which was riddled with false information about elections and voting affected the likelihood of change? Did it really turn up the urgency in a meaningful way around web regulation?

I would say that it did. And it also clarified the differences, in terms of why the Democrats believe that reform is necessary and why the Republicans believe that it is. There is a growing consensus that we need more regulation to ensure the openness and usefulness of the web, but Democrats and Republicans disagree on why.

Democrats generally would argue that the platforms allow too much harmful user content to be hosted and spread the kind of misinformation and disinformation we saw around the 2020 election, some of which of course contributed to or caused the Capitol insurrection. I would say that Democrats are also concerned with bullying, harassment and threats; hate speech; criminal activity that occurs on social media platforms; and the presence of dangerous organizations like terrorist groups or violently graphic content, and the effect those might have.

Republicans, by contrast, have sounded some of those same concerns. But they have focused a lot more on their concern that platforms censor conservative viewpoints that the platforms are engaging in viewpoint discrimination. Im not convinced that there is evidence of that, but that claim was made more loudly after President Trump was deplatformed by several of these major social media companies. I think it gave them another arrow in their quiver to try to advance that rhetorical argument that they had been making before the Capitol attack.

From Opinion

On an average day in the United States, more than 100 people are killed by guns. Most Americans want Congress to do something about this crisis, but for years, their representatives have offered them only political theater.

Why? Its not for lack of understanding of the problem, the cause of which is actually quite simple: The United States has a staggering number of guns. Over 393 million, to be precise, which is more than one per person and about 46 percent of all civilian-owned firearms in the world. As researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have put it, more guns = more homicide and more guns = more suicide.

But when it comes to understanding the causes of Americas political inertia on the issue, the lines of thought become a little more tangled. Some of them are easy to follow: Theres the line about the Senate, of course, which gives large states that favor gun regulation the same number of representatives as small states that dont. Theres also the line about the National Rifle Association, which some gun control proponents have cast arguably incorrectly as the sine qua non of our national deadlock.

But there may be a psychological thread, too. Research has found that after a mass shooting, people who dont own guns tend to identify the general availability of guns as the culprit. Gun owners, on the other hand, are more likely to blame other factors, such as popular culture or parenting.

Americans who support gun regulations also dont prioritize the issue at the polls as much as Americans who oppose them, so gun rights advocates tend to win out. Or, in the words of Robert Gebelhoff of The Washington Post, Gun reform doesnt happen because Americans dont want it enough.

On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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Is a Big Tech Overhaul Just Around the Corner? - The New York Times

People who wish to hold a protest or other event on county property in Gaston County will now need permission ahead of time, according to a new ordinance approved Tuesday night by Gaston County commissioners.

The new rules require people to submit an application to the county at least 24 hours in advance of holding a protest with more than 25 people on county property. Festivals and other events on county property will require an application submitted at least two business days in advance.

It will be up to the sheriff and other county leaders to approve the applications. They're not supposed to deny any on social, political, or religious grounds.

Commissioners approved the new ordinance unanimously at their Tuesday night meeting, despite representatives from the ACLU and Duke University's First Amendment Clinic warning in a letter to commissioners that the rules are overly broad and may violate the First Amendment.

First Amendment Concerns

In the letter, the representatives argued that the notification requirement could stifle free speech, quoting a ruling in NAACP, Western Region v. City of Richmond that said, "The simple knowledge that one must inform the government of his desire to speak and must fill out appropriate forms and comply with applicable regulations discourages citizens from speaking freely."

The representatives also said the ordinance does not make room for spontaneous protests and gatherings that might occur in response to breaking news events.

They also criticized a provision in the ordinance that prohibits protests from occurring within 50 feet of a county building, calling it "overbroad and unconstitutional."

"The sidewalks and other open outdoor areas surrounding county buildings are almost always considered traditional public fora which must be open to the public for protest and assembly," the representatives wrote.

Speaking before Tuesday's vote, Gaston County Commissioner Ronnie Worley said it was not the commission's intention to limit free speech through the updated ordinance.

"Certainly this board's intention is not to inhibit or restrict First Amendment rights," he said. "It's about public safety. It's about the safety of our members of our law enforcement, especially."

He said the ordinance would give police time to prepare for protests and other mass gatherings. He also noted that the ordinance only applies to county property.

"Folks can still congregate and protest freely in other places any time, so it doesn't inhibit freedom or speech in any way," he said.

Past Ordinance Proposals

Tuesday's ordinance was a revision from an earlier, much more restrictive proposal. The earlier proposal would have required people to give 30 days notice and pay at least $250 to host a gathering of 25 people or more, or $750 for groups of 500 people or more on county property.

The proposal needed unanimous consent to pass, and failed after Commission Chairman Tom Keigher cast the lone "no" vote, raising questions about the proposal's constitutionality, The Gaston Gazette reported.

Commissioners have been considering updates to the county's mass gathering ordinance since protests began springing up in the summer of 2020 around a Confederate monument outside the Gaston County Courthouse.

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Gaston County Will Require 24 Hours Notice Before Allowing Protests On County Property - WFAE

The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners approved two policies Tuesday dealing with requested police reforms.The first requires officers to have body-worn cameras on during every contact with the public. Video that won't be used in evidence will be retained for 180 days, the police department said.The second policy, the First Amendment Policy, prohibits officers from using less-lethal weapons and munitions, other than chemical agents, to disperse crowds in the event of an unlawful assembly. It also states, "Members will make all reasonable efforts to allow law-abiding individuals to continue to exercise their First Amendment-protected rights, and will focus efforts on those individuals in the active assembly who violate the law."The police department said it did extensive research and looked into best practices nationwide to draft the policies. Members also met with community and city leaders, as well as prosecutors and others to create policies that address community concerns."I commend you for continuing to do the work on this," Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a news release.The police department said the full text of the policies will be available online soon.

The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners approved two policies Tuesday dealing with requested police reforms.

The first requires officers to have body-worn cameras on during every contact with the public. Video that won't be used in evidence will be retained for 180 days, the police department said.

The second policy, the First Amendment Policy, prohibits officers from using less-lethal weapons and munitions, other than chemical agents, to disperse crowds in the event of an unlawful assembly. It also states, "Members will make all reasonable efforts to allow law-abiding individuals to continue to exercise their First Amendment-protected rights, and will focus efforts on those individuals in the active assembly who violate the law."

The police department said it did extensive research and looked into best practices nationwide to draft the policies. Members also met with community and city leaders, as well as prosecutors and others to create policies that address community concerns.

"I commend you for continuing to do the work on this," Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said in a news release.

The police department said the full text of the policies will be available online soon.

Original post:
KC police board OKs 2 police reform policies on body cams, dealing with protests - KMBC Kansas City

JERUSALEM The sun was rising on the Mediterranean one recent morning when the crew of an Iranian cargo ship heard an explosion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, was about 50 miles off the coast of Israel, and from the bridge they saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the hundreds of containers stacked on deck.

The state-run Iranian shipping company said the vessel had been heading to Spain and called the explosion a terrorist act.

But the attack on the Shahr e Kord this month was just one of the latest salvos in a long-running covert conflict between Israel and Iran. An Israeli official said the attack was retaliation for an Iranian assault on an Israeli cargo ship last month.

Since 2019, Israel has been attacking ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons through the eastern Mediterranean and Red Seas, opening a new maritime front in a regional shadow war that had previously played out by land and in the air.

Iran appears to have quietly responded with its own clandestine attacks. The latest came on Thursday afternoon, when an Israeli-owned container ship, the Lori, was hit by an Iranian missile in the Arabian Sea, an Israeli official said. No casualties or significant damage were reported.

The Israeli campaign, confirmed by American, Israeli and Iranian officials, has become a linchpin of Israels effort to curb Irans military influence in the Middle East and stymie Iranian efforts to circumvent American sanctions on its oil industry.

But the conflicts expansion risks the escalation of what has been a relatively limited tit-for-tat, and it further complicates efforts by the Biden administration to persuade Iran to reintroduce limits on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

This is a full-fledged cold war that risks turning hot with a single mistake, said Ali Vaez, Iran program director at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization. Were still in an escalatory spiral that risks getting out of control.

Since 2019, Israeli commandos have attacked at least 10 ships carrying Iranian cargo, according to an American official and a former senior Israeli official. The real number of targeted ships may be higher than 20, according to an Iranian Oil Ministry official, an adviser to the ministry and an oil trader.

The Israeli attacks were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Most of the ships were carrying fuel from Iran to its ally Syria, and two carried military equipment, according to an American official and two senior Israeli officials. An American official and an Israeli official said the Shahr e Kord was carrying military equipment toward Syria.

The Israeli government declined to comment.

The extent of Irans retaliation is unclear. Most of the attacks are carried out clandestinely and with no public claims of responsibility.

The Israeli ship attacked last month was a car freighter, the Helios Ray, carrying several thousand German-made cars to China.

As the ship rounded the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage off the coast of Iran, a speedboat that had been trailing in its wake accelerated, zipping alongside the freighter. Commandos affixed two timed explosives to the port side of the ship, a meter above the water, according to a person with knowledge of the subsequent investigation.

Twenty minutes later the explosives ripped two holes in the hull.

Several tankers were similarly attacked in the Red Sea last fall and winter, actions some officials attributed to the Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel movement in Yemen.

Iran has denied involvement in all of these attacks which, like the Israeli ones, appeared intended not to sink the ships but to send a message.

You attack us here, well attack you there, said Gheis Ghoreishi, a political analyst who has advised Irans Foreign Ministry on Middle Eastern affairs. Iran and Israel are bringing their covert war to the open waters.

The long-running shadow war between Israel and Iran has accelerated in recent years. Iran has been arming and financing militias throughout the region, notably in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon, where it supports Hezbollah, a Shiite militia and political movement that is a longtime enemy of Israel.

Israel has tried to counter Irans power play by launching regular airstrikes on Iranian shipments by land and air of arms and other cargo to Syria and Lebanon. Those attacks have made those routes riskier and shifted at least some of the weapons transit, and the conflict, to the sea, analysts said.

Israel has also sought to undermine Irans nuclear program through assassinations and sabotage on Iranian soil, and both sides are accused of cyberattacks, including a failed Iranian attack on an Israeli municipal water system last April and a retaliatory Israeli strike on a major Iranian port.

Irans Quds force was blamed for a bomb that exploded near Israels embassy in New Delhi in January. And 15 militants linked to Iran were arrested last month in Ethiopia for plotting to attack Israeli, American and Emirati targets.

The sum is an undeclared conflict that neither side wants to escalate into frontal combat.

Neither Israel nor Iran want to publicly take responsibility for the attacks because doing so would be an act of war with military consequences, Hossein Dalirian, a military analyst affiliated with Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, told The New York Times in a Clubhouse discussion on Thursday. But attacks against ships at this level could not happen without a state behind it.

We are at war but with our lights off, he added.

The dynamic complicates already fraught efforts by the Biden administration to reconstruct the 2015 nuclear deal that imposed limits on Irans nuclear enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, reinstating those sanctions and imposing a raft of new ones.

It jacks up the political price that the Biden administration would have to pay to provide the Iranians with any kind of economic reprieve, Mr. Vaez said. If Iran is engaged in this kind of tit for tat with Israel, while also putting pressure on American presence in the region, it makes restoring the deal much more difficult.

Analysts say that Iran wants to continue to needle Israel and to arm and support its Middle Eastern allies, both to surround Israel with well-armed proxies and to give Iran a stronger hand in any future nuclear negotiations.

Israels leadership believes the previous nuclear deal was insufficient and would like to scuttle any chance of resurrecting a similar pact. An Israeli official said the attacks were part of a broader strategy to strong-arm Tehran into agreeing to tougher and longer curbs on its nuclear ambitions, as well as restrictions on its ballistic missile program and its support for regional militias.

That campaign, The Times previously reported, also included an Israeli attack on a major Iranian nuclear site in July and the assassination of Irans top nuclear scientist last November. Israel has not publicly acknowledged either operation.

The Israeli offensive against Iranian shipping has two goals, analysts and officials said. The first is to prevent Tehran from sending equipment to Lebanon to help Hezbollah build a precision missile program, which Israel considers a strategic threat.

The second is to dry up an important source of oil revenue for Tehran, building on the pressure American sanctions have inflicted. After the United States imposed sanctions on Irans fuel industry in late 2018, the Iranian government became more reliant on clandestine shipping.

The attacks were carried out by Flotilla 13, an elite commando unit of the Israeli Navy that has been involved in clandestine operations since the early years of the Israeli state, according to the two Israeli officials and the American official.

Israeli officials said that two of the ships it attacked were transporting equipment for Hezbollahs missile program.

One, they said, was carrying an industrial planetary mixer, a device used to make solid rocket fuel for missiles. The device was meant to replace an older mixer that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut in August 2019, the Israeli officials said.

Previous Israeli airstrikes on Iranian convoys and cargo in Syria also targeted equipment for making guided missiles.

The tankers targeted by Israel were carrying Iranian oil to Syria, contravening American sanctions and most likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Israeli officials said that Syria paid Iran in cash or by providing logistical assistance to Syrian-based members of Irans Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards, and to Hezbollah.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, also under sanctions, is in dire need of oil. Iran, its economy decimated by American sanctions, needs cash. Hezbollah has also been hit hard by the severe economic and political crisis in Lebanon and a cyberattack on its financial system.

The Israeli attacks are therefore a way to prevent Iran from selling to Syria, and getting money and giving it to Hezbollah, said Sima Shine, a former head of research at Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

The attacks typically feature limpet mines and sometimes torpedoes, the American official said. They generally target the ships engines or propellers, one Israeli official said. And they are intended to cripple but not sink the ships, the American and Israeli officials said.

The attacks escalated toward the end of 2020, as Mr. Trumps term drew to close. In response, Irans Revolutionary Guards began to discreetly escort the tankers through the Red Sea, before ships from Russia, an Iranian ally, accompanied them at a distance through the Mediterranean, the American official said.

The attack on the Shahr e Kord occurred when the Russian escort was far enough away for the Israelis to strike, the official added.

The effectiveness of the Israeli campaign is unclear. Some of the targeted ships were forced to return to Iran without delivering their cargo, the American official said.

The Iranians associated with the Iranian Oil Ministry said that in all cases the vessels sustained minor damage, the crews were not hurt and repairs were conducted within a few days.

The American and Israeli officials said there was no connection between the Israeli campaign and a recent oil spill that left tons of tar on the beaches of Israel and Lebanon.

Within Israel, there is concern among maritime experts that the cost of a sea war may exceed its benefit.

While the Israeli Navy can make its presence felt in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, it is less effective in waters closer to Iran. And that could make Israeli-owned ships more vulnerable to Iranian attacks as they pass Irans western shores on their way to ports in the Gulf, said Shaul Chorev, a retired Israeli admiral who now heads the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center at the University of Haifa.

Israeli strategic interests in the Persian Gulf and related waterways will undoubtedly grow, he wrote in a statement, and the Israeli Navy does not have the capabilities to protect these interests.

Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv, Farnaz Fassihi from New York, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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Israels Shadow War With Iran Moves Out to Sea - The New York Times

The Saudi ceasefire initiative in Yemen will not be approved by the Houthis. There is no surprise there. The Houthis view their own position and the regional situation through Iranian eyes. They are satisfied with what meets Iranian interests and opposed to whatever is inconsistent with those interests.

And since Iran has used the war in Yemen as a card to pressure the United States, because of the danger that the Houthi military movement poses to American interests, it is neither acceptable nor permissible from their standpoint for the Yemeni crisis to be handled in a way that serves all Yemeni parties, including the Houthi side itself, which will certainly not come out as a loser from any negotiations between Yemenis.

The problem with the Houthis is that they identify their interests with those of Iran. They even put these ahead of their own, as they are ideology-driven. They look at their cause in terms of sectarian expediency even if it separates them from others, not in terms of national necessity that unites them with other parties. Therefore, they do not see compliance with Iranian dictates as a deviation from their principles.

However, there is an obstacle that the Houthis will face when they eventually declare their categorical rejection of the Saudi initiative. It is the fact that the initiative has received the blessing of the largest part of the international community, from which Iran is seeking to concessions in a new nuclear agreement.

The international community has become more convinced than before of the need to end the war in Yemen. That is not because of the humanitarian motives which the Houthis advance publicly while working to end the arms embargo, but rather because of genuine world concern at the fate of people in Yemen, who are on the edge of the abyss if they have not fallen into it already.

The United States and the European Union are convinced of the need to end the war. Realising this, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia cut to the chase and announced its peace initiative that removes the Iranian cover from he Houthis. It would also put them in direct confrontation with the world. It is not unlikely that the international community will impose a peace settlement on Yemen, as it has in Libya. Will the Houthis be able to confront the world militarily, for example?

The Houthis, having fallen into the ideological pit that ensured them supplies of Iranian money and weapons throughout the years of their war, cannot think rationally in a way that would guarantee their future within a national framework that brings together all Yemeni parties.

They are just a sectarian gang that was previously defeated in six wars. They have more than once violated signed agreements and continued to do so, taking advantage of the chaos of the Arab spring that led to the collusion of ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh whom they later killed. This gang has fought over for many years in defence of Irans interests, acting as Tehrans proxy on the Red Sea.

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Iran and not peace is what matters for Houthis | | AW - The Arab Weekly