Cerebral has revealed it shared the private health information, including mental health assessments, of more than 3.1 million patients in the United States with advertisers and social media giants like Facebook, Google, and TikTok. From a report: The telehealth startup, which exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic after rolling lockdowns and a surge in online-only virtual health services, disclosed the security lapse in a filing with the federal government that it shared patients' personal and health information who used the app to search for therapy or other mental health care services. Cerebral said that it collected and shared names, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, IP addresses and other demographics, as well as data collected from Cerebral's online mental health self-assessment, which may have also included the services that the patient selected, assessment responses, and other associated health information.

A top House official said that a "significant data breach" at the health insurance marketplace for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday potentially exposed personal identifiable information of hundreds of lawmakers and staff. NBC News reports: In a letter obtained by NBC News, Chief Administrative Officer Catherine L. Szpindor said Wednesday that the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI had alerted her to a data breach at DC Health Link, the Affordable Care Act online marketplace that administers health care plans for members of Congress and certain Capitol Hill staff. "Currently, I do not know the size and scope of the breach, but have been informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that account information and [personally identifiable information] of hundreds of Member and House staff were stolen," Szpindor said. "I expect to have access to the list of impacted enrollees later today and will notify you directly if your information was compromised." Szpindor added that it did not appear that House lawmakers were "the specific target of the attack" on DC Health Link.

Out of an "abundance of caution," Szpindor said, lawmakers may opt to freeze family credit at three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and Transunion. The data breach has also affected Senate offices, according to an email sent to Senate offices Wednesday afternoon that said the Senate Sergeant at Arms was informed by law enforcement about a data breach. The notice said that the "data included the full names, date of enrollment, relationship (self, spouse, child), and email address, but no other Personally Identifiable Information (PII)."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A security researcher appears to have tracked the physical location of a former top Biden administration official through his apparent usage of AllTrails, a popular hiking app with more than 30 million registered users. The AllTrails records appear to show the official visiting sensitive locations such as the White House, and also suggests the specific house where he or his family lives. By default, AllTrails users' activity is public for anyone to view, including completed trails, maps, and activities. But that convenience and focus on providing a social network style experience comes with potential risks around national security or privacy, depending on the particular user. Whether a public figure like a government official or celebrity, or someone at risk of stalking in general such as someone in an abusive relationship, AllTrails' privacy settings may be something users should consider.

"I found interesting results by searching near the Pentagon, NSA, CIA or White House and then looking at the user's other activity," Wojciech, the security researcher, told Motherboard in an email. Wojciech said they used their own open source intelligence platform as part of the investigative process. They said the tool supports Strava and another app called SportsTracker, and will include AllTrails itself soon. Wojciech sent Motherboard a link to what they believed to be the AllTrails profile of the former top Biden official. Motherboard is not naming the official because they did not respond to requests for comment, and their profile is still publicly accessible.

One trip to the White House in December recorded in AllTrails also shows a nearby apartment building he ended his journey at. More trips recorded that month show the official's other movements throughout Washington D.C. Much of the AllTrails activity relates to when this official was part of the administration. Motherboard searched through the official's AllTrails activity and found multiple hikes starting from the same location. Motherboard then queried public records and found this location was a house registered to the official's family, meaning AllTrails had helped identify where the official or his family may have been living. Motherboard also verified that the official does have an account on AllTrails by attempting to sign up to the service with the official's personal email address. This was not possible because the address was already registered to an account.

China's government could use TikTok to control data on millions of American users, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying the Chinese-owned video app "screams" of security concerns. Reuters reports: Wray told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats to U.S. security that the Chinese government could also use TikTok to control software on millions of devices and drive narratives to divide Americans over Taiwan or other issues. "Yes, and I would make the point on that last one, in particular, that we're not sure that we would see many of the outward signs of it happening if it was happening," Wray said of concerns China could feed misinformation to users. "This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government - and it, to me, it screams out with national security concerns," Wray said. Yesterday, the White House said it backed a bill in Congress to give the Biden administration new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign technologies that could pose security threats.

A YouTube star who built a sizable following with slickly produced videos flaunting his fleet of luxury and sports cars, collection of diamond-encrusted bling, and his spacious Swedesboro home will be forced to give up nearly all of it after he was sentenced Tuesday to 5 and a half years in prison for the illegal business that allowed him to amass those trappings of success. From a report: Bill Omar Carrasquillo -- better known to his more than 800,000 online followers as "Omi in a Hellcat" -- pleaded guilty last year to running one of the most brazen and successful cable TV piracy schemes ever prosecuted by the U.S. government. As part of his sentencing Tuesday, he was ordered to forfeit more than $30 million in assets, including nearly $6 million in cash; cars including Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, and McLarens; and a portfolio of more than a dozen properties he'd amassed across Philadelphia and its suburbs.

"Thirty million dollars is a lot of money [but] tangible objects aren't everything," U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said in announcing the punishment during a hearing in federal court. "You have a large following and there may be people who think if you can get away with it, they can too." Carrasquillo, 36, apologized to his family, his employees, and the cable companies he'd cheated through his business, which illegally sold content hijacked from cable boxes to thousands of online subscribers paying fees as low as $15 a month. "I really didn't know the significance of this crime until I was picked up [by the FBI] at my home," he said. "I feel like I let everybody down." But while prosecutors described Carrasquillo's crimes -- which included counts of conspiracy, copyright infringement, fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion -- as serious, much of Tuesday's hearing focused on Carrasquillo's remarkable rags-to-riches story.

Google is expanding VPN access to all Google One members on all plans and rolling out a new dark web report feature for all subscribers. From a report: VPN by Google One was previously only available to members on the Premium 2TB plan, but will now be available to all Google One members, including those on the Basic plan that starts at $1.99 per month. The tech giant notes that VPN by Google One adds more protection to your internet activity no matter what apps or browsers you use, shielding it from hackers or network operators by masking your IP address. Google is also introducing a new feature called "dark web report" for Google One members on all plans in the United States to help users monitor their personal information on the dark web. Dark web report will start rolling out over the next few weeks to members across all Google One plans in the United States.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon on Tuesday defeated a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of nearly 7,000 workers in California that claimed the company should have reimbursed employees who worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic for home office expenses. U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria in San Francisco said the named plaintiff, David Williams, failed to show that Amazon had a company-wide policy of not reimbursing employees for internet, cell phone and other costs, and the judge denied his motion to certify the workers as a class.

The judge said that more than 600 of the 7,000 proposed class members were reimbursed $66.49 on average for home internet expenses, and some were reimbursed in full. Williams' motion for class certification was denied without prejudice, meaning he can file a renewed motion later on. Craig Ackermann, a lawyer for Williams, said he plans to file a new motion excluding the 619 workers who received reimbursements from the proposed class. Williams sued Amazon in 2021 individually and added class-action claims last year. He has accused Amazon of violating a California law requiring employers to reimburse workers for reasonable work-related expenses.

The domain name registrar Freenom, whose free domain names have long been a draw for spammers and phishers, has stopped allowing new domain name registrations. KrebsOnSecurity reports: Freenom is the domain name registry service provider for five so-called "country code top level domains" (ccTLDs), including .cf for the Central African Republic; .ga for Gabon; .gq for Equatorial Guinea; .ml for Mali; and .tk for Tokelau. Freenom has always waived the registration fees for domains in these country-code domains, presumably as a way to encourage users to pay for related services, such as registering a .com or .net domain, for which Freenom does charge a fee. On March 3, 2023, social media giant Meta sued Freenom in a Northern California court, alleging cybersquatting violations and trademark infringement. The lawsuit also seeks information about the identities of 20 different "John Does" -- Freenom customers that Meta says have been particularly active in phishing attacks against Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users. The lawsuit points to a 2021 study (PDF) on the abuse of domains conducted for the European Commission, which discovered that those ccTLDs operated by Freenom made up five of the Top Ten TLDs most abused by phishers.

"The five ccTLDs to which Freenom provides its services are the TLDs of choice for cybercriminals because Freenom provides free domain name registration services and shields its customers' identity, even after being presented with evidence that the domain names are being used for illegal purposes," the complaint charges. "Even after receiving notices of infringement or phishing by its customers, Freenom continues to license new infringing domain names to those same customers." Freenom has not yet responded to requests for comment. But attempts to register a domain through the company's website as of publication time generated an error message that reads: "Because of technical issues the Freenom application for new registrations is temporarily out-of-order. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience. We are working on a solution and hope to resume operations shortly. Thank you for your understanding." Although Freenom is based in The Netherlands, some of its other sister companies named as defendants in the lawsuit names are incorporated in the United States.

It remains unclear why Freenom has stopped allowing domain registration, but it could be that the company was recently the subject of some kind of disciplinary action by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit entity which oversees the domain registrars. In June 2015, ICANN suspended Freenom's ability to create new domain names or initiate inbound transfers of domain names for 90 days. According to Meta, the suspension was premised on ICANN's determination that Freenom "has engaged in a pattern and practice of trafficking in or use of domain names identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark of a third party in which the Registered Name Holder has no rights or legitimate interest."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The White House said Tuesday it backs a bill in Congress to give the Biden administration new powers to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok and other foreign technologies that could pose security threats. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the bipartisan bill sponsored by a dozen senators "would strengthen our ability to address discrete risks posed by individual transactions, and systemic risks posed by certain classes of transactions involving countries of concern in sensitive technology sectors."

"We look forward to continue working with both Democrats and Republicans on this bill, and urge Congress to act quickly to send it to the President's desk," he said. The bill in question is called the "Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act."

The bill, introduced by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. John Thune (R-SD), doesn't single out TikTok to be banned. "Instead, Warner avoids making his bill all about TikTok," reports Ars Technica. "His office told Reuters that the RESTRICT Act will 'comprehensively address the ongoing threat posed by technology from foreign adversaries,' citing TikTok as an example of tech that could be assessed as a threat."

"[T]he RESTRICT Act is superior to the DATA Act because it provides a legal framework for the US to review all 'foreign technology coming into America,' not just from China, but also from Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. It's designed to give the US 'a systemic approach to make sure we can ban or prohibit' emerging technology threats 'when necessary.'"

The FBI and the Defense Department were actively involved in research and development of facial recognition software that they hoped could be used to identify people from video footage captured by street cameras and flying drones, according to thousands of pages of internal documents that provide new details about the government's ambitions to build out a powerful tool for advanced surveillance. WashingtonPost: The documents, revealed in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the FBI, show how closely FBI and Defense officials worked with academic researchers to refine artificial-intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent. Many of the records relate to the Janus program, a project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA, the high-level research arm of the U.S. intelligence community modeled after the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA. Program leaders worked with FBI scientists and some of the nation's leading computer-vision experts to design and test software that would quickly and accurately process the "truly unconstrained face imagery" recorded by surveillance cameras in public places, including subway stations and street corners, according to the documents, which the ACLU shared with The Washington Post.

In a 2019 presentation, an IARPA program manager said the goal had been to "dramatically improve" the power and performance of facial recognition systems, with "scaling to support millions of subjects" and the ability to quickly identify faces from partially obstructed angles. One version of the system was trained for "Face ID ... at target distances" of more than a half-mile. To refine the system's capabilities, researchers staged a data-gathering test in 2017, paying dozens of volunteers to simulate real-world scenarios at a Defense Department training facility made to resemble a hospital, a subway station, an outdoor marketplace and a school, the documents show. The test yielded thousands of surveillance videos and images, some of which were captured by a drone. The improved facial recognition system was ultimately folded into a search tool, called Horus, and made available to the Pentagon's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, which helps provide military technologies to civilian police forces, the documents show. The Horus tool has since been offered for use to at least six federal agencies, and their feedback is "continuing to be used to refine the tool," Department of Homeland Security officials said last year.

Police were investigating his neighbor. A judge gave officers access to all his security-camera footage, including inside his home. From a report: The week of last Thanksgiving, Michael Larkin, a business owner in Hamilton, Ohio, picked up his phone and answered a call. It was the local police, and they wanted footage from Larkin's front door camera. Larkin had a Ring video doorbell, one of the more than 10 million Americans with the Amazon-owned product installed at their front doors. His doorbell was among 21 Ring cameras in and around his home and business, picking up footage of Larkin, neighbors, customers and anyone else near his house. The police said they were conducting a drug-related investigation on a neighbor, and they wanted videos of "suspicious activity" between 5 and 7 p.m. one night in October. Larkin cooperated, and sent clips of a car that drove by his Ring camera more than 12 times in that time frame. He thought that was all the police would need. Instead, it was just the beginning.

They asked for more footage, now from the entire day's worth of records. And a week later, Larkin received a notice from Ring itself: The company had received a warrant, signed by a local judge. The notice informed him it was obligated to send footage from more than 20 cameras -- whether or not Larkin was willing to share it himself. As networked home surveillance cameras become more popular, Larkin's case, which has not previously been reported, illustrates a growing collision between the law and people's own expectation of privacy for the devices they own -- a loophole that concerns privacy advocates and Democratic lawmakers, but which the legal system hasn't fully grappled with. Questions of who owns private home security footage, and who can get access to it, have become a bigger issue in the national debate over digital privacy. And when law enforcement gets involved, even the slim existing legal protections evaporate. "It really takes the control out of the hands of the homeowners, and I think that's hugely problematic," said Jennifer Lynch, the surveillance litigation director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.

In the debate over home surveillance, much of the concern has focused on Ring in particular, because of its popularity, as well as the company's track record of cooperating closely with law enforcement agencies. The company offers a multitude of products such as indoor cameras or spotlight cameras for homes or businesses, recording videos based on motion activation, with the footage stored for up to 180 days on Ring's servers. They amount to a large and unregulated web of eyes on American communities -- which can provide law enforcement valuable information in the event of a crime, but also create a 24/7 recording operation that even the owners of the cameras aren't fully aware they've helped to build.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The US can stop Twitter from releasing details about the government's demands for user information in national security investigations, a court ruled (PDF), in the same week House Republicans are to grill national security officials over surveillance. Twitter had protested the government's redactions to a 2014 "transparency report" that featured a numerical breakdown of national security-related data requests from the previous year. The US appeals court in San Francisco on Monday agreed with a lower-court judge that the Justice Department had shown a "compelling" interest in keeping that information secret. Based on classified and unclassified declarations provided by government officials, the court was "able to appreciate why Twitter's proposed disclosure would risk making our foreign adversaries aware of what is being surveilled and what is not being surveilled -- if anything at all," US Circuit Judge Daniel Bress wrote for the three-judge panel.

Although the case is almost a decade old, the ruling comes just as lawmakers and US national security agencies gear up for a bruising fight over making changes to a key surveillance program. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, described by intelligence officials as a key authority, expires on Dec. 31 unless Congress votes to renew it. US agencies use the authority to compel internet and technology companies to turn over information about suspected foreign terrorists and spies. Changes to Section 702 could include altering what companies like Twitter are required to do in response to government demands. "The case at issue in Monday's decision involved efforts by Twitter to share information about two types of federal law enforcement demands on the social media company: 'national security letters' for subscriber information, which would cover metadata but not the substance of any electronic communications, and orders under FISA, which could include content," adds Bloomberg.

Judge Daniel Bress wrote: "The government may not fend off every First Amendment challenge by invoking national security. But we must apply the First Amendment with due regard for the government's compelling interest in securing the safety of our country and its people."

Ministers must consider changing the law to allow scientists to carry out genome editing of human embryos for serious genetic conditions -- as a matter of urgency. That is the key message of a newly published report by a UK citizens' jury made up of individuals affected by genetic conditions. From a report: The report is the first in-depth study of the views of individuals who live with genetic conditions about the editing of human embryos to treat hereditary disorders and will be presented at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing, which opens at the Crick Institute in London this week. Scientists say that in a few years, they will be ready to use genome editing techniques to alter genes and induce changes in physical traits, such as disease risk, in future generations. In the UK, around 2.4 million people live with a genetic condition. These include cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, muscular dystrophy, various cancers, and some forms of hereditary blindness.

"Genome editing offers the prospect of preventing such conditions affecting future generations but there needs to be a full national debate on the issues," said Prof Anna Middleton of Cambridge University, the project's leader. "These discussions need to start now because genome editing is advancing so quickly. Many affected individuals want to debate the ethical issues and explore what implementation might look like." Genome editing acts like a pair of molecular scissors that can cut a strand of DNA at a specific site, allowing scientists to alter the structure of a gene, a form of manipulation that does not involve the introduction of DNA from other organisms. In the UK, as in most countries worldwide, it is illegal to perform genome editing on embryos that lead to pregnancy.

"On March 7, 2003, a struggling company called The SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM," writes LWN.net, "claiming that the success of Linux was the result of a theft of SCO's technology..."

Two decades later, "It is hard to overestimate how much the community we find ourselves in now was shaped by a ridiculous lawsuit 20 years ago...." It was the claim of access to Unix code that was the most threatening allegation for the Linux community. SCO made it clear that, in its opinion, Linux was stolen property: "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts". To rectify this "misappropriation", SCO was asking for a judgment of at least $1 billion, later increased to $5 billion. As the suit dragged on, SCO also started suing Linux users as it tried to collect a tax for use of the system.

Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company. That would have solved SCO's ongoing business problems and IBM, for rather less than the amount demanded in court, could have made an annoying problem go away and also lay claim to the ownership of Unix — and, thus, Linux. To SCO's management, it may well have seemed like a good idea at the time. IBM, though, refused to play that game; the company had invested heavily into Linux in its early days and was uninterested in allowing any sort of intellectual-property taint to attach to that effort. So the company, instead, directed its not inconsiderable legal resources to squashing this attack. But notably, so did the development community as a whole, as did much of the rest of the technology industry.

Over the course of the following years — far too many years — SCO's case fell to pieces. The "misappropriated" technology wasn't there. Due to what must be one of the worst-written contracts in technology-industry history, it turned out that SCO didn't even own the Unix copyrights it was suing over. The level of buffoonery was high from the beginning and got worse; the company lost at every turn and eventually collapsed into bankruptcy.... Microsoft, which had not yet learned to love Linux, funded SCO and loudly bought licenses from the company. Magazines like Forbes were warning the "Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement" that they "should wake up". SCO was suggesting a license fee of $1,399 — per-CPU — to run Linux.... Such an effort, in less incompetent hands, could easily have damaged Linux badly.

As it went, SCO, despite its best efforts, instead succeeded in improving the position of Linux — in development, legal, and economic terms — considerably.
The article argues SCO's lawsuit ultimately proved that Linux didn't contain copyrighted code "in a far more convincing way than anybody else could have." (And the provenance of all Linux code contributions are now carefully documented.) The case also proved the need for lawyers to vigorously defend the rights of open source programmers. And most of all, it revealed the Linux community was widespread and committed.

And "Twenty years later, it is fair to say that Linux is doing a little better than The SCO Group. Its swaggering leader, who thought to make his fortune by taxing Linux, filed for personal bankruptcy in 2020."

America's public health-protecting Food and Drug Administration wants to update its definition of "healthy" for purposes of product labeling.

But the Washington Post reports dozens of food manufacturers are now "claiming the new standards are draconian and will result in most current food products not making the cut, or in unappealing product reformulations." Under the proposal, manufacturers can label their products "healthy" only if they contain a meaningful amount of food from at least one of the main food groups such as fruit, vegetable or dairy, as recommended by federal dietary guidelines. They must also adhere to specific limits for certain nutrients, such as saturated fat, sodium and added sugars.

It's the added sugar limit that has been the sticking point for many food executives. The FDA's previous rules put limits around saturated fat and sodium but did not include limits on added sugars.

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents 1,700 major food companies from General Mills to Pepsi, wrote a 54-page comment to the FDA in which it stated the proposed rule was overly restrictive and would result in a framework that would automatically disqualify a vast majority of packaged foods.... The proposed rule, if finalized, they said, would violate the First Amendment rights of food companies and could harm both consumers and manufacturers. The Sugar Association has an issue with the added sugar limit; Campbell Soup is more focused on that sodium....

Virtually every part of the food industry appeared disgruntled (here are the 402 comments about the proposed rule). Baby food company Happy Family Organics said the proposed rule probably would lead to an unintended exclusion of some nutrient-rich products. And the American Cheese Society took a more philosophical approach, saying the word "healthy" isn't that helpful on a label and should be used in a complete diet or lifestyle context rather than in a nutrient or single food-focused context.
The FDA estimates that up to just 0.4% of people who try to follow their guidelines would be swayed by the word "healthy" in their long-term food-purchasing decisions, according to the article. It's a position supported by a research paper in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing analyzing hundreds of international studies on the effectiveness of front-of-package nutrition labeling.

"The authors found that the most effective means of conveying nutrition information is a graphic warning label, as has been adopted in Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico and Israel. In Chile, black warning labels shaped like stop signs are required for packaged food and drinks that exceed, per 100 grams: 275 calories, 400 milligrams of sodium, 10 grams of sugar or four grams of saturated fats."

Reuters writes: Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, developed a plan to avoid the threat of prosecution by U.S. authorities as it started an American entity in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The Wall Street Journal reports: Any lawsuit from U.S. regulators would be like "nuclear fall out" for Binance's business and its officers, a Binance executive warned colleagues in a 2019 private chat. Worried about the threat of prosecution, Binance set out on a plan to neutralize U.S. authorities, according to messages and documents from 2018 to 2020 reviewed by The Wall Street Journal as well as interviews with former employees.

The strategy centered on building a bare-bones American platform, Binance.US, that would license Binance's technology and brand but otherwise appear to be wholly independent of Binance.com. It would shield from U.S. regulators' scrutiny the larger Binance.com exchange, which would exclude U.S. users. But Binance and Binance.US have been much more intertwined than the companies have disclosed, mixing staff and finances and sharing an affiliated entity that bought and sold cryptocurrencies, according to the interviews and the messages and documents reviewed by the Journal. Binance developers in China maintained the software code supporting Binance.US users' digital wallets, potentially giving Binance access to U.S. customer data.

If U.S. regulators conclude that these links mean Binance has control over a U.S. company, they could claim the power to police Binance's entire business, which, to many investors, has been a black box since the start. This would also put Binance's billionaire founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, and his finances under closer scrutiny.... Developers in Shanghai maintained key software functions at Binance.US at least through the summer of 2021, the Journal has reported. The Shanghai developers' contracts were with Binance, not with the U.S. platform, according to a person familiar with the agreements.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried "has been under house arrest at his parents' home on the Stanford campus since December," writes the Washington Post, "making the elite university the unlikely host to one of America's most notorious alleged white-collar criminals.

"Surrounded by student co-ops, fraternity houses and other faculty homes, he's the talk of the neighborhood." Bankman-Fried, the son of two Stanford law professors, was released on a $250 million bond secured by the Craftsman-style house. While awaiting his fraud trial later this year, Bankman-Fried wears an ankle bracelet to track his movements and plays with his new dog, Sandor, according to a Puck News report.... It remains to be seen what consequences Bankman-Fried, who pleaded "not guilty," might face. So far, his ability to be detained at home, instead of held in prison, is an exception to how most federal defendants are treated. The quiet, traffic-light Stanford neighborhood is quite the upgrade from Fox Hill, a notoriously rough prison in the Bahamas where Bankman-Fried was briefly held before being extradited.

If Bankman-Fried violates the terms of his bail agreement, his parents could lose their house, which they've owned since 1991 and is worth over $3.5 million, according to public property records....

The U.S. government has tried to restrict his access to virtual private networks and certain apps where messages disappear, but a final ruling has not been made. The judge presiding over his case asked in a hearing last month, "Why am I being asked to turn him loose in this garden of electronic devices?," highlighting that despite any restrictions the court might place on Bankman-Fried's use of technology, he remains in a home with his parents who also have a plethora of ways to be wired. On Friday, prosecutors proposed limiting Bankman-Fried to a flip-phone or "non-smartphone" that cannot access the internet, and that he be issued a new laptop "with limited functionalities." Prosecutors also want to place strict limits and monitoring tools on his parents' devices.
But meanwhile, among the student population, "There are party fliers with his likeness. He's a punchline in campus comedy sketches. Students ride their bikes by on dates.... When asked whether they could confirm a rumor that a nearby student co-op had attacked the Bankman-Fried home with eggs, Stanford campus police did not respond."

And one freshman/cryptocurrency enthusiast even stole a sign from in front of Bankman-Fried's house, then "paraded it around for selfies at a cryptocurrency networking event. The sign is currently growing mold in his dorm-room closet." Bankman-Fried, who grew up on campus, "certainly fits into what I regard as the kind of culture of Stanford," says Richard White, a retired Stanford history professor — even if the 30-year-old former billionaire left Silicon Valley to attend MIT. White and others characterize Stanford's culture as a place where faculty and students are emboldened to take big risks in conceiving the next hot start-up or breakthrough innovation, often with easy access to capital, the conviction that they're changing the world — and few consequences if things go south.
"Through his spokesman Mark Botnick, Bankman-Fried declined to comment for this article...."

The BBC reports: Journalists have been forced to temporarily take down articles critical of powerful oil lobbyists due to the exploitation of US copyright law, according to a new report.

At least five such articles have been subject to fake copyright claims, including one by the respected South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The claims — which falsely assert ownership of the stories — have been made by mystery individuals under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law meant to protect copyright holders. Just last month, three separate false copyright claims were made against Diario Rombe, an investigative news outlet that focusses on Equatorial Guinea. The articles under attack are about the president of Equatorial Guinea's son, Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima, and his close associate, Cameroonian businessman and lawyer NJ Ayuk.

The OCCRP claimed in a report published on Wednesday that the DMCA process was often abused by "unknown parties" who create backdated fake articles to target critical news reports....

Climate Home editor Megan Darby told the OCCRP: "These bogus allegations look like a devious tactic to suppress independent journalism."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story.

"Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race," reports the British newspaper the Times. Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer's books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.

Puffin Books, the company which publishes Dahl novels, updated the electronic novels, in which Augustus Gloop is no longer described as fat or Mrs Twit as fearfully ugly, on devices such as the Amazon Kindle. Dahl's biographer Matthew Dennison last night accused the publisher of "strong-arming readers into accepting a new orthodoxy in which Dahl himself has played no part."
Meanwhile...

• Dahl's publisher earlier announced they'd also resume publishing original versions of Dahl's novels "before the end of the year," reports the BBC.

• The Telegraph notes that when he was alive, Dahl himself "threatened to never write another word if his publishers ever changed his language, promising to send his 'Enormous Crocodile' to gobble them up if they did so."

• A New York Times opinion writer adds that "the changes to Dahl's texts first began to appear more than a year ago without attracting any significant attention until now."

• Children's book author Frank Cottrell-Boyce admits in the Guardian that "as a child I disliked Dahl intensely. I felt that his snobbery was directed at people like me and that his addiction to revenge was not good. But that was fine — I just moved along."

But Cottrell-Boyce's larger point is "The key to reading for pleasure is having a choice about what you read" — and that childhood readers faces greater threats. "The outgoing children's laureate Cressida Cowell has spent the last few years fighting for her Life-changing Libraries campaign. It's making a huge difference but it would have a been a lot easier if our media showed a fraction of the interest they showed in Roald Dahl's vocabulary in our children."

Urban scooter company Lime sued Hertz Corp on Thursday alleging unfair competition and accusing the rental car giant of improperly hiring the startup's senior engineers. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based Neutron Holdings Inc, which does business as Lime, filed the lawsuit (PDF) in California federal court seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction "to recover and protect its trade secrets." It also named Charlie Fang, who previously was Lime's head of engineering, and another engineer as defendants. Lime claimed that Fang, who joined Hertz last year as a senior vice president, violated his employment agreement to not solicit former colleagues after leaving the company.

Hertz said in a statement it "vehemently disagrees with the claims made in the lawsuit." The loss of engineers has "significantly harmed" Lime, which provides short-term e-bike and scooter rentals in about 30 countries. The company said in the lawsuit it now faces "staff shortages, recruiting costs, and critical project delays." Hertz sought to "capitalize" on Fang and his team's knowledge of building "back-end infrastructure for ride-sharing and consumer facing apps so that it could gain a competitive advantage over other companies," according to the complaint.