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Biden revokes Trumps TikTok, WeChat ban order, but White House to subject apps to a security review

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday revoked Trump administration executive orders that sought to ban TikTok, WeChat and other Chinese-owned apps and replaced them with a new security review that could prompt fresh steps to restrict those or other apps.

Biden’s new executive order would create a process to scrutinize whether apps controlled by a foreign adversary present risks to U.S. national security and the security of Americans’ sensitive personal data, the White House said.

After the government reviews each particular app, it can “take action, as appropriate,” the administration said in a fact sheet.

Senior administration officials said they remain concerned about the risks posed by apps owned by Chinese companies but wanted to establish a more “robust” process for reviewing them. They noted that the Trump administration’s ban orders had faced several court challenges that led judges to temporarily block the bans while the cases proceeded.

Asked whether the Biden administration still intends to ban TikTok or WeChat, one senior administration official said: “All the mobile apps named in the revoked executive orders are eligible for evaluation under the process we’ve outlined.”

“The administration is extremely committed to ensure protection of Americans’ data from foreign at-risk apps across the board . . . including large and popular apps. I think there are a wide range of actions that can be negotiated or imposed to ensure Americans’ data can be comprehensively protected,” another senior administration official told reporters Wednesday. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the new executive order.

“The Biden administration is committed to promoting an open, interoperable, reliable and secure Internet; protecting human rights online and offline; and supporting a vibrant, global digital economy,” the administration said in a fact sheet. “Certain countries, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), do not share these values and seek to leverage digital technologies and Americans’ data in ways that present unacceptable national security risks while advancing authoritarian controls and interests.”

TikTok’s corporate owner, ByteDance, declined to comment Wednesday. Tencent, which owns WeChat, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union warned the Biden administration against actions that would infringe on the First Amendment rights of TikTok and WeChat users. “President Biden is right to revoke these Trump administration executive orders, which blatantly violated the First Amendment rights of TikTok and WeChat users in the United States,” the statement quoted a senior ACLU attorney, Ashley Gorski, as saying. “The Commerce Department’s review of these and other apps must not take us down the same misguided path, by serving as a smokescreen for future bans or other unlawful actions.”

U.S. WeChat users who sued the Trump administration also applauded Biden’s move. A ban “would have led to the unprecedented shutdown of a major platform for communications relied on by millions of people in the United States,” said Michael Bien, lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

Administration officials said Biden’s order doesn’t affect a separate Trump directive from last August instructing ByteDance to divest its U.S. TikTok operations. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, has been overseeing ByteDance’s proposals to comply with that order, which at one point included an offer to spin off part of its operations to Oracle.

“The CFIUS action remains under active discussion by the U.S. government. I’m not in a place to share any details of that,” one of the administration officials said.

The new Biden order directs the Commerce secretary to prepare two reports: one recommending “additional executive and legislative actions to address the risk associated with” apps subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary, and another offering recommendations to prevent a foreign adversary from harming Americans by gaining access to their health or genetic information.

The Trump administration last year sought to ban TikTok, WeChat and other apps owned by Chinese companies, including the mobile-payment app Alipay, on the grounds that they collected “vast swaths” of data on Americans and offered the Chinese Communist Party avenues for censoring or distorting information. The Army and the Navy banned service members from using TikTok on government-issued devices in 2019 and the Defense Department issued a warning to its employees about the app.

ByteDance and users of TikTok and WeChat quickly challenged Trump’s executive orders in court, prompting judges to issue preliminary injunctions halting the bans.

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In the WeChat case, the court said the plaintiffs had raised “serious questions” about the ban hurting their First Amendment rights. In one of the TikTok cases, users of the app argued that the ban would eliminate the “professional opportunities” they derived from the app.

The Trump administration appealed those preliminary injunctions, but the Biden administration in February asked federal appeals courts to halt those proceedings while it reviewed the proposed bans.

One of the Biden officials said some of Trump’s executive orders “weren’t implemented in the soundest fashion” and that the White House is now trying to establish “a robust comprehensive process against a set of clear and intelligible criteria” to determine any risks posed by apps.

The administration gave similar reasons for changing a different Trump order last week. While Biden preserved the heart of Trump’s prohibitions on U.S. investment in companies that support China’s military, he moved oversight of the ban from the Defense Department to the Treasury Department, to give it stronger legal grounding.

“Like the administration’s order last week to ban investment in Chinese surveillance companies, this framework looks to improve on the Trump approach, but it should be judged on how they actually utilize the tool going forward,” said Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Pentagon official.

“Will it be used aggressively against TikTok, Alipay or other tech platforms that capture vast amounts of Americans’ data, or will it be employed rarely and with caution? If it’s the latter, this will be an improved framework but hold little value,” he said.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called revoking the Trump bans a “major mistake,” saying in a tweet that it “shows alarming complacency” toward China’s access to Americans’ personal information and toward China’s “growing corporate influence.”

One former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity, said the new order “suggests that the export of data to China is a pressing problem for the Biden administration, but it offers no clarity as to how they will address it.”

“The administration clearly wants to extricate itself from the legal morass created by its predecessor,” the former official said, “but it’s not yet clear they are committed to taking meaningful action in a timely way.”

Published : June 10, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen, Ellen Nakashima

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As Indias pandemic surge eases, a race begins to prepare for a possible next wave

NEW DELHI – Two months ago, the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital in Indias capital was a battlefield. Every one of its 1,500 beds for coronavirus patients was full. It came perilously close to running out of oxygen not once, but three times.

Now, the hospital has space for every patient who needs a bed and there is oxygen to spare. Ritu Saxena, the hospital’s deputy medical superintendent, no longer spends nights fielding calls from desperate relatives. Instead, she is focused on the future: helping prepare the hospital for more surges.

“The worst is definitely over,” a relieved Saxena said.

But now India faces the challenge of trying to gain the upper hand. A resurgence of the coronavirus is feared by many public health experts if nothing is done. Key to the scramble is a renewed vaccination push and efforts to boost India’s medical infrastructure to stockpile supplies, such as oxygen cylinders, and augment care networks from city slums to far-flung villages.

India’s vaccine makers, particularly the Serum Institute, are under pressure to enhance production to service the urgent domestic need even as the world waits for exports from the country to resume.

Failure could be brutal. India is reeling from a pandemic punch that brought staggering official daily death tolls of more than 4,500 at its peak in mid-May. At present, just 3.5 percent of India’s more than 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated.

And the clock is ticking. The timing and intensity of another surge remain difficult to predict. K. VijayRaghavan, a scientific adviser to the government, told reporters last month that a third wave was “inevitable” as the virus mutates. But, he said, the level of a coronavirus rebound could be reduced with strong measures.

“It depends much on how effectively the guidance is implemented,” he said referring to surveillance and containment measures. “It is difficult but we can – and must – do this.”

On Tuesday, India recorded nearly 86,500 cases – the lowest figure in two months. Yet the number is still the highest in the world.

India also continues to record the highest number of deaths in the world with a daily toll of more than 2,000 – a vast undercount according to experts. This week, for the first time in months, businesses and shops reopened in New Delhi and Mumbai, cities that were once at the heart of the country’s pandemic crisis.

India was caught off-guard by the ferocity of the coronavirus wave, driven largely by a highly infectious local variant. Hospitals ran full, medicines were in short supply and dead bodies were found floating in the Ganges river, a testament to the scale of the crisis.

“It’s not a question of whether but when,” said Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, referring to a possible new coronavirus wave. An “aggressive containment” strategy, he said, is essential.

“As soon as a cluster of cases is found, they should be sequenced for genomic markers to check if they are the same or new variants,” Babu said.

The other way to counter the inevitable was faster and wider vaccine coverage, he said. More than 230 million Indians have received at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine. But in a country of India’s size, that means just 18 percent of the population is partially vaccinated.

India’s vaccination drive that started in January with fanfare has hobbled in the past few months, at a time when it needed to have ramped up.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stepped in. On Monday, he reversed his government’s decision to give state governments a role in acquiring coronavirus vaccines. The policy had been criticized for exacerbating shortages in some regions.

Beginning June 21, the central government will be in charge of buying 75 percent of the vaccine supply, with the rest being earmarked for the private sector for purchase. Coronavirus vaccinations for all adults at government sites will be free.

The reversal comes days after the Supreme Court slammed the government for its muddled policies.

Doctors say the speed of vaccination is crucial for India. “The rapidity of vaccination plays an important role in the evolution of new variants,” said Lancelot Pinto, a pulmonologist at P.D. Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai. The virus, he said, will learn how to mutate and propagate among those not vaccinated.

“We don’t want to be in a situation where the pace [of vaccinations] is so slow that the virus outsmarts us,” Pinto said.

Inequities in the vaccination drive have emerged in recent days, with the rich being able to afford shots at private hospitals while the poor struggle to pay or register online to book a slot. Authorities in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, are investigating a free vaccine camp held in a posh residential colony of Noida using jabs meant for a small town miles away.

In rural areas, meanwhile, vaccine hesitancy and a lack of awareness remain roadblocks.

Babu, the epidemiologist, said India’s goal should be to fully vaccinate all of its vulnerable population or those with comorbidities and administer one dose to all adults. For that, he said, India would need to administer 10 million doses a day, a challenging acceleration from its current 3 million doses daily.

With vaccines heading back under New Delhi’s control, state governments are charting their own plans for the months to come. The states of Delhi and Maharashtra have set up pediatric task forces. During the recent wave, doctors reported many more younger patients with severe illness than in the previous surge.

Khusrav Bajan, an intensive-care specialist and member of Maharashtra’s covid-19 task force, said the state was setting up intensive-care beds for children and training health-care providers in rural areas in treatment protocols. Hospitals with more than 100 beds were asked to set up in-house oxygen plants to avoid shortages.

“We are much wiser than before,” Bajan said.

New Delhi, the nation’s capital that hit 28,000 daily cases in April, is planning to handle a possible peak of 37,000 cases in any future surge.

The city was ravaged by an acute shortage of oxygen, with major hospitals pleading for the government to send supplies. Dozens of small oxygen plants are being set up and storage capacity being increased to have one day’s buffer of supply.

“It is our duty to be prepared” in case the third wave “turns out to be extremely dangerous,” said Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi chief minister, announcing the measures last week.

Earlier this month – in a decision to minimize risks of a large outbreak – the government canceled a crucial exam for students in grade 12 that determines college admissions. Modi said the decision “safeguards the health as well as future of our youth.”

For Saxena, the doctor in New Delhi, memories of the past months are raw and traumatizing.

“The second wave was like a tsunami and we were not fully prepared,” she said.

She anticipates a “huge” number of patients if a third wave hits. But this time, she said, they “are ready to face it.”

Published : June 10, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Niha Masih, Taniya Dutta

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https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40001851

Apple settles lawsuit after iPhone techs posted womans explicit photos on Facebook, report says

Apple paid a multimillion dollar settlement to a woman after iPhone repair techs posted risque pictures from her phone to Facebook, one of the most severe customer privacy breaches yet to be made public, according to legal documents obtained by the Telegraph.

The tech behemoth agreed to cover the amount for Apple-approved repair contractor Pegatron following a 2016 incident in which an unnamed Oregon college student sent her phone to Apple for repairs after it stopped working.

Two iPhone repair technicians in Sacramento, uploaded “10 photos of her in various stages of undress and a sex video” to her Facebook account, resulting in “severe emotional distress” for the young woman, according to the Telegraph’s review of legal records.

Pegatron, a major Apple manufacturer with facilities across the globe, had to reimburse Apple for the settlement and face insurers who didn’t want to pay for it, according to the news outlet. Legal documents revealed that the woman was paid an unspecified sum, reported to be a “multimillion-dollar” amount, and that her lawyers had demanded upward of $5 million, the Telegraph reported.

Apple told The Washington Post in a statement that there are protocols in place to ensure the privacy and security of customers during the repair process.

“When we learned of this egregious violation of our policies at one of our vendors in 2016, we took immediate action and have since continued to strengthen our vendor protocols,” a company spokesperson said.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple keeps a firm grip on the repair of its devices, arguing that allowing only approved retailers and vendors to repair its products ensures the privacy of its customers. The revelation of the lawsuit pokes holes in the company’s stance that only authorized retailers can keep customer information secure.

Apple was listed as a “customer” in the lawsuit in an effort to keep the issue private, the Telegraph reported.

But Apple’s name became public in the matter in a separate, unrelated lawsuit against the firm and Pegatron, according to the news outlet.

Lawyers for the young woman warned of suing for invasion of privacy and emotional distress along with “negative media publicity” before a settlement that prevents the woman from speaking about and disclosing the specified amount was reached, the outlet reported.

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The settlement isn’t the first time Apple has had to handle the misdeeds of employees.

In 2019, a California woman alleged that an Apple store employee had texted a private picture on her phone to himself. That employee was no longer working for the company after Apple conducted its investigation.

Apple store employees at a Brisbane, Australia, location were fired in 2016 for taking candid pictures of female employees and customers’ bodies and stealing photos from consumers’ phones to rank their bodies.

Published : June 10, 2021

By : The Washington Post · Lateshia Beachum

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Asean sees over 23,000 new Covid-19 cases

The number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia crossed 4.23 million, with 23,385 new cases reported on Wednesday, higher than Tuesday’s tally of 20,286. New deaths were 422, increasing from Tuesday’s 404.

The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Asean now stands at 82,912.

Vietnam is planning to postpone the hosting of the 31st SEA Games, which was originally scheduled for November 31-December 2, to next year as the country faces a new Covid-19 wave.

A top Vietnamese newspaper reported that although the number of patients in the country is still low compared to other nations in the region, Vietnam still has the lowest inoculation rate per total population in Asean.

Meanwhile, Brunei’s Public Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that two people had contracted Covid-19, the first time in 398 days that new cases have been found, bringing the cumulative cases in that country to 246 patients. The two patients are returnees from Manila, Philippines, who had entered the country on May 26.

Published : June 10, 2021

By : THE NATION

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China urges ASEAN to avoid “undue interference” in Myanmar crisis

China has asked ASEAN nations to avoid “undue interference” in the Myanmar crisis, as the United States and other democratic forces have been imposing sanctions on the Southeast Asian countrys junta, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

“China is a close neighbor of Myanmar linked by mountains and rivers, and the situation in Myanmar has a direct bearing on China’s interests,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Monday.

During the face-to-face meeting in China’s south-central city of Chongqing held amid the coronavirus pandemic, Wang said Beijing “supports ASEAN in playing a constructive role in properly handling Myanmar’s domestic issues.”

“We are willing to continue to work with ASEAN to jointly urge all parties in Myanmar to put the interests of the people first, and keep calm to eliminate all kinds of violence,” he said.

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China has refrained from condemning Myanmar’s military coup, unlike the United States, the European Union and Japan.

Beijing is believed to be attempting to increase its economic and security influence in the neighboring country, from which it imports natural resources like gas and crude oil, while its tensions with the United States and other democratic countries have been escalating in the Asia-Pacific region.

Myanmar is located right on the path of China’s strategic plan to gain direct access to the Indian Ocean as part of its “Belt and Road” project for the development of infrastructure and trade across Asia, Europe and Africa.

China seeks to work in tandem to deal with the virus outbreak and the Myanmar issue with the ASEAN members, some of which have strengthened economic ties with Beijing but depend on Washington in security terms.

It has provided them with China-developed coronavirus vaccines as it promotes “vaccine diplomacy” across the globe.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Published : June 09, 2021

By : The Jakarta Post/ANN