Privacy

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      TikTok’s CEO eluded the spotlight. Now, a looming ban means he can’t avoid it

      by

      Shou Zi Chew is not a prolific TikToker. The 40-year-old CEO of the Chinese-owned app has just 23 posts and 17,000 followers to his name – paltry by his own platform’s standards.Chew’s profile sees him attending football games, visiting Paris and London, trying Nashville hot chicken, or boating on a lake, often with generic captions. (“Love the outdoors!”). Users have noticed: “Bro the TikTok ceo with 41 likes,” one person commented on his video of the outdoors. “Shout out to this small creator,” another wrote.Suffice to say, Chew is not an influencer. But his influence over one of the world’s fastest growing, most popular and – some say – most dangerous social networks is under increasing scrutiny.On Thursday Chew will appear before a US congressional committee, answering to lawmakers’ concerns over the Chinese government’s access to US user data, as well as TikTok’s impact on the mental health of its younger user base. The stakes are high, coming amid a crackdown on TikTok from the US to Europe. In the past few months alone, the US has banned TikTok on federal government devices, following similar moves by multiple states’ governments, and the Biden administration has threatened a national ban unless its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, sells its shares.It’s one of the biggest tests yet for the Harvard business alumnus, who counts stints at the consumer electronics giant Xiaomi, Yuri Milner’s investment firm DST and Goldman Sachs on his resume, and has only been in the TikTok job since May 2021.Chew’s low-key online presence is reflective of his public profile. In the two years since becoming CEO, Chew remained relatively quiet even as TikTok was thrust into the spotlight. Save for select interviews he operates largely in the background, staying under the radar as the company promises regulators increased transparency. There’s a lot riding on Chew’s first congressional appearance, which might explain why, in recent months, he’s been on a publicity tour. In addition to various interviews, Chew has been quietly meeting with lawmakers as he gears up for his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.Chew has also worked to mobilize the platform’s US user base. In a video posted to the TikTok main account, Chew warned that “some politicians” could take the app away from “all 150 million of you” and asked people to share what they love about using the video-sharing service in the comments.Over the past year, the company has attempted to address some lawmakers’ concerns about both data security and teen mental health. TikTok says it spent more than $1.5bn on security efforts and started the process of deleting the US user data that was backed up to its storage centers in Virginia and Singapore after it started routing all US traffic through Oracle-owned servers in the US. The company also recently announced it was limiting screen time for its under-18 users to one hour.But it’s unclear how much he stands to change lawmakers’ minds, especially as bipartisan efforts to appear tough on China gain momentum, making it difficult for him to find allies in either party.Regulatory pressure growsBy the time Chew took over in May 2021, he had his work cut out for him. The now seven-year-old company had already gone through two CEOs in just one year – Kevin Mayer, who ran the company for three months, and Vanessa Pappas, who served as a temporary global head before Chew replaced her. TikTok was seeing explosive growth, boasting 150 million users just in the US, but also increased regulatory pressure over potential ties to the Chinese government.Though Chew has not formally worked at TikTok for very long, he has been involved with its parent company since its early days. Chew was an early investor in ByteDance, founded in 2012, before it began to develop short-form video apps, according to an interview with David Rubenstein, the founder of private investment firm and ByteDance investor the Carlyle Group.Chew, whose promotion to CEO landed him a spot on Fortune’s 40 under 40 list in 2021, joined the ranks of tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at a time when people in those roles, once the subject of unadulterated adoration and hero worship, had become the subject of ire and disillusionment.While his lack of public persona may have largely saved him from personal scrutiny, it could hinder his attempts at making inroads among lawmakers and members of the public who have become wary of Chinese surveillance.“The mystery of ByteDance and TikTok and the uncertainty around whether they are doing anything that’s unscrupulous is part of the problem,” said Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and founder of the industry newsletter and podcast Geekout. “So [Chew’s] lack of profile and lack of awareness of who he is may be a blessing, but also it might be a downfall given people want to understand TikTok and ByteDance to understand what the level of risk is.”Within months of joining, Chew started working to combat those concerns. In June 2021, Chew wrote a letter to lawmakers, reiterating the company’s commitment to transparency and emphasizing the company was run by him, “a Singaporean based in Singapore” and not China-based ByteDance.Nearly two years later, those conversations appear to have deteriorated, and even appeals to individual lawmakers have not assuaged fears.Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado who called on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores in February, met with Chew last month but said he was still worried about the national security risks of the app and the “poisonous influence of TikTok’s algorithms on teen mental health”.“Mr Chew and I had a frank conversation,” Bennet said in a statement. “But I remain fundamentally concerned that TikTok, as a Chinese-owned company, is subject to dictates from the Chinese Communist party and poses an unacceptable risk to US national security.”Into the hot seatIt’s not the first time US lawmakers have grilled TikTok, but it will be Chew’s first time in the hot seat. In September 2022, battling national security concerns over whether ByteDance may be giving the Chinese government access to US user data, TikTok’s chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas testified in front of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, contending there is no basis for concern and that TikTok is working to minimize how much data non-US employees can access.Chew, who once interned at Facebook, has echoed the same sentiment since he started at TikTok: the company is not beholden to the Chinese government. “TikTok has never shared … US user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever made,” Chew will say on Thursday, according to written testimony posted ahead of the hearing.In the past, Chew has pointed out that while ByteDance is based in China, TikTok itself is not available for download in China and all US user data is stored in Virginia with a backup in Singapore.Though the US government has offered no evidence that the Chinese government has accessed user data from TikTok, their concerns about the security of consumer information in the hands of the company aren’t unfounded. ByteDance employees have reportedly accessed US user data, and the Department of Justice and the FBI have launched an investigation into allegations that some ByteDance employees had obtained TikTok user data to investigate the source of leaks to US journalists.Several civil liberties and privacy advocates argue banning TikTok would amount to censorship, and that concerns over data security would be best addressed through a federal privacy regulation that limits how much user data all tech companies can collect and share with government agencies and third parties. The argument appears to have fallen flat and industry experts appear skeptical there is much Chew could say to assuage lawmakers’ concerns.“It’ll be interesting to see how believable and authentic he comes across or how rehearsed those answers [to Congress] are,” Navarra said. “I think that TikTok has to come in and tell these lawmakers something they haven’t already heard. Because if they don’t then the likelihood of banning is certainly gonna increase.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Meta Manager Was Hacked With Spyware and Wiretapped in Greece

      by

      Artemis Seaford, a dual U.S.-Greek national, was targeted with a cyberespionage tool while also under a wiretap by the Greek spy agency in a case that shows the spread of illicit snooping in Europe.A U.S. and Greek national who worked on Meta’s security and trust team while based in Greece was placed under a yearlong wiretap by the Greek national intelligence service and hacked with a powerful cyberespionage tool, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and officials with knowledge of the case.The disclosure is the first known case of an American citizen being targeted in a European Union country by the advanced snooping technology, the use of which has been the subject of a widening scandal in Greece. It demonstrates that the illicit use of spyware is spreading beyond use by authoritarian governments against opposition figures and journalists, and has begun to creep into European democracies, even ensnaring a foreign national working for a major global corporation.The simultaneous tapping of the target’s phone by the national intelligence service and the way she was hacked indicate that the spy service and whoever implanted the spyware, known as Predator, were working hand in hand.The latest case comes as elections approach in Greece, which has been rocked by a mounting wiretapping and illegal spyware scandal since last year, raising accusations that the government has abused the powers of its spy agency for illicit purposes.The Predator spyware that infected the device is marketed by an Athens-based company and has been exported from Greece with the government’s blessing, in possible breach of European Union laws that consider such products potential weapons, The New York Times found in December.The Greek government has denied using Predator and has legislated against the use of spyware, which it has called “illegal.”“The Greek authorities and security services have at no time acquired or used the Predator surveillance software. To suggest otherwise is wrong,” Giannis Oikonomou, the government spokesman, said in an email. “The alleged use of this software by nongovernmental parties is under ongoing judicial investigation.”“Greece was among the first countries in Europe that passed legislation banning the sale, use and possession of malware in December 2022, which has the most severe legal consequences and strict penalties for individuals and legal entities involved in such an offense,” Mr. Oikonoumou continued. “The same legislation includes provisions on restructuring of the National Intelligence Service, additional safeguards for legal surveillance and modernizing procedures on confidentiality of communications.”European Union lawmakers have launched their own investigation.Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece has come under pressure to explain how and why Predator was sold from Greece and used in Greece, supposedly without the government’s knowledge, against members of his own government, opposition politicians and journalists.Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece, center, during a parliamentary debate in January. He has been under pressure to explain how and why Predator spyware was sold from Greece and used in Greece.Petros Giannakouris/Associated PressHe has insisted that the Greek government had nothing to do with the cyber-surveillance tool, but that opaque actors may have used it behind the authorities’ backs.The latest case centers on Artemis Seaford, a Harvard and Stanford Law graduate, who worked from 2020 to the end of 2022 as a Trust and Security manager at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, while living in Greece.In her role at Meta, Ms. Seaford worked on policy questions relating to cybersecurity and she also maintained working relations with Greek as well as other European officials.After she saw her name on a leaked list of spyware targets in the Greek news media last November, she took her phone to The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the world’s foremost forensics experts on spyware.The lab report, which was reviewed by The New York Times, found that Ms. Seaford’s mobile phone had been hacked with the Predator spyware in September 2021 for at least two months.“This does not preclude the possibility of other infections, or of an infection period extending beyond 2021-11-16,” the forensic report by Citizen Lab said.Ms. Seaford on Friday filed a lawsuit in Athens against anyone found responsible for the hack. The suit compels prosecutors to open an investigation.Ms. Seaford also filed a request with the Greek Authority for the Protection of the Privacy of Telecommunications, an independent constitutional watchdog, asking them to determine whether the Greek national intelligence service, known as the EYP, had wiretapped her phone..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Two people with direct knowledge of the case said that Ms. Seaford had in fact been wiretapped by the Greek spy service from August 2021, the month before the spyware hack, and for several months into 2022.They spoke on condition of anonymity because it is illegal for them to publicly comment on EYP operations.It could take a minimum of three years for Ms. Seaford to be informed of the spy agency wiretap under Greek laws that the government has twice changed since a flurry of wiretapping cases have come to light.Ms. Seaford is now is the fourth known person to file suit in Greece involving the spyware, after an investigative reporter and two opposition politicians.In the first case, an investigative reporter, Thanasis Koukakis, in 2020 similarly asked the constitutional watchdog authority to inform him whether he had also been placed under a wiretap.Thanasis Koukakis, an investigative journalist, has taken the Greek government to the European Court of Human Rights over a change in Greece’s surveillance law. Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBefore Mr. Koukakis could get a formal answer, the government quickly passed a law in 2021 that drastically curbs citizens’ rights to be informed if they had been under surveillance by the national intelligence service. Mr. Koukakis has taken the Greek government to the European Court of Human Rights over the change in the law.The Greek government has since come under pressure to restore some recourse for citizens to learn about being wiretapped and seek redress if their surveillance had been abusive.Under a law passed last year, a citizen who has been targeted by the spy agency can now be informed — but only if they ask, and subject to the approval of a committee, and no earlier than three years after the end of the wiretap.It is under those new conditions that Ms. Seaford’s surveillance by the Greek national intelligence service may one day be officially confirmed.“Targets of abusive surveillance should have the right to know what happened to them and have means of redress just like every other crime,” Ms. Seaford said in an interview.She maintains that there is no reasonable explanation for her being targeted. Wiretapping in Greece is permitted only for national security reasons or serious criminal investigations.More than a year after her surveillance by the Greek intelligence service and the illegal spyware infection of her mobile device, no charges have been brought against her, and she has not been asked to cooperate with the authorities on any investigation.“In my case, I do not know why I was targeted, but I cannot see any reasonable national security concerns behind it,” Ms. Seaford said. Meta and the U.S. embassy in Athens declined to comment.Ms. Seaford’s targeting by the Greek spy agency and some elements of her case were earlier reported by the Greek newspaper Documento.In Ms. Seaford’s case, it appears that information gleaned from the wiretap may have assisted the ruse used to implant the spyware, according to the timeline established by the forensic analysis and submitted to the Greek prosecutor.Demonstrators in Athens last year protesting revelations of the phone tapping of a political leader and journalists by the Greek National Intelligence Service. The scandal has become an issue in coming elections.Orestis Panagiotou/EPA, via ShutterstockIn September 2021, Ms. Seaford booked an appointment for a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine through the official Greek government vaccination platform.She got an automated SMS with her appointment details on Sept. 17, just after midnight. Five hours later, at 05:31 a.m., documents show, she received another SMS asking her to confirm the appointment by clicking on a link.This was the infected link that put Predator in her phone. The details for the vaccination appointment in the infected text message were correct, indicating that someone had reviewed the authentic earlier confirmation and drafted the infected message accordingly.The sender also appeared to be the state vaccine agency, while the infected URL mimicked that of the vaccination platform.Ms. Seaford, who has been reluctant to get dragged into Greek party politics, where the surveillance scandal has become a point of bitter debate, said the question of spyware and surveillance abuse should be a nonpartisan issue.“My hope is that my case and others like mine will not just be instrumentalized, shut down to avoid political cost for some, or, conversely, elevated for the political gain of others,” she said. More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The TikTok wars – why the US and China are feuding over the app

      by

      TikTok is once again fending off claims that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, would share user data from its popular video-sharing app with the Chinese government, or push propaganda and misinformation on its behalf.China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday accused the US itself of spreading disinformation about TikTok’s potential security risks following a report in the Wall Street Journal that the committee on foreign investment in the US – part of the treasury department – was threatening a US ban on the app unless its Chinese owners divest their stake.So are the data security risks real? And should users be worried that the TikTok app will be wiped off their phones?Here’s what to know:What are the concerns about TikTok?Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data – such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers – with China’s authoritarian government.A law implemented by China in 2017 requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to the country’s national security. There’s no evidence that TikTok has turned over such data, but fears abound due to the vast amount of user data it, like other social media companies, collects.Concerns around TikTok were heightened in December when ByteDance said it fired four employees who accessed data on two journalists from BuzzFeed News and the Financial Times while attempting to track down the source of a leaked report about the company. Just last week, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, told the Senate intelligence committee that TikTok “screams” of national security concerns and that China could also manipulate the algorithm to perpetuate misinformation.“This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government, and to me, it screams out with national security concerns,” Wray said.How is the US responding?White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby declined to comment when asked on Thursday to address the Chinese foreign ministry’s comments about TikTok, citing the review being conducted by the committee on foreign investment.Kirby also could not confirm that the administration sent TikTok a letter warning that the US government may ban the application if its Chinese owners don’t sell its stake but added, “we have legitimate national security concerns with respect to data integrity that we need to observe.”In 2020, then president Donald Trump and his administration sought to force ByteDance to sell off its US assets and ban TikTok from app stores. Courts blocked the effort, and President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s orders but directed an in-depth study of the issue. A planned sale of TikTok’s US assets was also shelved as the Biden administration negotiated a deal with the app that would address some of the national security concerns.In Congress, US senators Richard Blumenthal and Jerry Moran, a Democrat and a Republican, respectively, wrote a letter in February to the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, urging the committee on foreign investment panel, which she chairs, to “swiftly conclude its investigation and impose strict structural restrictions” between TikTok’s US operations and ByteDance, including potentially separating the companies.At the same time, lawmakers have introduced measures that would expand the Biden administration’s authority to enact a national ban on TikTok. The White House has already backed a Senate proposal that has bipartisan support.How has TikTok already been restricted?On Thursday, British authorities said they are banning TikTok on government-issued phones on security grounds, after similar moves by the EU’s executive branch, which temporarily banned TikTok from employee phones. Denmark and Canada have also announced efforts to block the app on government-issued phones.Last month, the White House said it would give US federal agencies 30 days to delete TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices. Congress, the US armed forces and more than half of US states had already banned the app on official devices.What does TikTok say?TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said the company was already answering security concerns through “transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification”.In June, TikTok said it would route all data from US users to servers controlled by Oracle, the Silicon Valley company it chose as its US tech partner in 2020 in an effort to avoid a nationwide ban. But it is storing backups of the data in its own servers in the US and Singapore. The company said it expects to delete US user data from its own servers, but it has not provided a timeline as to when that would occur.TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is will testify next week before the House energy and commerce committee about the company’s privacy and data-security practices, as well as its relationship with the Chinese government. In the lead-up to the hearing, Chew has quietly met with several lawmakers – some of whom remain unmoved by their conversation with the 40-year-old executive.After convening with Chew in February, Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado who previously called on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, said he remained “fundamentally concerned that TikTok, as a Chinese-owned company, is subject to dictates from the Chinese Communist party”.Meanwhile, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been trying to position itself as more of an international company – and less of a Chinese company that was founded in Beijing in 2012 by its current chief executive, Liang Rubo, and others.Theo Bertram, TikTok’s vice-president of policy in Europe, said in a tweet on Thursday that ByteDance “is not a Chinese company”. Bertram said its ownership consists of 60% global investors, 20% employees and 20% founders. Its leaders are based in cities such as Singapore, New York, Beijing and other metropolitan areas.Are the security risks legitimate?It depends on whom you ask.Some tech privacy advocates say that while the potential abuse of privacy by the Chinese government is concerning, other tech companies have data-harvesting business practices that also exploit user information.“If policymakers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for a basic privacy law that bans all companies from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone,” said Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future.Karim Farhat, a researcher with the Internet Governance Project at Georgia Tech, said a TikTok sale would be “completely irrelevant to any of the alleged ‘national security’ threats” and go against “every free market principle and norm” of the state department’s internet freedom principles.Others say there is legitimate reason for concern.People who use TikTok might think they’re not doing anything that would be of interest to a foreign government, but that’s not always the case, said Anton Dahbura, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute. Important information about the US is not strictly limited to nuclear power plants or military facilities; it extends to other sectors, such as food processing, the finance industry and universities, Dahbura said.Is there precedence for banning tech companies?Last year, the US banned the sale of communications equipment made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, citing risks to national security. But banning the sale of items could be more easily done than banning an app, which is accessed through the web.Such a move might also go to the courts on grounds that it could violate the first amendment as some civil liberties groups have argued. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Gary Hart: The “New Church Committee” Is an Outrage

      by

      To legitimize otherwise questionable investigations, Congress occasionally labels them after a previous successful effort. Thus, the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ proposed select committee, which plans to investigate the “weaponization of government,” is being described as “the new Church committee,” after the group of senators who investigated the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other groups from 1975-76.As the last surviving member of the original Church committee, named after its chairman, the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, I have a particular interest in distinguishing what we accomplished then and what authoritarian Republicans seem to have in mind now.The outlines of the committee, which Rep. Jim Jordan will assemble, remain vague. Reading between the rhetorical lines, proponents appear to believe agencies of the national government have targeted, and perhaps are still targeting, right-of-center individuals and groups, possibly including individuals and right-wing militia groups that participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.That is almost completely at odds with the purpose of the original Church committee, which was founded in response to widespread abuses by government intelligence agencies. While we sought to protect the constitutional rights and freedoms of American citizens, we were also bound to protect the integrity of the intelligence and security agencies, which were founded to protect those freedoms, too.Our committee brought U.S. intelligence agencies under congressional scrutiny to prevent the violation of the privacy rights of American citizens, and to halt covert operations abroad that violated our constitutional principles. Rather than strengthening the oversight of federal agencies, the new committee seems designed to prevent law enforcement and intelligence agencies from enforcing the law — specifically, laws against insurrectionist activity in our own democracy.It is one thing to intercept phone calls from people organizing a peaceful civil rights march and quite another to intercept phone calls from people organizing an assault on the Capitol to impede the certification of a national election.Rather than weaken our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the Church committee sought to restore their original mandates and increase their focus away from partisan or political manipulation. Our committee was bipartisan, leaning neither right nor left, and the conservative senators, including the vice chair, John Tower, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and others, took pains to prevent liberal or progressive members, including chairman Church, Philip Hart, Walter Mondale and me, from weakening our national security.They needn’t have bothered. We all understood, including me, the youngest member, that attacks on federal law enforcement and national security would not go down well among our constituents. Unlike in the 1970s, today’s threat to domestic security is less from foreign sources and more from homeland groups seeking to replace the constitutional order with authoritarian practices that challenge historic institutions and democratic practices.Among a rather large number of reforms proposed by the Church committee were permanent congressional oversight committees for the intelligence community, an endorsement of the 1974 requirement that significant clandestine projects be approved by the president in a written “finding,” the notification of the chairs of the oversight committees of certain clandestine projects at the time they are undertaken and the elimination of assassination attempts against foreign leaders.Despite the concern of conservatives at the time, to my knowledge, no significant clandestine activity was compromised and no classified information leaked as a result of these reforms in the almost half-century since they were adopted. In fact, the oversight and notification requirements, by providing political cover, have operated as protection for the C.I.A.Evidence was provided of the effectiveness of these reforms in the so-called Iran-contra controversy in 1985-87. The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to finance covert operations in Nicaragua against its socialist government. Assigning accountability for this scheme proved difficult until a document authorizing it was located in the White House. President Reagan did not remember signing it; however, it bore his signature. This kind of accountability would not have been possible before our reforms were adopted.The rules of the Senate and the House establish what standing committees and what special committees each house may create. The House is clearly at liberty within those rules to create a committee to protect what it perceives to be an important element of its base. And if its purposes are ultimately to protect authoritarian interests, it is presumably free to do so and accept criticisms from the press and the public. It is outrageous to call it a new Church committee. Trying to disguise a highly partisan effort to legitimize undemocratic activities by cloaking it in the mantle of a successful bipartisan committee from decades ago is a mockery.Gary Hart is a former United States senator from Colorado and the author of, most recently, “The Republic of Conscience.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Inside the Face-Off Between Russia and a Small Internet Access Firm

      by

      The cat-and-mouse experience of Proton, a Swiss company, shows what it’s like to be targeted by Russian censors — and what it takes to fight back.After Moscow erected a digital barricade in March, blocking access to independent news sites and social media platforms to hide information about its unfolding invasion of Ukraine, many Russians looked for a workaround. One reliable route they found came from a small Swiss company based nearly 2,000 miles away.The company, Proton, provides free software that masks a person’s identity and location online. That gives a user in Russia access to the open web by making it appear that the person is logging in from the Netherlands, Japan or the United States. A couple of weeks after the internet blockade, about 850,000 people inside Russia used Proton each day, up from fewer than 25,000.That is, until the end of March, when the Russian government found a way to block Proton, too.Targeting Proton was the opening salvo of a continuing back-and-forth battle, pitting a team of about 25 engineers against a country embarking on one of the most aggressive censorship campaigns in recent memory.Working from a Geneva office where the company keeps its name off the building directory, Proton has spent nine pressure-packed months repeatedly tweaking its technology to avoid Russian blocks, only to be countered again by government censors in Moscow. Some employees took Proton off their social media profiles out of concern that they would be targeted personally.The high-stakes chess match mirrors what is playing out with growing frequency in countries facing coups, wars and authoritarian rule, where restricting the internet is a tool of repression. The blocks drive citizens to look for workarounds. Engineers at companies like Proton think up new ways for those people to secretly reach the open web. And governments, in turn, seek out new technical tricks to plug leaks.The digital censorship battle is reaching “an inflection point,” said Grant Baker, a research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House, which recently reported that internet censorship globally had reached a new high in 2022. While Russia has spent years working on a more closely controlled, sovereign internet, the controls imposed after the war are “a stark contrast” to anything Moscow had ever done before, Mr. Baker said.Companies rarely discuss being targeted by an authoritarian government out of fear of escalating the conflict. But Andy Yen, Proton’s founder and chief executive, said that after a period of trying to keep its “head down,” Proton wanted to raise awareness about the increasing sophistication of governments, in Russia and elsewhere, to block citizens from reaching the open web and the need for technologists, companies and governments to push back.Proton’s account provides a rare inside look at what it’s like to be entangled in Russia’s censorship net as President Vladimir V. Putin tries to suppress information about the war and mounting battlefield losses in Ukraine.Dozens of VPN services have been blocked inside Russia, but Proton, perhaps best known for its encrypted email service, seemed to receive extra attention from the authorities. In June, Russia’s internet regulator labeled the company a “threat.”“We’re gearing up for a long fight,” Mr. Yen said in an interview at the company’s office. “Everybody hopes this will have a happy ending, but it’s not guaranteed. We don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, in fact, but you keep going because if we don’t do it, then maybe nobody else will.”The VPN team at Proton, whose virtual private network gives users a way around government internet restrictions.Aurélien Bergot for The New York TimesProton, which makes money by selling $10-a-month subscriptions for extra features, was founded in 2014 by a team of young engineers from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, the institute outside Geneva where the worldwide web was created. Their main project was working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, a $5 billion instrument built to unlock some of the world’s biggest scientific mysteries.After the disclosures of mass digital surveillance that were made by Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor, Mr. Yen and a few colleagues created an email service that encrypts messages so they cannot be intercepted, simplifying use of a technology that had been too complicated for many people. It became popular with activists, journalists and privacy-conscious consumers.The State of the WarStriking Deep in Russia: In its most brazen attack into Russian territory, Ukraine used drones to strike two military bases hundreds of miles inside Russia, showing an ability to take the war beyond its borders.Weaponizing Winter: Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have left millions without power, heat or water as the snow begins to fall. The Daily looks at what life is like in Ukraine as winter sets in.Russian Oil Price Cap: The E.U. agreed on a $60-a-barrel limit for Russian oil, the latest effort by Western allies to try to deprive Moscow of revenue to finance its war in Ukraine. Here’s how it will work.Mr. Yen, who grew up in Taiwan, said the threat of Chinese aggression looming over the island’s democracy had shaped his worldview. Privacy and fighting censorship were core to Proton’s mission from the start, he said, and the company seemed to almost relish confronting authoritarianism.In 2017, after several governments, including Turkey and Russia, temporarily blocked access to the email service, Proton created its virtual private network, or VPN, a technology used to sidestep internet restrictions.The technology behind a VPN traces back to the 1990s. It is a relatively basic tool used most commonly by people trying to pirate movies or watch a sports broadcast available only in another country. Yet in recent years the systems, which are easy to use and often difficult to detect, have become a vital tool for circumventing internet restrictions.The Kremlin spent years building the legal foundation and technological abilities to control the internet more closely. Yet even as Russia blocked certain websites and interrupted access to Twitter last year, few thought it would outright block major social media platforms and independent news websites. While television has always been heavily censored, the internet had been less restricted.The crackdown in March interrupted communications and commerce for many otherwise apolitical Russians, said Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel at Access Now, a group focused on online speech-related issues. VPN use was already high among tech-savvy Russians, she said, but the blocks and news of harsh punishment for online protest led even more casual internet users to seek ways around the restrictions.Demand for VPNs surged in Russia, with downloads in March jumping 2,692 percent from February, said Simon Migliano, head of research for the review site Top10VPN.com. Proton was a popular choice, he said, hovering among the 10 most popular products despite being slower than some other choices.Since then, VPNs have become a way of life for many. Roskomsvoboda, a Russian civil society group focused on internet freedom, estimates that a quarter of the Russian population is using one.“To simply read independent news or to post a picture, you had to open your VPN,” said Viktoriia Safonova, 25, who now delivers food by bike in Sweden after she fled Russia in July. Both she and her husband were racked by anxiety after the invasion. Finding independent news and information was difficult. Workarounds often weren’t reliable.“If the one you’re using gets blocked, you have to find another VPN,” Ms. Safonova said.She recalled the paranoia that set in as new internet restrictions and surveillance took effect. She and her husband, Artem Nesterenko, worried about whether they could criticize the war online, even on international social networks. He recalled how the police had come to check on their building after he scrawled “No to war” in the elevator. He feared being arrested for things he posted online.As people turned to VPN services to avoid the blocks, Proton struggled to keep up. Over a weekend in March, engineers scrambled to buy and configure more than 20 new servers to avert a crash of its entire network.At the same time in Moscow, censors were at work trying to patch holes in the government’s internet controls.The first block that took down Proton, at the end of March, was a technically basic interruption that company engineers quickly overcame, but they figured more powerful attempts loomed.The battle took on a “Spy vs. Spy” dynamic in Proton’s headquarters. Mr. Yen said a network of people within the government, telecommunications firms and civil society groups had helped Proton operate in Russia, providing access to local networks and sharing intelligence about how the censorship system worked. But those contacts began to go dark as the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent intensified.At the start of June, censors struck again.The service, which had more than 1.4 million daily users inside Russia at this point, collapsed as employees were going about their day. Complaints from Russian users poured into Proton’s customer service email. The company concluded that the government had deployed more sophisticated software that could filter through all internet traffic to identify when a person was trying to connect to Proton’s VPN service. Russia had used similar technology to block Twitter and other social media sites.Around this time, the company noticed a suspicious spike in negative reviews of its service in the Apple and Google app stores, reducing its search ranking.“They had clearly studied us,” said Antonio Cesarano, a senior engineer working on the VPN project.Some at Proton questioned whether they should continue the fight with Russia. It was costing millions of dollars and slowing down development of other products. But after Proton faced criticism in 2021, when the French police obtained the IP address of a climate activist using its email service, backing down from Russia could have added another bruise to the company’s reputation.Over about two weeks in June, Proton created yet another workaround that bounced internet traffic to servers in different geographical areas faster than censors could track. It was a technically complex move that would take considerable resources for Russia to counter.The fix worked — for about six weeks.Mr. Yen was interrupted during a staff meeting in mid-July with news that Russian censors had come up with an even more elaborate block. A corporate chart from the time shows use dropping off a cliff. Russian engineers had identified what is known as an authentication “handshake,” the vital moment when Proton’s VPN connection gets established before reaching the wider web. Blocking the link made Proton’s service essentially unusable.“We had no idea what was happening and how they were doing it,” Mr. Cesarano said.By August, after working around the clock for days to find a fix, Proton acknowledged defeat and pulled its app from Russia. The company has spent the months since then developing a new architecture that makes its VPN service harder to identify because it looks more like a regular website to censorship software scanning a country’s internet traffic. Proton has been successfully testing the system in Iran, where Proton has seen a sharp increase in VPN use during recent political demonstrations.In Russia, Proton has reintroduced its apps using the new system. Mr. Yen acknowledged that it probably wasn’t a long-term fix. He has confidence in the new technology, but figures Russian engineers will eventually figure out a new way to push back, and the game will continue. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Why Am I Seeing That Political Ad? Check Your ‘Trump Resistance’ Score.

      by

      To help campaigns target ads, voter-profiling firms score millions of Americans on issues like guns, vaccines and QAnon.In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, a voter analytics firm called PredictWise came up with a novel approach to help Democratic campaigns target persuadable Republicans: “Covid concern” scores.To create the scores, the company first analyzed an immense data set showing the cellphone locations of tens of millions of Americans during the initial lockdown months of the pandemic. Then it ranked people based on their travel patterns.Republicans whose phone locations showed that they left home a lot received high “Covid-19 decree violation” scores, while those who mainly stayed home received low scores, according to a PredictWise report. In follow-up surveys of some voters, researchers found that stay-at-home Republicans were almost as concerned about the pandemic as Democrats.The firm said it had used the data to help Democrats in several swing states target more than 350,000 “Covid-concerned” Republicans with Covid-related campaign ads. In Arizona, PredictWise reported, the scores helped Democrats “open up just over 40,000 persuasion targets” for Mark Kelly, who was running for Senate. (Senator Kelly’s office did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment.)Voter-profiling systems like the Covid-19 scores may be invisible to most people. But they provide a glimpse into a vast voter data-mining ecosystem in the United States involving dozens of political consulting, analytics, media, marketing and advertising software companies.In the run-up to the midterm elections next month, campaigns are tapping a host of different scores and using them to create castes of their most desirable voters. There are “gun owner,” “pro-choice” and “Trump 2024” scores, which cover everyday politics. There are also voter rankings on hot-button issues — a “racial resentment” score, for example, and a “trans athletes should not participate” score. There’s even a “U.F.O.s distrust government” score.Campaign and media consultants say such political-issue scores make it easier for candidates to surgically target messages to, and mobilize, the most receptive voters.“We’re seeing not only U.S. congressional races, but State Senate races that are diving into this, and consultants using it to help them find those perfect targets,” said Paul Westcott, a marketing executive at L2, a leading voter database firm. He added that even some county campaigns were using scoring models to target voters on local ballot measures.But the same nano-targeting that may help mobilize some people to vote could also disenfranchise others as well as exacerbate political polarization, political researchers say.What is voter scoring?Consumers are subject to a host of predictive scoring systems — hidden rankings based on factors like their demographic profile, socioeconomic status, online activities and offline interests.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.Losing Ground: With inflation concerns front and center, the state of democracy in the United States is not shaping up to be the driver of votes that many on the left hoped it would be.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.Retailers and other services often use “customer lifetime value” scores to try to predict how much money individual clients might spend over time. Universities use “retention” scores to identify students at risk of dropping out.Voter scores work similarly. They are intended to predict the likelihood that an individual agrees or disagrees with a particular party or political stance, like a belief in gun control. They are also used to predict a person’s likelihood of voting.Ad tech firms often use the scores to help political campaigns narrowly target audiences on streaming video services, podcasts, websites and apps. Candidates, political party committees and advocacy groups also use the scores to help create lists of specific voters to call, text or canvas in person.But researchers and privacy experts say that the scores are speculative and invasive, and that they could cause harm if they leaked to hackers or employers.The process can involve classifying more than 150 million voters — using ratings like “gay marriage” scores or “non-Christian” scores — on personal beliefs they might have assumed were private. The scoring systems can also enable campaigns to quietly aim different, and perhaps contradictory, messages at different voters with little public accountability or oversight.“In a democracy, we would like to know what promises are being made so that candidates can be held to account,” says Erika Franklin Fowler, a government professor at Wesleyan University who studies political advertising. “That’s harder to do if they’re saying different things to different people.”How are voter scores calculated?To calculate the scores, voter-profiling firms typically use commercially available dossiers thick with data on the election participation, demographics and consumer habits of millions of adults in the United States.The files contain public information, obtained from state voter registration databases, like a person’s name, date of birth and address, as well as the election years in which the person has voted. They may also include a phone number, political party registration and race or ethnicity.The voter profiles are often enhanced with commercially available details on consumers like: net worth, education level, occupation, home value, number of children in one’s household, gun ownership, pet ownership, political donations and hobbies or habits such as cooking, woodworking, gambling or smoking. Such details can be purchased from data aggregators that acquire information from customers’ loyalty-card records and other sources.Next, profiling firms survey a representative sample of voters, scoring respondents according to their stances on issues like marijuana legalization. Firms then use machine learning to identity common characteristics across the dossiers — like low-income households, say, or a preference for low-fat foods — that correlate with voters’ stances.The characteristics enable profiling firms to find “look-alike” voters in their files. Then they often calculate scores on issues like climate change for all the voters in their files.What do voter scores look like?Voter-profiling companies each have their own proprietary ranking systems. But they typically do not allow voters to see their scores.One prominent conservative firm, i360, offers a number of scores, including a “Marriage Model” that ranks voters on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0. Scores near a full point indicate voters with a high likelihood of supporting “laws that preserve traditional marriage.”HaystaqDNA, a predictive analytics firm that worked with Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, has posted an extensive catalog with dozens of proprietary scores on taxes, Covid and other issues. These include a “QAnon Believer” score, ranking people based on whether they believe a “deep state” within the federal government operated child-trafficking rings.TargetSmart, a prominent progressive firm, developed a “Trump Resistance” model, which gives voters scores between 0 and 100 based on their likelihood of opposing Donald Trump. In a statement Tom Bonier, TargetSmart’s chief executive, said the company used public and commercially available data to help campaigns reach voters on “the issues they care most about.” The firm did not respond to questions about its voter scores.Despite the marketing of these scores, people’s voting histories and political party affiliations remain the best predictors of their voter behavior, political researchers say.“There’s a lot of hype in this space,” says Katherine Haenschen, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University who studies how digital communications affect voter turnout. “The most likely predictor is what the person has done in the past.”In an election circular in 1840, Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the Whig Party instructed county committees to target undecided “doubtful voters” for special persuasion efforts.Where did voter targeting start?Trying to target and sway voters is an electioneering practice that dates at least as far back as 1840. That was the year Abraham Lincoln helped write a campaign circular for the Whig Party that laid out a plan for identifying and mobilizing individual voters.The Lincoln directive, which ran in newspapers, instructed local party committees to “make a perfect list of all the voters” in their districts and ascertain “with certainty for whom they will vote.” It also treated undecided voters differently, instructing party committees to “keep a CONSTANT WATCH on the DOUBTFUL VOTERS” and try to “enlighten and influence them.”The advent of computer modeling helped automate voter targeting, making it more efficient.In the 1960s, a market researcher in Los Angeles, Vincent Barabba, developed a computer program to help political campaigns decide which neighborhoods to target. The system overlaid voting precinct maps with details on individuals’ voting histories along with U.S. census data on household economics, ethnic makeup and family composition.In 1966, political consultants used the system to help Ronald Reagan’s campaign for governor of California identify neighborhoods with potential swing voters, like middle-aged, white, male union members, and target them with ads.Critics worried about the technology’s potential to influence voters, deriding it as a “sinister new development dreamt up by manipulative social scientists,” according to “Selling Ronald Reagan,” a book on the Hollywood actor’s political transformation.By the early 2000s, campaigns had moved on to more advanced targeting methods.For the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush in 2004, Republican consultants classified American voters into discrete buckets, like “Flag and Family Republicans” and “Religious Democrats.” Then they used the segmentation to target Republicans and swing voters living in towns that typically voted Democrat, said Michael Meyers, the president of TargetPoint Consulting, who worked on the Bush campaign.In 2008, the Obama presidential campaign widely used individualized voter scores. Republicans soon beefed up their own voter-profiling and targeting operations.A decade later, when Cambridge Analytica — a voter-profiling firm that covertly data-mined and scored millions of Facebook users — became front-page news, many national political campaigns were already using voter scores. Now, even local candidates use them.This spring, the Government Accountability Office issued a report warning that the practice of consumer scoring lacked transparency and could cause harm. Although the report did not specifically examine voter scores, it urged Congress to consider enacting consumer protections around scoring. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Should Candidates Be Transparent About Their Health?

      by

      More from our inbox:Revised Drone RulesLiving in Political FearPreparing for Future PandemicsHow Fossil Fuel Donations Sway Climate PoliticsLt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania greets supporters following a Senate campaign rally.Kriston Jae Bethel/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Candidates Must Disclose Medical Issues,” by Lawrence K. Altman (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 30):Dr. Altman correctly calls for the full disclosure of medical issues by major candidates, especially presidential. He has championed this cause for years, but his voice has gone unheeded.The most famous candidate health cover-up was J.F.K.’s adrenal insufficiency, Addison’s disease. But John McCain’s recurrent melanoma, Bill Bradley’s atrial fibrillation, Joe Biden’s cerebral aneurysm in his 1988 campaign and Bernie Sanders’s significant coronary disease requiring a stent were all either downplayed or denied.The most egregious example of health misrepresentation was in 1992, when Paul Tsongas and his physicians declared he was cured of his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he was not. If he had been elected president rather than Bill Clinton, he would have required ongoing cancer treatments while in office, which would have compromised his ability to fulfill his duties. He died on Jan. 18, 1997.With the likelihood of one or more candidates over 75 running for president in 2024, the case for full medical disclosure is more compelling than ever. The country would be well served to remember the advice given by William Safire in 1987, when he wrote, “The president’s body is not wholly his own; that is why we go to such lengths to protect it.”Kevin R. LoughlinBostonThe writer is a retired urologic surgeon and a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School.To the Editor:I would like to respectfully disagree that candidates owe their voters full medical transparency. Confidentiality of medical records exists for good reason, and to throw it away — citing confusion over John Fetterman’s health in the Pennsylvania Senate campaign — is the wrong approach.For example: Does a female candidate owe it to voters to reveal whether she has ever had an abortion? Some would argue yes, she should. I would argue that it’s none of the voters’ business.What else should a candidate reveal? Therapist’s notes? Past substance use?A real-life example is Thomas Eagleton, who was tapped to be George McGovern’s running mate in 1972 until it was revealed that he had undergone electroshock therapy for depression 12 years earlier. Because of this, he was dropped from the ticket.In the U.S., we are extremely fortunate to have the rights we have, including a right to privacy. We should not be looking for ways to chip away at these rights.Gregory FedynyshynMalden, Mass.Revised Drone RulesAn Air Force Predator drone, right, returning from a mission in the Persian Gulf region in 2016. The new policy suggests that the United States intends to launch fewer drone strikes away from recognized war zones.John Moore/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Rules on Counterterrorism Drone Strikes, Eased by Trump, Are Tightened by Biden” (news article, Oct. 8):Are we supposed to be assured that the United States is now acting ethically, legally and judiciously with President Biden’s revised drone assassination policy?Our clandestine killing of terrorist leaders outside conventional war zones only provokes greater risk for American citizens and soul-searching trauma for drone operators thousands of miles way. It deeply stains our own sense of national righteousness.This is not a policy that needs to be reformed. It’s a policy that should be abandoned for ethical, tactical and practical reasons.Dave PasinskiFayetteville, N.Y.Living in Political FearHouse and Senate leaders have their own security details, including plainclothes officers and armored vehicles, but it can be more difficult for others to obtain such protection.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Lawmakers Fearing the Worst as Intimidation Tactics Grow” (front page, Oct. 2):The appalling acrimony and threats directed against duly elected representatives have a chilling trickle-down effect to citizens as well. I recently received what I considered a banal lawn sign from the League of Women Voters. One side states, “Vote — Our Democracy Depends on It,” and the other, “Vote 411 — Election Information You Need.”In other election years, I would have placed it on my lawn without thinking twice. But after the Jan. 6 insurrection, I’m hesitant. Even though I live in a mostly progressive, blue-voting Westchester community, I know that many of my neighbors hold other political beliefs. There are a surprising number of “Blue Lives Matter” banners and “1776” flags in my neighborhood, which make me wonder how many of these neighbors doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election.I worry that displaying a message that our democracy depends on voting would be more of a red flag than a civic reminder.And I am ashamed that in our current fractious, and dangerously degraded, political climate, my fear will keep me from exercising my political beliefs.Merri RosenbergArdsley, N.Y.Preparing for Future Pandemics Brynn Anderson/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Unprepared for Covid and Monkeypox. And the Next Outbreak, Too” (news analysis, Oct. 1):Apoorva Mandavilli highlights an important issue when she writes that the United States “remains wholly unprepared to combat new pathogens.”Governments do need to be ready for future pandemics when they hit, but their priority must be preventing them in the first place. We know that most infectious diseases can be traced to pathogen transmission between wildlife and people, particularly in our increasingly degraded and exploited natural world.Governments across the globe must prioritize efforts to reduce the risks of future pathogen spillovers, including via trade and at wildlife markets.A critical first step is recognizing the intrinsic links between the health of humans, animals and the ecosystem, and acknowledging the foundational importance of an intact and functioning environment to our well-being.A new international treaty or agreement can help bring governments together to catalyze needed change. With several hundred thousand yet undiscovered viruses in wildlife that can potentially infect humans, this is not the time to ignore the science and avoid action.The adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is now truer than ever.Susan LiebermanChris WalzerDr. Lieberman is the vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Walzer is its executive director for health.How Fossil Fuel Donations Sway Climate PoliticsFrom left, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and two senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, in 2019.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Talk About Rebuilding, but Not the Cause of Climate Change” (news article, Oct. 5):Large political contributions from fossil fuel interests are blocking federal action against climate change even in Florida, one of the areas most vulnerable to hurricanes. Its vulnerability is fueled by warmer oceans along with storm surges worsened by rising seas and downpours increased by a warmer atmosphere that holds more moisture.The United States could become the world leader in battling climate change, inspiring and helping other countries to do more while creating millions of jobs. Incredibly, Florida’s Republican governor and two senators have voted against action to mitigate climate change.Why? “If you’re from Florida, you should be leading on climate and environmental policy, and Republicans are still reticent to do that because they’re worried about primary politics,” Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from South Florida, is quoted as saying.That is, Republicans who stray from the fossil fuel line will face a primary opponent well funded by fossil fuel interests.Public funding of election campaigns must replace big contributions if we want our democracy to stop being distorted. Indeed, if we want to safeguard our planet.Richard BarsantiWestern Springs, Ill. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Who in the World Is Still Answering Pollsters’ Phone Calls?

      by

      Response rates suggest the “death of telephone polling” is getting closer.Ryan CarlWe’re already in the field with our next New York Times/Siena College national survey, so it’s a good time to go through some of the poll-related reader mail we’ve received recently.Here’s a version of a question we get a lot:Given that pollsters are relying on calling people on the phone (per your methodology description at the bottom of the poll), how do you know where they are, and how do you account for the fact that so few people answer their phones at all anymore? I for one have moved twice since I got my current phone number, most recently to a different state, so my phone number has nothing to do with my actual location. Meanwhile, most of my calls are spam, so I almost never answer my phone unless I recognize the phone number — and I am someone who is old enough to have grown up with what is now called a landline. My teenage kids almost never answer their phones at all. The only people I know who still ever use a landline at all are my parents. — Doug Berman, West Jordan, UtahThere are a lot of good points here, so let’s take it bit by bit.How do we know where they are? Some pollsters (like us) call voters from a list of telephone numbers on a voter registration file, a big data set containing the names and addresses of every registered voter in most states. The addresses tell us “where they are” with a great deal of precision.How do we deal with people who have moved? The voter file offers a solution to this problem as well. Once you’ve registered to vote in your new state, pollsters can call your phone number if it’s on the voter file — and call it regardless of whether it’s an in-state or out-of-state area code.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Attacks by Doug Mastriano, the G.O.P. nominee, on the Jewish school where Josh Shapiro, the Democratic candidate, sends his children have set off an outcry about antisemitic signaling.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but some conservative Christians have learned to tolerate the behavior of those who advance their cause.How do you account for the fact that few people answer? Before I respond, I want to dwell on just how few people are answering. In the poll we have in the field right now, only 0.4 percent of dials have yielded a completed interview. If you were employed as one of our interviewers at a call center, you would have to dial numbers for two hours to get a single completed interview.No, it wasn’t nearly this bad six, four or even two years ago. You can see for yourself that around 1.6 percent of dials yielded a completed interview in our 2018 polling.The Times has more resources than most organizations, but this is getting pretty close to “death of telephone polling” numbers. You start wondering how much more expensive it would be to try even ridiculous options like old-fashioned door-to-door, face-to-face, in-person interviews.Call screening is definitely part of the problem, but if you screen your calls almost 100 percent of the time, it might be a little less of one than you might think. About one-fifth of our dials still contact a human. But once we do reach a person, we’ve got a number of challenges. Is this the right human? (We talk only to people named on the file, so that we can use their information.) If it is the right person, will he or she participate? Probably not, unfortunately.OK, back to the question: What do we do to account for this? The main thing is we make sure that the sample of people we do reach is demographically and politically representative, and if not, we adjust it to match the known characteristics of the population. If we poll a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by two percentage points, and our respondents wind up being registered Democrats by a four-point margin, we give a little less weight to the Democratic respondents.We make similar adjustments for race; age; education; how often people have voted; where they live; marital status; homeownership; and more. As I explained last month, we believe our polls provide valuable election information. Is all of this enough? After 2020, it’s hard not to wonder whether the people who answer the phone might be more likely to back Democrats than those who don’t answer the phone. We’re conducting some expensive multi-method research this fall to help answer this question, to the extent we can. We’ll tell you more at a later time.What about cellphones? Finally, an easy one: We call cellphones and landlines! About three-quarters of our calls go to cellphones nowadays — including nearly every call to young people. More