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

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      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

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      Will UK follow US in demanding TikTok be sold by its Chinese owner?

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      When asked this week whether the UK would ban TikTok on government phones, Rishi Sunak’s response signalled a change in stance: “We look at what our allies are doing.”Previously ministers had seemed sanguine, even saying that whether or not the app stayed on someone’s phone should be a matter of “personal choice”.Not any more. The UK’s allies are turning against TikTok and it was when Sunak said he was watching their actions closely that a government ban became inevitable. The US, Canada and the EU’s executive arm have already decided to strip the app from official devices. It is now a matter of geopolitical choice.TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance. The fear among its critics on both sides of the Atlantic is that the Chinese state can access data generated by its more than 1 billion users and manipulate its recommendation algorithm in order to push a China-friendly point of view to unsuspecting users.There is no hard evidence this is the case and TikTok says it would refuse any data request from the Chinese government, although the UK government cited concerns about “the way in which this [user] data may be used” for the ban on Thursday. But tensions over Taiwan, concerns that China will supply weaponry to Russia, the shooting down of a spy balloon that hovered over the US and warnings of state espionage have created a toxic backdrop to those denials. And on Monday a refreshed integrated review of UK defence and foreign policy described China as an “epoch-defining” challenge.TikTok’s reputation was severely damaged last year when ByteDance admitted employees had attempted to use the app to spy on reporters.TikTok will be concerned that Sunak will match each upward ratchet in pressure from his counterparts. On Wednesday the Biden administration demanded the platform’s Chinese owner sell the app or face a complete ban. Will the UK ultimately threaten the same?If geopolitics is the leading factor in these moves, as opposed to hard proof that TikTok poses a security threat, then it is likely every deterioration in relations between China and the west will push the app further along the road to a complete ban or forced divestment from its owners in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, a forced sale in the US – if the Chinese government lets TikTok’s owners do so – could lead to TikTok being peeled off from ByteDance in its entirety.The shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the east coast of the US last month was followed by reports that negotiations between TikTok and the Biden administration over a deal to resolve security concerns had stalled, while this week the White House gave its support to a Senate bill giving the president the power to ban TikTok.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTikTok’s attempts to assuage those concerns – for instance announcing plans to store US and European user data on third-party data servers – seem to have failed with the current American president in the same way they did with his immediate predecessor, who also tried to force a divestment of TikTok’s US business. The backstop used by TikTok’s critics is the existence of Chinese laws that could force ByteDance to cooperate with Beijing authorities, including the national intelligence law of 2017, which states that all organisations and citizens shall “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. For many, this is enough evidence.Perhaps eliminating the concerns over Chinese interference by selling TikTok to non-Chinese investors is the only way to quell the critics. But there are plenty of other aspects of the Chinese tech industry – from Huawei mobile phones to other electronic devices – that are just as capable of eliciting similar fears. Without strong supporting evidence there is no way of knowing how proportionate the UK government is being – and the same could be true for moves against other Chinese tech interests. More

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      Russia disinformation looks to US far right to weaken Ukraine support

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      As Russia’s ruthless war against Ukraine has faced major setbacks since it began a year ago, the Kremlin has deployed new disinformation themes and tactics to weaken US support for Kyiv with help from conservative media stars and some Republicans in Congress, according to new studies and experts.Moscow’s disinformation messages have included widely debunked conspiracy theories about US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, and pet themes on the American right that portray the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as an ally in backing traditional values, religion and family in the fight against “woke” ideas.Further, new studies from thinktanks that track disinformation have noted that alternative social media platforms such as Parler, Rumble, Gab and Odysee have increasingly been used to spread Russian falsehoods since Facebook and Twitter have imposed more curbs on Moscow’s propaganda.Other pro-Russian messages focused on the economic costs of the war for the US have been echoed by Republicans in the powerful far-right House Freedom Caucus such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Paul Gosar, who to varying degrees have questioned giving Ukraine more military aid and demanded tougher oversight.Since Russia launched its invasion last February, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Trump ally – turned influential far-right podcaster – Steve Bannon have promoted some of the most baseless claims that help bolster the Kremlin’s aggression.For instance, Bannon’s War Room podcast in February 2022 featured an interview with Erik Prince, the wealthy US founder of Blackwater, where they both enthused that Putin’s policies were “anti-woke” and praised Putin’s homophobia and transphobia.Last month too on the anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Carlson revved up his attacks on US support for Ukraine claiming falsely that Biden’s goal had become “overthrowing Putin and putting American tanks in Red Square because, sure, we could manage Russia once we overthrow the dictator”.Analysts who track Russia’s disinformation see synergies between the Kremlin and parts of the US right that have helped spread some of the biggest falsehoods since the start of the invasion.“Russia doesn’t pull even its most outlandish narratives out of thin air – it builds on existing resentments and political fissures,” Jessica Brandt, a policy director at the Brookings Institution who tracks disinformation and foreign interference, told the Guardian.She added: “So you often have a sort of harmony – both Kremlin messengers and key media figures, each for their own reasons, have an interest in dinging the administration for its handling of the Ukraine crisis, in amplifying distrust of authoritative media, in playing on skepticism about the origins of Covid and frustration with government mitigation measures.”“That was the case with the biolabs conspiracy theory, for example, which posits that the Pentagon has been supporting the development of biological weapons in Ukraine. The Charlie Kirk Show and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, among others, devoted multiple segments to the claim. It’s not so much that we’re witnessing any sort of coordination, but rather an alignment of interests.”Brandt also noted that Russia had an “interest in promoting authentic American voices expressing views that align with the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals. And that’s why you often see them retweet Americans that make these arguments.”Likewise, two reports issued separately last month by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Atlantic Council, reveal how Russian state media have shifted some messaging themes and adopted new tactics with an eye to undercutting US backing for Ukraine.The Alliance report documented a shift in messaging in the US and Europe from directly defending Russia’s invasion to stressing the energy and economic impacts that it was having, themes that seem to be resonating with some Republican politicians.In the first six months of the war, Alliance data revealed that Russia-linked accounts on Twitter mentioned “Nazi” in more than 5,800tweets.But in the following six months from August 2022 through January 2023, “the number of ‘Nazi’ tweets dropped to 3,373 – a 42% decline”. Likewise, mentions of Nato by Russian-linked accounts on Twitter dropped by roughly 30% in the second six-month period.By contrast, in the most recent six-month period the report said that “tweets mentioning both ‘energy’ and ‘Ukraine’ increased by 267%, while tweets mentioning ‘cost of living’ increased 66%” compared to the first six months of the war.In another twist, Bret Schafer, who leads the Alliance’s information manipulation team, told the Guardian: “In response to restrictions and crackdowns by major tech platforms, accounts and channels affiliated with Russian state media outlet RT, which has been banned entirely on YouTube, have fanned out across alternative social media and video sharing platforms like Rumble and Odysee that have less restrictive content moderation policies and that allow RT to operate without labels or restrictions.“Those platforms also tend to cater to audiences who are not necessarily pro-Russian, but are certainly more apt, based on the other videos found on those platforms, to oppose continued support for Ukraine.”Despite Moscow’s disinformation offensive and the $100bn plus in military and financial assistance that has flowed to Ukraine in one year, the ex-Republican House member Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said that “most GOP members still support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression”.But Dent stressed that “the hardest edge of the Bannon-Carlson wing of the Maga movement in Congress is more sympathetic to Russian arguments and has an isolationist view of American foreign policy. There are some members who are less willing to push back against autocrats. There are others too who find common cause with Russia’s professed socially conservative orientation.”Those voices are especially loud in the Freedom Caucus which is wielding growing influence with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who has said he will not support a “blank check” for Ukraine and this week declined the invitation of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to visit Kyiv.Freedom Caucus member Greene from Georgia at the recent CPAC conference said flatly: “We’ve done enough.”Democrats are especially worried about the embrace of pro-Kremlin disinformation by the American right.The Democratic senator Chris Murphy blasted US conservatives for echoing Kremlin propaganda and traced its roots back to ex-president Donald Trump, who at the start of Russia’s invasion lauded Putin as “savvy” and a “genius”. Murphy said Trump’s “admiration for Putin” has “turned into a collective rightwing obsession”.Murphy noted that among the obsessed on the right are Donald Trump Jr, whom he follows on social media, and who is “relentlessly making fun of Zelenskiy online”.Meanwhile, Putin’s own words and propaganda have lately shifted as he has tried to influence opinion in the US and the west, and blunt Russian dissent.“Millions of people in the west understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe,” Putin railed last month in a wildly hyperbolic speech that homed in on “the destruction of families”, and related themes.Russia experts warn that Putin’s rhetoric and Kremlin messaging on these themes is far removed from the reality in Russia.“One of the glaring mistakes of far-right propagandists is to view Vladimir Putin as some kind of defender of Christendom, of family values and as a protector of the white race,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “They repeat the Kremlin talking points and get excited about the Russian ‘gay propaganda’ law. Nothing could be further from reality.“Today Russia is the leader in Europe of high divorce rates, HIV infections, and low church attendance and practice.”Senator Murphy expects Putin to count “on the [American] right wing to advance Russian propaganda and exploit our internal divisions.” More

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      Sensitive personal data of US House and Senate members hacked, offered for sale

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      Sensitive personal data of US House and Senate members hacked, offered for saleBreach in the systems of DC Health Link, a health insurance company, led to 170,000 records being compromisedMembers of the House and Senate were informed Wednesday that hackers may have gained access to their sensitive personal data in a breach of a Washington, DC, health insurance marketplace. Employees of the lawmakers and their families were also affected.DC Health Link confirmed that data on an unspecified number of customers was affected and said it was notifying them and working with law enforcement. It said it was offering identity theft service to those affected and extending credit monitoring to all customers.Lawmaker who gave tours of Capitol will lead inquiry of January 6 panelRead moreThe FBI said it was aware of the incident and was assisting the investigation.A broker on an online crime forum claimed to have records on 170,000 DC Health Link customers and was offering them for sale for an unspecified amount. The broker claimed they were stolen Monday. The broker did not immediately respond to questions posed by the Associated Press on an encrypted chat site.It was not possible to confirm the number claimed. Sample stolen data was posted on the site for a dozen apparent customers. It included Social Security numbers, addresses, names of employers, phone numbers, emails and addresses. The AP reached one of the dozen by dialing a listed number.“Oh, my God,” the man said when informed the information was public. All 12 people listed work for the same company or are family members.In an email to all Senate email account holders, the sergeant at arms said it was informed that the stolen data included full names of the insured and family members but “no other personally identifiable information”,It recommended that anyone registered on the health insurance exchange freeze their credit to prevent identity theft.In an emailed statement, congressman Joe Morelle said House leadership was informed by Capitol police that DC Health Link “suffered an extraordinarily large data breach of enrollee information” that posed a “great risk” to members, employees and their family members. “At this time the cause, size and scope of the data breach impacting the DC Health Link still needs to be determined by the FBI,” Morelle said.The hack follows several recent breaches affecting US agencies. Hackers broke into a US marshals service computer system and activated ransomware on 17 February after stealing personally identifiable data about agency employees and targets of investigations.An FBI computer system was breached at the bureau’s New York field office, CNN reported in mid-February. Asked about that intrusion, the FBI issued a statement calling it “an isolated incident that has been contained”. It declined further comment, including when it occurred and whether ransomware was involved.There was no indication the Health Link breach was ransomware related.TopicsUS newsWashington DCCybercrimeHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateHackingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      White House backs bill that could give it power to ban TikTok nationwide

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      White House backs bill that could give it power to ban TikTok nationwideThe bill would allow commerce department to impose restrictions on technologies that pose a risk to national securityThe White House said it backed legislation introduced on Tuesday by a dozen senators to give the administration new powers to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they pose national security threats.The endorsement boosts efforts by a number of lawmakers to ban the popular ByteDance-owned app, which is used by more than 100 million Americans.‘Abusing state power’: China lashes out at US over TikTok bansRead moreThe bill gives the commerce department the authority to impose restrictions up to and including banning TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks, said Democratic Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the intelligence committee.He said it would also apply to foreign technologies from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.TikTok said in a statement that any “US ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide”.The bill would require the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, to identify and address foreign threats to information and communications technology products and services. Raimondo’s office declined to comment.The group, led by Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, includes Democrats Tammy Baldwin, Joe Manchin, Michael Bennett, Kirsten Gillibrand and Martin Heinrich along with Republicans Deb Fischer, Jerry Moran, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, Warner’s office said.Warner said it was important the government do more to make clear what it believes are the national security risks to the US from the use of TikTok.White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan praised the bipartisan bill saying it “would strengthen our ability to address discrete risks posed by individual transactions, and systemic risks posed by certain classes of transactions involving countries of concern in sensitive technology sectors”.“We look forward to continue working with both Democrats and Republicans on this bill, and urge Congress to act quickly to send it to the president’s desk,” he said in a statement.TikTok has come under increasing fire over fears user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests.TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before Congress on 23 March.The House foreign affairs committee last week voted along party lines on a bill sponsored by Representative Michael McCaul to give Biden the power to ban TikTok after then president Donald Trump was stymied by courts in 2020 in his efforts to ban the app along with the Chinese messaging app WeChat.Democrats opposed McCaul’s bill, saying it was rushed and required due diligence through debate and consultation with experts. Some major bills aimed at China like the Chips funding bill took 18 months to win approval. McCaul said he thinks the full US House of Representatives could vote on the bill this month.TopicsTikTokChinaAppsUS politicsInternetBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      House committee advances legislation to ban TikTok over security concerns

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      House committee advances legislation to ban TikTok over security concernsRepublican committee chair describes Chinese-owned social app as a ‘spy balloon in your phone’A powerful US House committee has applied further pressure to TikTok by backing legislation that could give Joe Biden the power to ban the social video app.The House foreign affairs committee voted on Wednesday along party lines to grant the administration new powers to ban the Chinese-owned app as well as other apps believed to pose security risks. The fate of the measure is still uncertain and it would need to be passed by the full House and Senate before it can go to Biden.The Republican committee chair, Michael McCaul, described TikTok this week as a “spy balloon in your phone”, referring to the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina last month. Democrats on the committee voted against McCaul’s deterring America’s technological adversaries act but Republican lawmakers pushed it through 24 to 16.The committee vote came in the same week that Canada joined the US in banning TikTok from being installed on all government-issued mobile devices, due to security concerns. The European Commission has also banned TikTok from staff phones. Politicians who support the TikTok bans have expressed concerns that the Chinese government could access user data or manipulate public opinion via the app – accusations that TikTok denies.On Monday the British government said there was no evidence of the need for a TikTok ban.“We have no evidence to suggest that there is a necessity to ban people from using TikTok,” the UK’s secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Michelle Donelan, told Politico. “That would be a very, very forthright move, that would require a significant evidence base to be able to do that.”McCaul told Reuters after the vote that he thinks the TikTok bill will be taken up on the floor “fairly soon” and voted on by the full House this month. He said this week that Democrats would prefer to rely on a security review of TikTok being undertaken by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, although an approved plan has yet to emerge from that process.Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, said he opposed the legislation because it would “damage our allegiances across the globe, bring more companies into China’s sphere, destroy jobs here in the United States and undercut core American values of free speech and free enterprise”. TikTok has around 110 million users in the US, according to analytics firm data.ai, and more than 1 billion worldwide.In a letter sent to McCaul this week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that the legislation was “vague and overbroad” and would “violate the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use TikTok to communicate, gather information, and express themselves daily”.TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, said it was “disappointed” to see the legislation being brought forward.“A US ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide. We’re disappointed to see this rushed piece of legislation move forward, despite its considerable negative impact on the free speech rights of millions of Americans who use and love TikTok,” said a TikTok spokesperson.On Tuesday a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said banning TikTok on US government devices revealed Washington’s own insecurities and was an abuse of state power.Reuters contributed reportingTopicsTikTokUS politicsChinanewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizing

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      ‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizingVictories at several companies energized organizers, but hostile corporations – and an impotent labor board – stymie negotiationsUS corporations have mounted a fierce counterattack against the union drives at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies, and in response, federal officials are working overtime to crack down on those corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics – maneuvers that labor leaders fear could significantly drain the momentum behind today’s surge of unionization.The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that polices labor-management relations, has accused Starbucks and Amazon of a slew of illegal anti-union practices, among them firing many workers in retaliation for backing a union. Nonetheless, many workplace experts question whether the NLRB’s efforts, no matter how vigorous, can assure that workers have a fair shot at unionizing.Serving $66 entrees for $18 an hour: the union push at an upscale New York restaurantRead more“We’re seeing the same situation over and over – workers going up against billionaires and billion-dollar companies with an endless amount of resources while our labor laws are far too weak,” said Michelle Eisen, a barista in Buffalo who helped lead the early unionization efforts of Starbucks in that city. “We’re all fighting for the same thing against different companies. We’re all in the same boat. No one denies that there are a lot of obstacles to overcome.”“The labor board is doing its job with the limited resources it has,” she added. “But Starbucks continues to break the law flagrantly.” The union asserts that Starbucks has engaged in illegal retaliation by firing 150 pro-union baristas and closing a dozen recently unionized stores.Echoing many union leaders, Eisen says US labor laws are woefully inadequate because they don’t allow regulators to impose any fines on companies that break the law when fighting against unionization. Starbucks and Amazon deny firing anyone illegally or violating any laws in their fight against unionization.“These workers were supposed to be able to get together without fear of retaliation,” said Lynne Fox, president of Workers United, the union that workers at more than 280 Starbucks have voted to join. “But companies, including Starbucks, have determined that the penalty for retaliation is minimal – and much more appealing than allowing workers to unionize. Violating workers’ rights has simply become part of the cost of doing business.” Labor leaders complain that the penalty imposed for illegal retaliation is often just an order to post a notice on a company’s bulletin boards saying that it broke the law.Newly unionized workers are also frustrated and angry that efforts to reach a first contract are taking so long, with some unions asserting that companies are deliberately and illegally dragging out negotiations – an assertion the companies deny. Workers won breakthrough union victories at Starbucks in December 2021, and the next year saw several other organizing victories. REI workers had a successful union vote in March 2022, Amazon in April, Apple in June, Trader Joe’s in July and Chipotle in August, but none of those companies have reached a first contract.The extraordinary recent wave of unionization that corporate America has faced over the past year has been met with what union supporters say is an equally extraordinary wave of union-busting that has slowed and even stopped some unionization efforts.Shortly after workers at a Chipotle restaurant in Augusta, Maine, petitioned for a unionization vote in the hope of becoming the first Chipotle in the US to unionize, the company shut down the store. The NLRB has accused Chipotle of illegal retaliation and sought to order the fast-food chain to reopen the store. Chipotle says the closing was for legitimate business reasons.Brandi McNease, a pro-union worker at the Chipotle in Augusta, said: “They closed it down because we were going to get our vote and they were going to lose. It’s much easier for a multibillion-dollar corporation to face whatever the consequences are of that then to allow a union into one of their stores.”The NLRB has accused Apple of illegally spying on and threatening workers. The company’s anti-union efforts helped pressure Apple store workers in Atlanta to withdraw their request to hold a unionization election, although workers at Apple stores in Towson, Maryland, and Oklahoma City have voted to unionize.Trader Joe’s closed its one wine shop in New York City days before that shop’s workers were to announce plans to seek a union election. The workers have accused the company of shutting the store to quash the union drive and retaliate against the workers. Trader Joe’s says it didn’t shut the store because of the employees’ organizing efforts.On 17 February, a day after employees at a Tesla plant in Buffalo announced plans to unionize, Tesla fired dozens of workers there. Union supporters complained to the NLRB that Tesla dismissed 37 workers “in retaliation for union activity and to discourage union activity”. Tesla said the terminations had nothing to do with the union drive and were part of its regular performance-evaluation process.The NLRB has brought 75 complaints against Starbucks that accuse it of more than 1,000 illegal actions. Federal judges have ordered Starbucks to reinstate numerous pro-union baristas who they say were fired illegally. The labor board has accused Starbucks of refusing to bargain with workers at 21 stores in Oregon and Washington state. The union asserts that Starbucks is deliberately dragging out negotiations to dishearten union supporters. Starbucks representatives have walked out of dozens of bargaining sessions, refusing to talk so long as union negotiators insist on letting other union members use Zoom to watch the sessions.The NLRB has accused Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, of illegally coercing and intimidating workers by saying they would be “less empowered” if they unionized. NLRB judges have ruled that Amazon fired several pro-union workers illegally, and the board recently accused Amazon of unlawfully terminating one of the most effective organizers at its JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, where the Amazon Labor Union won a landmark victory for the warehouse’s 8,300 employees last 1 April.Ohio train derailment reveals need for urgent reform, workers sayRead moreAmazon has filed a series of challenges to overturn the union’s Staten Island victory in the hope of not having to recognize or bargain with the union. In January, an NLRB judge upheld the union’s victory, but Amazon said it would appeal.“We know they plan to appeal and appeal and drag things out,” said Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union. Smalls voiced frustration that nearly a year after the Staten Island workers voted to unionize, there have been no contract talks.Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard, admits to some surprise that several supposedly progressive companies are using hardball anti-union tactics. “What we have is new economy companies using the old, anti-union playbook on a national scale and in a way that people are paying attention to,” Sachs said.“It’s not new, but it’s more prominent: firing union organizers, threatening to close stores, closing stores, not bargaining, holding captive audience meetings, selective granting of benefits. To observers of labor, this has been going on for a long time. What’s different is these companies that hold themselves as different and progressive – they’re proving they’re not. There’s a dissonance between these brands’ progressive image and their old-school union-busting.”Amazon has repeatedly denied any illegal anti-union actions. It said: “We don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees” and “our focus remains on working directly” with our them “to continue making Amazon a great place to work”. Amazon argues that the union’s win on Staten Island “was not fair, legitimate or representative of the majority” and should therefore be overturned, maintaining that the union illegally intimidated and harassed anti-union workers and illegally distributed marijuana to win support.Tesla fires more than 30 workers after union drive announcementRead moreStarbucks denies that it fired any pro-union baristas unlawfully, saying that those workers were dismissed for misconduct or violating company rules. The company denies that it is deliberately dragging out negotiations, saying: “Counter to the union’s claims, Starbucks continues to engage honestly and in good faith while ensuring actions taken align with decades of case law and precedent.” It added: “We’ve come to the table in person and in good faith for 84 single-store contract bargaining sessions since October 2022.” Starbucks acknowledges that it has walked out of bargaining sessions because the workers “insist on broadcasting” the sessions “to unknown individuals not in the room and, in some instances, have posted excerpts of the sessions online”.Leaders of the Starbucks union say they have repeatedly pledged that the workers would not broadcast, record or post excerpts of the bargaining sessions. Furthermore, they ask why Starbucks refuses to let union members watch the negotiations by Zoom when it allowed that practice during the pandemic and so many other companies allow the use of Zoom during negotiating sessions. For its part, Starbucks has accused the union of failing to bargain in good faith, a claim the union says is ludicrous.One study found that after workers won union elections, 52% of the time they were without a first contract a year later and 37% of the time without one two years later. Many companies drag out contract talks as long as they can in order to dishearten workers and show that there’s little to gain by unionizing and because they know they save money on wages and benefits by delaying – or never reaching – a first union contract. Moreover, many companies prolong contract talks in the hope that union members will grow frustrated with their union and vote to decertify it.Sarah Beth Ryther, a leader of the successful effort to unionize a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis, said the retailer is moving far slower than she hoped in negotiations. “I have said it was like writing a novel. We were on page one for a long time, and now we’re finally on page two,” Ryther said. “It’s just folks with very little experience who have organized an independent union, and to face these union-busting tactics, it’s hard. We’re not being paid a thousand dollars an hour like some TJ’s lawyers. We do this because we want to help our fellow workers.”Even if the NLRB rules that a company broke the law by negotiating in bad faith to drag out negotiations, federal law doesn’t allow the labor board to order management to reach a contract. “Even if the NLRB issues a complaint about bad faith bargaining, it takes a long time to handle those cases. Any meaningful order is a year down the road,” said Wilma Liebman, who headed the NLRB under Barack Obama. “The remedies take too long and they’re too weak. The board can’t order parties to reach an agreement or make concessions.”Liebman pointed to the big issue that labor organizing faces right now. “Can the unionization surge be sustained by continued growth?” she asked. “Otherwise it’s going to fizzle. This is the year that’s kind of make or break.”Under federal law, employers can’t be fined for illegal delays or bargaining in bad faith. The proposed protecting the right to organize (Pro) act sought to overcome lengthy delays by providing that if the two sides failed to reach a contract within 120 days of a new union’s being certified, a panel of arbitrators should be appointed to decide on the terms of a first two-year contract. The Pro act would also allow for substantial fines against employers that violate the law when fighting unions. The House of Representatives approved the Pro act in March 2021, but, facing a filibuster and unanimous Republican opposition, the legislation went nowhere in the Senate.Sachs says corporations have sizable incentives to violate the law when battling against unions because the National Labor Relations Act doesn’t provide for any fines for illegal actions. “We need to fundamentally change the incentive structure facing employers during union drives,” he said. “You can change the incentive structure in different ways. Consumers can do it if there is a national boycott of Starbucks or Apple or Chipotle or REI. That would have a huge impact. The other way to change the incentive structure would be to have massive monetary damages for anti-union violations. That would require not only legislative change, but the courts to order damage awards – and that would be a slow process.”Eisen, the barista in Buffalo, voices keen dismay that Starbucks keeps ratcheting up the pressure against the union drive. Arguably its most effective strategy to discourage unionization was not the firings or store closings, but when its CEO, Howard Schultz, announced that the company would give certain raises and benefits to its nonunion workers while denying them to workers at its unionized stores. The NLRB has brought a complaint asserting that this Starbucks policy illegally discriminates against union members.‘The lavatory waste comes on us’: unsafe, unsanitary work conditions, airport workers claimRead more“One of the things we need to win is public pressure,” Eisen said. “Can we let billionaires and billionaire companies continue to bully their way out of union campaigns? That’s essentially what is happening. It’s not fair. We need as much help as we can get. We need the public to recognize that these companies are not as good as they say they are.”The anti-union tactics have taken their toll. Partly because Starbucks’ aggressive anti-union efforts have discouraged and frightened many workers, the number of petitions for union elections at Starbucks stores has dropped from 71 last March to about 10 per month recently. Trader Joe’s workers in Boulder, Colorado, withdrew their petition for a unionization vote a day after they filed charges accusing the retailer of illegal intimidation and coercion. With highly paid anti-union consultants on hand to press workers to vote no, the Amazon Labor Union lost a unionization vote at a warehouse outside Albany, New York, and following that loss and facing an anti-union campaign, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Moreno Valley, California, withdrew their petition for a union election.“That comes with the territory, but that’s what we signed up for as organizers,” said the Amazon Labor Union’s Smalls. “We know this is a marathon not a sprint. In the words of Mother Jones, you fight like hell. That’s what we’re doing right now, fighting like hell.”TopicsUS unionsAmazonStarbucksAppleUS politicsTeslaReuse this content More

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      Revealed: the US adviser who tried to swing Nigeria’s 2015 election

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      Revealed: the US adviser who tried to swing Nigeria’s 2015 electionSam Patten, an American consultant later mired in controversy, exploited emails obtained by Tal Hanan’s team In late December 2014, a team from Cambridge Analytica flew to Madrid for meetings with a handful of old and new contacts. A member of the former Libyan royal family referred to as “His Royal Highness” was there. So, too, was the son of a US billionaire, a Nigerian businessman and a private Israeli intelligence operative.For Alexander Nix, the Etonian chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, and his new employee Brittany Kaiser, who networked like most other people breathed, there may have been nothing unusual about such a gathering.But, by any other measure, it was an unlikely ensemble, not least because last week the identity of the intelligence operative was revealed to be Tal Hanan: an Israeli “black ops” mercenary who, it is now known, claims to have manipulated elections around the world.Hanan, who operates using the alias “Jorge”, has boasted of meddling in more than 30 elections. His connection to the now defunct Cambridge Analytica offers a revealing insight into what appears to have been a decades-long global election subversion industry.Hanan’s group, “Team Jorge”, was unmasked by an international consortium of media, including the Guardian and Observer, which revealed the hacking and disinformation tactics it uses to try to sway elections.Quick GuideAbout this investigative seriesShowThe Guardian and Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, is exposing how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay. The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. Hours before she was murdered, Lankesh had been putting the finishing touches on an article called In the Age of False News, which examined how so-called lie factories online were spreading disinformation in India. In the final line of the article, which was published after her death, Lankesh wrote: “I want to salute all those who expose fake news. I wish there were more of them.”The Story killers consortium includes more than 100 journalists from 30 media outlets including Haaretz, Le Monde, Radio France, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, Die Zeit, TheMarker and the OCCRP. Read more about this project.Investigative journalism like this is vital for our democracy. Please consider supporting it today.Three reporters in Israel went undercover, pretending to be consultants trying to delay an election in a politically unstable African country. They secretly filmed more than six hours of Team Jorge’s pitches, including a live demonstration by Hanan showing how he could use hacking techniques to access the Telegram and Gmail accounts of senior political figures in Kenya. Hanan did not respond to detailed requests for comment but said: “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”Previously unpublished emails leaked to the Observer and Guardian proved that Hanan had interfered in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election, in an attempt to bolster the electoral prospects of then incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan – and discredit Muhammadu Buhari, his main rival. And he did it in coordination with Cambridge Analytica.There is no suggestion that Jonathan knew of either Cambridge Analytica or Team Jorge’s ultimately failed attempts to get him re-elected. And the campaign had nothing to do with the hack of Facebook data that propelled the company into the headlines in 2018.Instead, its most salient feature was a classic dirty tricks campaign. Team Jorge obtained documents from inside the opposition campaign of Buhari that could later be leaked to the media. Cambridge Analytica did the leaking.That episode has been drawn sharply into focus in recent days. But one name so far not mentioned has been that of Sam Patten, the consultant who managed Cambridge Analytica’s campaign on the ground in Nigeria. Three years later, Patten would come to be known as a cooperating witness in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.A former state department official, Patten was ultimately charged and pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent to a Ukrainian oligarch. And among a memorable cast of characters who wound up as part of Mueller’s investigation, Patten’s business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, stood out: he was a Russian spy.A spy who allegedly passed polling data – processed by Cambridge Analytica – from the Trump campaign to Russian intelligence in 2016 and planted false narratives about Ukraine in the 2020 election. Kilimnik was later subjected to sanctions by the US Treasury, which described him as a “known Russian intelligence services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf”. He has denied that he worked for Russian intelligence.A campaign so dirty it panicked staffClose readers of the Observer may fuzzily recall some elements of this story from our coverage of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. In the news frenzy that followed the Observer and New York Times revelations about the illicit (and now known to be illegal) heist of millions of people’s Facebook data, one story got lost in the mix.Four days after the original report in the Observer, we published a series of follow-up stories in the Guardian about a campaign so dirty that, even at the time, employees worried that they were implicated in illegal activity. This was the Nigeria campaign that resurfaced this week, with the unmasking of Hanan finally solving the mystery of the identity of the “Israeli consultants” referenced in the story.In 2018, some employees knew Hanan as “Jorge” but his true identity was unknown. Kaiser, grilled by MPs in parliament, said she could not “recall” his name, and she did not know about his activities until after the event.Emails leaked to the Guardian and Observer reveal when Nix asked her the real name of “Jorge” from “the Israel black ops co” in May 2015, she replied: “Tal Hanan is CEO of Demoman International.”Kaiser told the Observer that her parliamentary testimony had been a “daunting experience”, adding: “I didn’t remember the name of the Demoman company when asked.” She said she had no prior knowledge of the methods Team Jorge would end up using in Nigeria, and downplayed her role in the campaign.Observer front pagesCambridge Analytica and Team Jorge were, she said, working “separately but in parallel” for the same client – the Nigerian businessman both sides had met during the gathering in Madrid. “Alexander flew in for this one to pitch the Nigerians and separately so did Jorge,” Kaiser recalled.After the Madrid meeting, Kaiser said, she was not involved in any “operational matters with Jorge” in relation to the Nigeria campaign, which was led by a team on the ground. “I sent some emails to put everyone in contact with each other and sort out who was doing what as time was short,” she added.The emails suggest that Patten would, as part of his role at Cambridge Analytica, take responsibility for exploiting the material that Hanan obtained from the Nigerian opposition. Despite anxiety over the material, which panicked staff had assumed had been “hacked”, someone at Cambridge Analytica combed through the documents, looking for dirt on the opposition candidates.And it was Patten who appears to have leaked select documents to BuzzFeed and the Washington Free Beacon.‘Ghost’ campaign in NigeriaIn January 2015, Patten found himself parachuted into Abuja, Nigeria, to lead a last-minute $1.8m “ghost” campaign for SCL (Cambridge Analytica) in support of President Jonathan and against Buhari. Kaiser had helped land the contract in her first weeks with the company.In her memoir, Targeted, she writes that it was her friend, a former Libyan prince, who introduced her to “wealthy Nigerian oil industry billionaires” who wanted a last-minute anonymous campaign to help get Jonathan re-elected.Emails obtained by the Observer show that Kaiser’s travel schedule in December 2014, when she was helping seal the contract, was a whirlwind of meetings across three continents with highly placed contacts and a complicated web of different, though often overlapping, projects.One was the last-minute attempt to affect the outcome of the west African election. While the wealthy Nigerian client hired Cambridge Analytica and Team Jorge on separate contracts, the expectation was that both sides would coordinate.Within a fortnight of the Madrid meeting, Patten flew into Abuja. He is understood to have coordinated with others in the country against Buhari – among them Hanan, who sources say he met in a hotel in Abuja. Another Team Jorge operative working in Nigeria did so under the alias “Joel”.Hanan claimed in emails that they had entered the country on a “special visa”. A highly placed source told the Observer in 2017 that the Israeli contractors travelled on Ukrainian passports and that their fee for work in Nigeria – $500,000 – was transmitted via Switzerland into a Ukrainian bank account.A busy time for Sam PattenIn press reports, Patten has said he was not involved in Cambridge Analytica’s controversial data-targeting practices. The work he performed for the now defunct firm, he told New York magazine in 2019, was more “standard”, described as analysis, speechwriting, ads and “attempts to sway the media”.But the consortium’s investigation and previous reporting by the Observer suggest a different story. It was a busy time for Patten, whose work in Nigeria took place days before he founded a new company – Begemot Ventures – with Konstantin Kilimnik, the Ukrainian-born political consultant alleged to be a Russian intelligence agent by the US government.According to the emails, Patten flew to London at the end of January. That was where, according to the subject line of one email, a “final sweep” of the material that Team Jorge had obtained using deceptive measures was undertaken. There is no evidence that Patten knew about the nefarious methods through which that material had been obtained by the IsraelisBut others at the firm were alarmed. Cambridge Analytica employees who worked in the company’s office in Mayfair, central London, told the Observer in 2018 how they had been given a thumb drive by two Israeli operatives, one of whom is now known to be Hanan. Employees described their panic when they realised they were looking at private emails that they assumed had been illegally hacked, with one said to have “freaked out”.Do you have information about Tal Hanan or ‘Team Jorge’? For the most secure communications, use SecureDrop or see our guide.Kaiser told parliament that episode was “concerning”. But she said she did not believe the emails had been “hacked” in the classic sense, via computer, but by a person hired by the Israeli team to physically infiltrate the Buhari campaign and illicitly download them there.Whatever the case, it was Cambridge Analytica’s job to search for dirt. We “continue to analyse the information that we received from Jorge to see if there is anything that would ignite the international press”, an employee told a representative of the client. “If we find something, then we will push it.”Patten, it would appear, was focused on exactly that. The problem was that the data dump was disappointing. Referring to “the matter that brought us back to London”, Patten asked colleagues: “Did anyone come up with anything that could be of interest? My overall read is that, while a good insight into campaign thinking, there are few silver bullets or smoking guns.”He added that he would “use the AKPD bits”. That was a reference to emails revealing that AKPD Message and Media, the political consultancy founded by David Axelrod, a former chief strategist to Barack Obama, had briefly been hired by the Buhari campaign.“What are our media pitch angles?” Patten asked the next day, in an email enumerating three points, including that “B’s [Buhari’s] actual positions are obscured by a slick ‘change’ campaign steered by well-heeled American consultants”.Hours later, he sent another email: “Boom. Story 1 in progress, background sources needed, off the record, who other than me can do?” He then sent another email to clarify that he needed someone on the team to speak to a journalist to tell them Buhari, the leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was “running a tight, American-style campaign with discipline and a scripted message”.Five days later, an article appeared in BuzzFeed headlined “Firm founded by David Axelrod worked in Nigerian election as recently as December”. It referenced “emails between top APC officials obtained by BuzzFeed News”, which echoed Patten’s talking points.On the same day, another article appeared in the Washington Free Beacon that also referenced the leaked emails. It cited “a series of emails” obtained by the conservative news website “between senior APC party members and advisers”.BuzzFeed declined to comment. The Washington Free Beacon did not respond to a request for comment. When reached by phone, Patten said he had no recollection of a man named Tal Hanan or Jorge, and was “not involved” in anything having to do with the “Israeli hackers” who were previously the subject of media attention.When asked whether he had ever contacted reporters to discuss AKPD working for Buhari, he paused. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said, before ending the conversation. He did not respond to further requests for comment. Nix did not respond to questions, other than to say this newspaper’s “purported understanding is disputed”.TopicsCambridge AnalyticaDisinfo black opsEspionageNigeriaGoodluck JonathanMuhammadu BuhariAfricaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More