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      Facebook whistleblower testimony should prompt new oversight – Schiff

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      FacebookFacebook whistleblower testimony should prompt new oversight – Schiff‘I think we need regulation to protect people’s private data,’ influential Democrat says in wake of Frances Haugen revelations

      Facebook biased against the facts, says Nobel prize winner
      Martin Pengelly and Charles KaiserSat 9 Oct 2021 16.06 EDTFirst published on Sat 9 Oct 2021 15.36 EDTTestimony in Congress this week by the whistleblower Frances Haugen should prompt action to implement meaningful oversight of Facebook and other tech giants, the influential California Democrat Adam Schiff told the Guardian in an interview to be published on Sunday.“I think we need regulation to protect people’s private data,” the chair of the House intelligence committee said.“I think we need to narrow the scope of the safe harbour these companies enjoy if they don’t moderate their contents and continue to amplify anger and hate. I think we need to insist on a vehicle for more transparency so we understand the data better.”Haugen, 37, was the source for recent Wall Street Journal reporting on misinformation spread by Facebook and Instagram, the photo-sharing platform which Facebook owns. She left Facebook in May this year, but her revelations have left the tech giant facing its toughest questions since the Cambridge Analytica user privacy scandal.At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Haugen shared internal Facebook reports and argued that the social media giant puts “astronomical profits before people”, harming children and destabilising democracy via the sharing of inaccurate and divisive content.Haugen likened the appeal of Instagram to tobacco, telling senators: “It’s just like cigarettes … teenagers don’t have good self-regulation.”Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Haugen’s testimony might represent a “big tobacco” moment for the social media companies, a reference to oversight imposed despite testimony in Congress that their product was not harmful from executives whose companies knew that it was.The founder and head of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has resisted proposals to overhaul the US internet regulatory framework, which is widely considered to be woefully out of date.He responded to Haugen’s testimony by saying the “idea that we prioritise profit over safety and wellbeing” was “just not true”.“The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical,” he said. “We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don’t want their ads next to harmful or angry content.”Schiff was speaking to mark publication of a well-received new memoir, Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.The Democrat played prominent roles in the Russia investigation and Donald Trump’s first impeachment. He now sits on the select committee investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, by Trump supporters seeking to overturn his election defeat – an effort in part fueled by misinformation on social media.In his book, Schiff writes about asking representatives of Facebook and two other tech giants, Twitter and YouTube, if their “algorithms were having the effect of balkanising the public and deepening the divisions in our society”.‘Welcome to the party’: five past tech whistleblowers on the pitfalls of speaking outRead moreFacebook’s general counsel in the 2017 hearing, Schiff writes, said: “The data on this is actually quite mixed.”“It didn’t seem very mixed to me,” Schiff says.Asked if he thought Haugen’s testimony would create enough pressure for Congress to pass new laws regulating social media companies, Schiff told the Guardian: “The answer is yes.”However, as an experienced member of a bitterly divided and legislatively sclerotic Congress, he also cautioned against too much optimism among reform proponents.“If you bet against Congress,” Schiff said, “you win 90% of the time.”TopicsFacebookUS politicsSocial networkingnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden restores beloved national monuments, reversing Trump cuts

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      This land is your landJoe BidenBiden restores beloved national monuments, reversing Trump cutsRestoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante represents victory for advocates after protections were slashed Supported byAbout this contentHallie GoldenFri 8 Oct 2021 14.23 EDTLast modified on Fri 8 Oct 2021 15.11 EDTJoe Biden restored environmental protections on Friday to three national monuments and their vast expanse of vital ecosystems and sacred Indigenous spaces, reversing cuts made by Donald Trump.“These protections provide a bridge to our past, but they also build a bridge to a safer and more sustainable future,” said Biden. “One where we strengthen our economy and pass on a healthy planet to our children and our grandchildren.”Canada: win for anti-logging protesters as judge denies firm’s injunction bidRead moreBiden signed three proclamations that increased the boundaries of Bears Ears to 1.36m acres, while restoring the Grand Staircase-Escalante to 1.87m acres – both spanning large swaths of southern Utah. He also reinstated protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine, about 130 miles off the coast of New England, and extended limits on commercial fishing.The proclamations unraveled moves made by Trump, in which he slashed 85% of Bears Ears, leaving wide swaths of the site vulnerable to mining and other commercial activities. The Grand Staircase-Escalante was cut by about half. In 2020, Trump also stripped the environmental protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine, a marine monument home to more than 1,000 distinct species.After years of fighting back against cuts to the national monuments, the announcement served as a key victory for environmental and Indigenous groups. Many expressed their relief and gratitude.The interior secretary, Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary, fought back tears as she applauded the administration’s actions for “bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice”.“This is a place that must be protected in perpetuity for every American and every child of the world,” she said, referring to Bears Ears.The monument, which was named for two striking buttes in south-eastern Utah, includes ancient cliff dwellings and sacred burial grounds. It is a place of worship and an important space for ceremonial activities, explained the Hopi Tribe vice-chairman, Clark Tenakhongva.“It’s on the same level as any kind of church or foundation or facility,” said Tenakhongva, who is also co-chair for the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. “It’s very important to the lifeline of all nations and all people.”Staff attorney Matthew L Campbell for the Native American Rights Fund, which represents three of the tribes that have been involved in a years-long legal battle to protect Bears Ears, including the the Hopi Tribe, said he was very excited that this day had finally come.“The tribes have fought long and hard to protect this area,” he said. “It’s a sacred place that is intricately tied to the tribes’ histories and who they are as a people and it certainly deserves the protections and we’re glad and happy to see that those protections are going to be restored.”Shaun Chapoose, chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe business committee and a member of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said in a statement: “President Biden did the right thing restoring the Bears Ears national monument. For us the monument never went away. We will always return to these lands to manage and care for our sacred sites, waters and medicines.”Brad Sewell, senior director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s oceans program, said he was thrilled with the decision and the fact that it will help to preserve important marine wildlife and the deep-sea coral gardens within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine national monument.“We’re very happy for the country. This action will preserve an extraordinary place – our newest blue park for generations to come,” said Sewell.But some Republican leaders have said they are disappointed with the decision and the “winner-take-all mentality” it represented.In a statement released with other state leaders, Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, said: “The president’s decision to enlarge the monuments again is a tragic missed opportunity – it fails to provide certainty as well as the funding for law enforcement, research, and other protections which the monuments need and which only congressional action can offer.”During Biden’s campaign for the presidency, he had pledged to restore these monuments’ boundaries. Just after his inauguration, he signed an executive order requiring the interior department to review the monuments, and make a decision about whether it would be appropriate to restore them.Last spring, Haaland traveled to Utah to visit two of the monuments, and then later recommended Biden return them to their previous size and protections.TopicsJoe BidenThis land is your landUS politicsConservationnewsReuse this content More

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      Senate Republicans sow disinformation after $480bn US debt ceiling deal

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      US CongressSenate Republicans sow disinformation after $480bn US debt ceiling dealRepublicans claim cap must be lifted to pay for Biden’s economic agenda – a sign of party’s approach to once non-partisan issues Hugo Lowell in WashingtonFri 8 Oct 2021 07.49 EDTLast modified on Fri 8 Oct 2021 15.56 EDTTop Republicans in the Senate are advancing a campaign of disinformation over the debt ceiling as they seek to distort the reasons for needing to raise the nation’s borrowing cap, after they dropped their blockade on averting a US debt default in a bipartisan manner.Senate report details Trump’s attempt to use DoJ to overturn election defeatRead moreThe Senate on Thursday passed a bill to allow the debt ceiling to be raised by $480bn through early December, which the treasury department estimates will be enough to allow the government to temporarily avert an unprecedented default on $28tn of debt obligations.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, announced the morning before its passage that he had reached a deal with the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to clear the way for the vote on a short-term extension with GOP support.The movement came after McConnell made a tactical retreat to back down from weeks of refusal to allow Democrats to raise the debt ceiling by any measure other than through a complicated procedure known as reconciliation that would have required a party-line vote.The Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on the floor: “Unfortunately, Republicans blinked.”And some Republicans railed against what they saw as an unnecessarily triumphalist victory speech by Schumer after the deal, while the West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin put his head in his hands during the address and later called it “inappropriate”.Manchin Buries His Head in His Hands During Schumer Speech on Debt Ceiling, Says Remarks Were Not ‘Appropriate’ https://t.co/T32nLEJVkA— Carl Howard (@litlgrey) October 8, 2021
      The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and majority leader, Steny Hoyer, will set up a vote on Tuesday on the bill passed on Thursday evening, bringing the House back from recess a week early.But even as McConnell struck the accord to stave off the threat of a first-ever default, the resolution to punt the issue until December did nothing to address the crux of the partisan stalemate and Republicans’ mischaracterization of the issue.The argument at the heart of the GOP’s insistence – which is likely to resume in two months’ time – is that Democrats should raise the debt ceiling on a party-line basis, in part because they claim the borrowing cap needs to be lifted to pay for Biden’s economic agenda.“McConnell told them they are going to have to – if they are determined to spend at least $3.5tn more in borrowed money – lift the debt ceiling to accommodate that debt by themselves,” the Republican senator John Cornyn said of McConnell at a recent news conference, referring to Democrats’ social spending plan.The treasury department acknowledges that raising the debt ceiling would allow the US to continue borrowing in order to finance projects, such as Democrats’ social spending and infrastructure package that is expected to now cost between $1.9tn and $2.2tn.But economists at the department also say that attempts to portray the need to tackle the debt ceiling as an effort to pay for Democrats’ budget resolutions that are yet to pass Congress amount to disinformation, according to sources familiar with the mechanism.The criticism comes primarily because the overriding reason for raising the debt ceiling stems from the fact that the US needs to borrow new money to pay the principal and interest on about $8tn of debt incurred over the course of the Trump administration.In recent years, the majority of the increase in the national debt has come at the hands of Republicans, and lifting the debt ceiling merely allows the treasury department to pay existing debts by taking on new debts, the sources said.The mischaracterization by top Senate Republicans is emblematic of the party leadership’s approach to once non-partisan issues as it seeks to shield its members from being punished at the ballot box in 2022 by red state voters for lifting the debt ceiling.McConnell had insisted for weeks before caving on Wednesday that Democrats should have to tackle the debt ceiling on a party-line basis through reconciliation, repeatedly blocking measures that would have required at least 10 Republicans to vote for a debt limit hike.The Republicans’ minority leader first mounted a filibuster against a stopgap funding measure that both prevented a government shutdown and a default, as well as against a standalone bill to raise the debt ceiling as he sought to insulate Republicans from a tough vote.But Democrats ruled out using reconciliation, concerned about the scheduling difficulty and potential for abuse of the two so-called vote-a-ramas – where Republicans could offer unlimited amendments and poison pill bills – before the fiscal deadline of 18 October.The prospect of a default this October carried calamitous consequences: economists forecast an immediate recession, a meltdown in financial markets, with trillions wiped off US household wealth and sent unemployment rates surging.The weeks-long Republican intransigence to block any measure that raised the debt ceiling on a bipartisan basis also reflected the hypocrisy of the Republican position, Democrats said, noting they helped Republicans to tackle the debt without drama during the Trump era.And on Wednesday, it was only when Democrats started to call for Schumer to explore carving out an exception to the filibuster to pass a standalone debt bill that would have cut Republican power in the Senate that McConnell agreed on a bipartisan proposal.“The argument made yesterday was that this may be more pressure than two Democrat senators can stand regarding changing the filibuster rules,” the Republican senator Lindsey Graham said of McConnell’s deal to defuse moves to even partially abolish the Senate rule.Joanna Walters contributed reportingTopicsUS CongressRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More