America's Federal Trade Commission and 17 states filed an antitrust suit against Amazon in September. This week Amazon responded in court about its usage of Signal's "disappearing messages" feature.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares GeekWire's report: At a company known for putting its most important ideas and strategies into comprehensive six-page memos, quick messages between executives aren't the place for meaningful business discussions. That's one of the points made by Amazon in its response Monday to the Federal Trade Commission's allegations about executives' use of the Signal encrypted communications app, known for its "disappearing messages" feature. "For these individuals, just like other short-form messaging, Signal was not a means to send 'structured, narrative text'; it was a way to get someone's attention or have quick exchanges on sensitive topics like public relations or human resources," the company says as part of its response, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Of course, for regulators investigating the company's business practices, these offhanded private comments between Amazon executives could be more revealing than carefully crafted memos meant for wider internal distribution. But in its filing this week, Amazon says there is no evidence that relevant messages have been lost, or that Signal was used to conceal communications that would have been responsive to the FTC's discovery requests. The company says "the equally logical explanation — made more compelling by the available evidence — is that such messages never existed."

In an April 25 motion, the FTC argued that the absence of Signal messages from Amazon discussing substantive business issues relevant to the case was a strong indication that such messages had disappeared. "Amazon executives deleted many Signal messages during Plaintiffs' pre-Complaint investigation, and Amazon did not instruct its employees to preserve Signal messages until over fifteen months after Amazon knew that Plaintiffs' investigation was underway," the FTC wrote in its motion. "It is highly likely that relevant information has been destroyed as a result of Amazon's actions and inactions...."

Amazon's filing quotes the company's founder, Jeff Bezos, saying in a deposition in the case that "[t]o discuss anything in text messaging or Signal messaging or anything like that of any substance would be akin to business malpractice. It's just too short of a messaging format...." The company's filing traces the initial use of Signal by executives back to the suspected hacking of Bezos' phone in 2018, which prompted the Amazon founder to seek ways to send messages more securely.

In an elaborate scam in January, "a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff," remembers CNN. But Hong Kong police later said that all of them turned out to be deepfake re-creations which duped the employee into transferring $25 million. According to police, the worker had initially suspected he had received a phishing email from the company's UK office, as it specified the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized.
Now the targeted company has been revealed: a major engineering consulting firm, with 18,500 employees across 34 offices: A spokesperson for London-based Arup told CNN on Friday that it notified Hong Kong police in January about the fraud incident, and confirmed that fake voices and images were used. "Unfortunately, we can't go into details at this stage as the incident is still the subject of an ongoing investigation. However, we can confirm that fake voices and images were used," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "Our financial stability and business operations were not affected and none of our internal systems were compromised," the person added...

Authorities around the world are growing increasingly concerned about the sophistication of deepfake technology and the nefarious uses it can be put to. In an internal memo seen by CNN, Arup's East Asia regional chairman, Michael Kwok, said the "frequency and sophistication of these attacks are rapidly increasing globally, and we all have a duty to stay informed and alert about how to spot different techniques used by scammers."
The company's global CIO emailed CNN this statement. "Like many other businesses around the globe, our operations are subject to regular attacks, including invoice fraud, phishing scams, WhatsApp voice spoofing, and deepfakes.

"What we have seen is that the number and sophistication of these attacks has been rising sharply in recent months."

Slashdot reader st33ld13hl adds that in a world of Deep Fakes, insurance company USAA is now asking its customers to authenticate with voice. (More information here.)

Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for sharing the news.

The Washington Post reports that America took "one of its biggest steps yet to keep fossil fuels in the ground," announcing Thursday that it will end new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, "which produces nearly half the coal in the United States...

"It could prevent billions of tons of coal from being extracted from more than 13 million acres across Montana and Wyoming, with major implications for U.S. climate goals." A significant share of the nation's fossil fuels come from federal lands and waters. The extraction and combustion of these fuels accounted for nearly a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions between 2005 and 2014, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey. In a final environmental impact statement released Thursday, Interior's Bureau of Land Management found that continued coal leasing in the Powder River Basin would harm the climate and public health. The bureau determined that no future coal leasing should happen in the basin, and it estimated that coal mining in the Wyoming portion of the region would end by 2041.

Last year, the Powder River Basin generated 251.9 million tons of coal, accounting for nearly 44 percent of all coal produced in the United States. Under the bureau's determination, the 14 active coal mines in the Powder River Basin can continue operating on lands they have leased, but they cannot expand onto other public lands in the region... "This means that billions of tons of coal won't be burned, compared to business as usual," said Shiloh Hernandez, a senior attorney at the environmental law firm Earthjustice. "It's good news, and it's really the only defensible decision the BLM could have made, given the current climate crisis...."

The United States is moving away from coal, which has struggled to compete economically with cheaper gas and renewable energy. U.S. coal output tumbled 36 percent from 2015 to 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration. The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign estimates that 382 coal-fired power plants have closed down or proposed to retire, with 148 remaining. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized an ambitious set of rules in April aimed at slashing air pollution, water pollution and planet-warming emissions spewing from the nation's power plants. One of the most significant rules will push all existing coal plants by 2039 to either close or capture 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions at the smokestack.

"The nation's electricity generation needs are being met increasingly by wind, solar and natural gas," said Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an energy think tank. "The nation doesn't need any increase in the amount of coal under lease out of the Powder River Basin."

Starting this week millions will see AI-generated answers in Google's search results by default. But the announcement Tuesday at Google's annual developer conference suggests a future that's "not without its risks, both to users and to Google itself," argues the Washington Post: For years, Google has been shielded for liability for linking users to bad, harmful or illegal information by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But legal experts say that shield probably won't apply when its AI answers search questions directly. "As we all know, generative AIs hallucinate," said James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech. "So when Google uses a generative AI to summarize what webpages say, and the AI gets it wrong, Google is now the source of the harmful information," rather than just the distributor of it...

Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the nonprofit free-market think tank R Street, worries that innovation could be throttled if Congress doesn't extend Section 230 to cover AI tools. "As AI is integrated into more consumer-facing products, the ambiguity about liability will haunt developers and investors," he predicted. "It is particularly problematic for small AI firms and open-source AI developers, who could be decimated as frivolous legal claims accumulate." But John Bergmayer, legal director for the digital rights nonprofit Public Knowledge, said there are real concerns that AI answers could spell doom for many of the publishers and creators that rely on search traffic to survive — and which AI, in turn, relies on for credible information. From that standpoint, he said, a liability regime that incentivizes search engines to continue sending users to third-party websites might be "a really good outcome."

Meanwhile, some lawmakers are looking to ditch Section 230 altogether. [Last] Sunday, the top Democrat and Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a draft of a bill that would sunset the statute within 18 months, giving Congress time to craft a new liability framework in its place. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) argued that the law, which helped pave the way for social media and the modern internet, has "outlived its usefulness."

The tech industry trade group NetChoice [which includes Google, Meta, X, and Amazon] fired back on Monday that scrapping Section 230 would "decimate small tech" and "discourage free speech online."
The digital law professor points out Google has traditionally escaped legal liability by attributing its answers to specific sources — but it's not just Google that has to worry about the issue. The article notes that Microsoft's Bing search engine also supplies AI-generated answers (from Microsoft's Copilot). "And Meta recently replaced the search bar in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp with its own AI chatbot."

The article also note sthat several U.S. Congressional committees are considering "a bevy" of AI bills...

An anonymous reader shared this report from Automotive News: Automotive News recently reported that eight automakers sent vehicle location data to police without a court order or warrant. The eight companies told senators that they provide police with data when subpoenaed, getting a rise from several officials.

BMW, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen presented their responses to lawmakers. Senators Ron Wyden from Oregon and Ed Markey from Massachusetts penned a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, urging investigative action. "Automakers have not only kept consumers in the dark regarding their actual practices, but multiple companies misled consumers for over a decade by failing to honor the industry's own voluntary privacy principles," they wrote.

Ten years ago, all of those companies agreed to the Consumer Privacy Protection Principles, a voluntary code that said automakers would only provide data with a warrant or order issued by a court. Subpoenas, on the other hand, only require approval from law enforcement. Though it wasn't part of the eight automakers' response, General Motors has a class-action suit on its hands, claiming that it shared data with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a company that provides insurers with information to set rates.
The article notes that the lawmakers praised Honda, Ford, GM, Tesla, and Stellantis for requiring warrants, "except in the case of emergencies or with customer consent."

After Adobe threatened legal action, the Delta Emulator said it'll abandon its current logo for a different, yet-to-be-revealed mark. The issue centers around Delta's stylized letter "D", which the digital media giant says is too similar to its stylized letter "A". The Verge reports: On May 7th, Adobe's lawyers reached out to Delta with a firm but kindly written request to go find a different icon, an email that didn't contain an explicit threat or even use the word infringement -- it merely suggested that Delta might "not wish to confuse consumers or otherwise violate Adobe's rights or the law." But Adobe didn't wait for a reply. On May 8th, one day later, Testut got another email from Apple that suggested his app might be at risk because Adobe had reached out to allege Delta was infringing its intellectual property rights.

"We responded to both Apple and Adobe explaining our icon was a stylized Greek letter delta -- not an A -- but that we would update the Delta logo anyway to avoid confusion," Testut tells us. The icon you're seeing on the App Store now is just a temporary one, he says, as the team is still working on a new logo. "Both the App Store and AltStore versions have been updated with this temporary icon, but the plan is to update them to the final updated logo with Delta 1.6 once it's finished."

Karl Bode writes via Techdirt: Tired of being underserved and overbilled by shitty regional broadband monopolies, back in 2002 a coalition of local Utah governments formed UTOPIA -- (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency). The inter-local agency collaborative venture then set about building an "open access" fiber network that allows any ISP to then come and compete on the shared network. Two decades later and the coalition just announced that 18 different ISPs now compete for Utah resident attention over a network that now covers 21 different Utah cities. In many instances, ISPs on the network are offering symmetrical (uncapped) gigabit fiber for as little as $45 a month (plus $30 network connection fee, so $75). Some ISPs are even offering symmetrical 10 Gbps fiber for around $150 a month: "Sumo Fiber, a veteran member of the UTOPIA Open Access Marketplace, is now offering 10 Gbps symmetrical for $119, plus a $30 UTOPIA Fiber infrastructure fee, bringing the total cost to $149 per month."

It's a collaborative hybrid that blurs the line between private companies and government, and it works. And the prices being offered here are significantly less than locals often pay in highly developed tech-centric urban hubs like New York, San Francisco, or Seattle. Yet giant local ISPs like Comcast and Qwest spent decades trying to either sue this network into oblivion, or using their proxy policy orgs (like the "Utah Taxpayer Association") to falsely claim this effort would end in chaos and inevitable taxpayer tears. Yet miraculously UTOPIA is profitable, and for the last 15 years, every UTOPIA project has been paid for completely through subscriber revenues. [...] For years, real world experience and several different studies and reports (including our Copia study on this concept) have made it clear that open access networks and policies result in faster, better, more affordable broadband access. UTOPIA is proving it at scale, but numerous other municipalities have been following suit with the help of COVID relief and infrastructure bill funding.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian, written by Caroline Haskins: On May 7th and 8th in Washington, D.C., the city's biggest convention hall welcomed America's military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that's not how they would describe it. It was the inaugural "AI Expo for National Competitiveness," hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project -- better known as the "techno-economic" thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference's lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that's best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump's family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces.

The conference hall was also filled with booths representing the U.S. military and dozens of its contractors, ranging from Booz Allen Hamilton to a random company that was described to me as Uber for airplane software. At industry conferences like these, powerful people tend to be more unfiltered – they assume they're in a safe space, among friends and peers. I was curious, what would they say about the AI-powered violence in Gaza, or what they think is the future of war?

Attendees were told the conference highlight would be a series of panels in a large room toward the back of the hall. In reality, that room hosted just one of note. Featuring Schmidt and the Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, the fire-breathing panel would set the tone for the rest of the conference. More specifically, it divided attendees into two groups: those who see war as a matter of money and strategy, and those who see it as a matter of death. The vast majority of people there fell into group one. I've written about relationships between tech companies and the military before, so I shouldn't have been surprised by anything I saw or heard at this conference. But when it ended, and I departed DC for home, it felt like my life force had been completely sucked out of my body. Some of the noteworthy quotes from the panel and convention, as highlighted in Haskins' reporting, include:

"It's always great when the CIA helps you out," Schmidt joked when CIA deputy director David Cohen lent him his microphone when his didn't work.

The U.S. has to "scare our adversaries to death" in war, said Karp. On university graduates protesting Israel's war in Gaza, Karp described their views as a "pagan religion infecting our universities" and "an infection inside of our society."

"The peace activists are war activists," Karp insisted. "We are the peace activists."

A huge aspect of war in a democracy, Karp went on to argue, is leaders successfully selling that war domestically. "If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any armies in the west ever," Karp said.

A man in nuclear weapons research jokingly referred to himself as "the new Oppenheimer."

In what's marked as an EU first, the French government has blocked TikTok in its territory of New Caledonia amid widespread pro-independence protests. Politico reports: A French draft law, passed Monday, would let citizens vote in local elections after 10 years' residency in New Caledonia, prompting opposition from independence activists worried it will dilute the representation of indigenous people. The violent demonstrations that have ensued in the South Pacific island of 270,000 have killed at least five people and injured hundreds. In response to the protests, the government suspended the popular video-sharing app -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and favored by young people -- as part of state-of-emergency measures alongside the deployment of troops and an initial 12-day curfew.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal didn't detail the reasons for shutting down the platform. The local telecom regulator began blocking the app earlier on Wednesday. "It is regrettable that an administrative decision to suspend TikTok's service has been taken on the territory of New Caledonia, without any questions or requests to remove content from the New Caledonian authorities or the French government," a TikTok spokesperson said. "Our security teams are monitoring the situation very closely and ensuring that our platform remains safe for our users. We are ready to engage in discussions with the authorities."

Digital rights NGO Quadrature du Net on Friday contested the TikTok suspension with France's top administrative court over a "particularly serious blow to freedom of expression online." A growing number of authoritarian regimes worldwide have resorted to internet shutdowns to stifle dissent. This unexpected -- and drastic -- decision by France's center-right government comes amid a rise in far-right activism in Europe and a regression on media freedom. "France's overreach establishes a dangerous precedent across the globe. It could reinforce the abuse of internet shutdowns, which includes arbitrary blocking of online platforms by governments around the world," said Eliska Pirkova, global freedom of expression lead at Access Now.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted amendments to Regulation S-P that require certain financial institutions to disclose data breach incidents to impacted individuals within 30 days of discovery. Regulation S-P was introduced in 2000 and controls how some financial entities must treat nonpublic personal information belonging to consumers. These rules include developing and implementing data protection policies, confidentiality and security assurances, and protecting against anticipated threats.

The new amendments (PDF) adopted earlier this week impact financial firms, such as broker-dealers (funding portals included), investment firms, registered investment advisers, and transfer agents. The modifications were initially proposed in March of last year to modernize and improve the protection of individual financial information from data breaches and exposure to non-affiliated parties. Below is a summary of the introduced changes:

- Notify affected individuals within 30 days if their sensitive information is, or is likely to be, accessed or used without authorization, detailing the incident, breached data, and protective measures taken. Exemption applies if the information isn't expected to cause substantial harm or inconvenience to the exposed individuals.
- Develop, implement, and maintain written policies and procedures for an incident response program to detect, respond to, and recover from unauthorized access or use of customer information. This should include procedures to assess and contain security incidents, enforce policies, and oversee service providers.
- Expand safeguards and disposal rules to cover all nonpublic personal information, including that received from other financial institutions.
- Require documentation of compliance with safeguards and disposal rules, excluding funding portals.
- Align annual privacy notice delivery with the FAST Act, exempting certain conditions.
- Extend safeguards and disposal rules to transfer agents registered with the SEC or other regulatory agencies.

New submitter txyoji shares a report: Enterprise workplace collaboration platform Slack has sparked a privacy backlash with the revelation that it has been scraping customer data, including messages and files, to develop new AI and ML models. By default, and without requiring users to opt-in, Slack said its systems have been analyzing customer data and usage information (including messages, content and files) to build AI/ML models to improve the software.

The company insists it has technical controls in place to block Slack from accessing the underlying content and promises that data will not lead across workplaces but, despite these assurances, corporate Slack admins are scrambling to opt-out of the data scraping. This line in Slack's communication sparked a social media controversy with the realization that content in direct messages and other sensitive content posted to Slack was being used to develop AI/ML models and that opting out world require sending e-mail requests: "If you want to exclude your Customer Data from Slack global models, you can opt out. To opt out, please have your org, workspace owners or primary owner contact our Customer Experience team at feedback@slack.com with your workspace/org URL and the subject line 'Slack global model opt-out request'. We will process your request and respond once the opt-out has been completed."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An Arizona woman has been accused of helping generate millions of dollars for North Korea's ballistic missile program by helping citizens of that country land IT jobs at US-based Fortune 500 companies. Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, raised $6.8 million in the scheme, federal prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed Thursday. Chapman allegedly funneled the money to North Korea's Munitions Industry Department, which is involved in key aspects of North Korea's weapons program, including its development of ballistic missiles. Part of the alleged scheme involved Chapman and co-conspirators compromising the identities of more than 60 people living in the US and using their personal information to get North Koreans IT jobs across more than 300 US companies.

As another part of the alleged conspiracy, Chapman operated a "laptop farm" at one of her residences to give the employers the impression the North Korean IT staffers were working from within the US; the laptops were issued by the employers. By using proxies and VPNs, the overseas workers appeared to be connecting from US-based IP addresses. Chapman also received employees' paychecks at her home, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors said that Chapman and three North Korean IT workers -- using the aliases of Jiho Han, Chunji Jin, Haoran Xu, and others -- had been working since at least 2020 to plan a remote-work scheme. In March of that year, prosecutors said, an individual messaged Chapman on LinkedIn and invited her to "be the US face" of their company. From August to November of 2022, the North Korean IT workers allegedly amassed guides and other information online designed to coach North Koreans on how to write effective cover letters and resumes and falsify US Permanent Resident Cards.

Under the alleged scheme, the foreign workers developed "fictitious personas and online profiles to match the job requirements" and submitted fake documents to the Homeland Security Department as part of an employment eligibility check. Chapman also allegedly discussed with co-conspirators about transferring the money earned from their work. Chapman was arrested Wednesday. It wasn't immediately known when she or Didenko were scheduled to make their first appearance in court. If convicted, Chapman faces 97.5 years in prison, and Didenko faces up to 67.5 years.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed two lawsuits Wednesday against the international online retail giant Amazon.com, accusing it of deceptive and unfair business practices. Courthouse News Service: The two lawsuits, filed in state court, say Amazon's Prime cancellation process and the algorithm that decides whether a product is offered through a "buy now" or "add to cart" option violate the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act and the Arizona Uniform State Antitrust Act. Mayes, a Democrat, accuses Amazon of artificially inflating prices and boxing our third-party retailers that rely on the site for business. "Amazon must be held accountable for these violations of our state laws," Mayes said in a statement. "No matter how big and powerful, all businesses must play by the same rules and follow the same laws as everyone else."

In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr (D-N.J.) made their case for why Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has "outlived its usefulness." Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content, allowing them to moderate content without being treated as publishers.

"Unfortunately, Section 230 is now poisoning the healthy online ecosystem it once fostered. Big Tech companies are exploiting the law to shield them from any responsibility or accountability as their platforms inflict immense harm on Americans, especially children. Congress's failure to revisit this law is irresponsible and untenable," the lawmakers wrote. The Hill reports: Rodgers and Pallone argued that rolling back the protections on Big Tech companies would hold them accountable for the material posted on their platforms. "These blanket protections have resulted in tech firms operating without transparency or accountability for how they manage their platforms. This means that a social-media company, for example, can't easily be held responsible if it promotes, amplifies or makes money from posts selling drugs, illegal weapons or other illicit content," they wrote.

The lawmakers said they were unveiling legislation (PDF) to sunset Section 230. It would require Big Tech companies to work with Congress for 18 months to "evaluate and enact a new legal framework that will allow for free speech and innovation while also encouraging these companies to be good stewards of their platforms." "Our bill gives Big Tech a choice: Work with Congress to ensure the internet is a safe, healthy place for good, or lose Section 230 protections entirely," the lawmakers wrote.

samleecole writes: For the last decade, farmers have been warning that John Deere, a company celebrated by farmers, country musicians, and politicians, has been doing something else very American: Concentrating power, stripping away the ownership rights of people who buy their products, and adding a bevy of artificial, software-based repair restrictions that have effectively created a regime in which farmers can no longer fix their own tractors, combines, harvesters, and other agricultural equipment. Farmers have resorted to pirating John Deere's software and firmware on underground forums and torrent sites, and have used software cracked by Ukrainian pirates in order to simply fix the things they own. Farmers often have to wait days or weeks for an "authorized" John Deere dealership to come to their farms to repair their equipment, meanwhile their crops die on the vine.

For years, very little happened to slow down John Deere's march toward total control of the repair market. But interviews with farmers, activists, and lawyers, and a review of court records reveal a turn in the story: There is increased scrutiny on Deere's repair practices not just in this class action lawsuit, but from state legislators, the White House, and a series of federal agencies. The walls on Deere's repair monopoly may finally be closing in.

The person who claimed to have stolen the physical addresses of 49 million Dell customers appears to have taken more data from a different Dell portal, TechCrunch reported Tuesday. From the report: The newly compromised data includes names, phone numbers and email addresses of Dell customers. This personal data is contained in customer "service reports," which also include information on replacement hardware and parts, comments from on-site engineers, dispatch numbers, and in some cases diagnostic logs uploaded from the customer's computer.

Several reports seen by TechCrunch contain pictures apparently taken by customers and uploaded to Dell for seeking technical support. Some of these pictures contain metadata revealing the precise GPS coordinates of the location where the customer took the photos, according to a sample of the scraped data obtained by TechCrunch.

A panel of judges in the Netherlands has found Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers behind crypto anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, guilty of money laundering. Wired: Over the course of two days in March, the Russian national was tried on the allegation that the tool he developed had allowed criminals -- among them hackers with ties to North Korea -- to freely launder $1.2 billion in stolen cryptocurrency. "The management of Tornado Cash welcomed the bank robbers with open arms," the prosecutors wrote in a March court filing.

Dutch judges sentenced Pertsev to five years and four months in prison on Tuesday, which was the term requested by prosecutors in the case. "With Tornado Cash, the defendant created a shortcut for financing crimes and terrorism," said the court in a statement, translated from Dutch. "He chose to look away from the abuse and did not take any responsibility." The purpose of tools like Tornado Cash, known as crypto mixers or tumblers, is to mask the origin and destination of users' coins. Funds belonging to many parties are pooled, jumbled up, and spat out into brand-new wallets, by which time it is no longer clear whose crypto is whose. These services are promoted as a way to improve the level of privacy available to crypto users, but have been readily co-opted for the purpose of money laundering.

On August 8, 2022, Tornado Cash was sanctioned in the United States, making it illegal for US citizens to use the service. Any product that "indiscriminately facilitates anonymous transactions," wrote the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, represents a "threat to US national security." Two days later, Pertsev was arrested in the Netherlands, where he resided. Money laundering activity, the Dutch prosecutors claim, accounted for more than 30 percent of the funds that passed through Tornado Cash between 2019 and 2022. [...] Pertsev built his defense on the argument that Tornado Cash, which remains in operation, is under nobody's control -- including his own -- as a piece of software that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, a distributed network of computers. Further reading: Coinbase Employees and Ethereum Backers Sue US Treasury Over Tornado Cash Sanctions (September 2022).

Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple's AirTags being used for malicious purposes.

Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.

Jon Brodkin reports via Ars Technica: T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will pay a combined $10.2 million in a settlement with US states that alleged the carriers falsely advertised wireless plans as "unlimited" and phones as "free." The deal was announced yesterday by New York Attorney General Letitia James. "A multistate investigation found that the companies made false claims in advertisements in New York and across the nation, including misrepresentations about 'unlimited' data plans that were in fact limited and had reduced quality and speed after a certain limit was reached by the user," the announcement said.

T-Mobile and Verizon agreed to pay $4.1 million each while AT&T agreed to pay a little over $2 million. The settlement includes AT&T subsidiary Cricket Wireless and Verizon subsidiary TracFone. The settlement involves 49 of the 50 US states (Florida did not participate) and the District of Columbia. The states' investigation found that the three major carriers "made several misleading claims in their advertising, including misrepresenting 'unlimited' data plans that were actually limited, offering 'free' phones that came at a cost, and making false promises about switching to different wireless carrier plans."

"AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile lied to millions of consumers, making false promises of free phones and 'unlimited' data plans that were simply untrue," James said. "Big companies are not excused from following the law and cannot trick consumers into paying for services they will never receive." The carriers denied any illegal conduct despite agreeing to the settlement. In addition to payments to each state, the carriers agreed to changes in their advertising practices. It's unclear whether consumers will get any refunds out of the settlement, however. These are the following changes the three carriers agreed upon, as highlighted by the NY attorney general's office:

- "Unlimited" mobile data plans can only be marketed if there are no limits on the quantity of data allowed during a billing cycle.
- Offers to pay for consumers to switch to a different wireless carrier must clearly disclose how much a consumer will be paid, how consumers will be paid, when consumers can expect payment, and any additional requirements consumers have to meet to get paid.
- Offers of "free" wireless devices or services must clearly state everything a consumer must do to receive the "free" devices or services.
- Offers to lease wireless devices must clearly state that the consumer will be entering into a lease agreement.
- All "savings" claims must have a reasonable basis. If a wireless carrier claims that consumers will save using its services compared to another wireless carrier, the claim must be based on similar goods or services or differences must be clearly explained to the consumer.

The advertising restrictions are to be in place for five years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Maryland legislature passed two bills over the weekend limiting tech platforms' ability to collect and use consumers' data. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is expected to sign one of those bills, the Maryland Kids Code, on Thursday, MoCo360 reports. If signed into law, the other bill, the Maryland Online Privacy Act, will go into effect in October 2025. The legislation would limit platforms' ability to collect user data and let users opt out of having their data used for targeted advertising and other purposes. Together, the bills would significantly limit social media and other platforms' ability to track their users -- but tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, have opposed similar legislation. Lawmakers say the goal is to protect children, but tech companies say the bills are a threat to free speech.

Part of the Maryland Kids Code -- the Maryland Age-Appropriate Design Code Act -- will go into effect much sooner, on October 1st. It bans platforms from using "system design features to increase, sustain, or extend the use of the online product," including autoplaying media, rewarding users for spending more time on the platform, and spamming users with notifications. Another part of the legislation prohibits certain video game, social media, and other platforms from tracking users who are younger than 18. "It's meant to rein in some of the worst practices with sensible regulation that allows companies to do what's right and what is wonderful about the internet and tech innovation, while at the same time saying, 'You can't take advantage of our kids,'" Maryland state Delegate Jared Solomon, one of the bill's sponsors, said in a press conference Wednesday.

"We are technically the second state to pass a kids code," Solomon told The New York Times. "But we are hoping to be the first state to withstand the inevitable court challenge that we know is coming."