Month: April 2018

Promises, Promises: Facebook’s History with Privacy

“We’ve made a bunch of mistakes.” “Everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times.” “Not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.”

 

Sound familiar? It’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a major privacy breach — seven years ago.

 

Lawmakers in many countries may be focused on Cambridge Analytica’s alleged improper use of Facebook data, but the social network’s privacy problems back more than a decade. Here are some of the company’s most notable missteps and promises around privacy.

2007

 

The social media darling unveils its Facebook Platform to great fanfare. Zuckerberg says app developers can now access the web of connections between users and their friends, a set of connections Facebook calls the “social graph.”

 

“The social graph is changing the way the world works,” he says.

That November, Facebook launches Beacon, which shares what users are doing on other websites with their Facebook friends. Many users find it intrusive and difficult to disable. Massachusetts resident Sean Lane buys his wife a diamond ring for Christmas on Overstock.com, but Facebook ruins the surprise , an incident leading to a class-action lawsuit.

 

In December, Zuckerberg apologizes and enables users to shut off Beacon. “I know we can do better,” he says .

 

2008

 

Facebook launches Facebook Connect , aiming to correct Beacon’s mistakes by requiring users to take deliberate action before they share activity from other websites when logged in using Facebook. More than 100 websites use the tool at launch, including CNN and TripAdvisor.

 

2009

 

Facebook announces “privacy improvements” after a yearlong review by Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner found that it geared its default privacy settings toward openness, failed to inform users their data would be used to serve ads, and leaked data to third party developers, including when their friends used apps. Facebook vows to encourage “users to review their privacy settings” but does not agree to all the recommendations.

 

Beacon is officially shut down, settling Lane’s class action lawsuit.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union warns people that Facebook’s default settings mean that when a friend uses an app or takes a quiz, the quiz- or app-maker can peer into your profile, even if you’ve made it private.

 

2010

 

App-makers exhibit a sophisticated grasp of data they can scoop from Facebook’s social graph.

 

The Wall Street Journal reports that many popular apps are transmitting personalized Facebook data to dozens of advertising and internet companies, among them, Zynga’s breakout game FarmVille. Facebook responds by shutting down some apps.

 

Prior to the Journal report, Facebook says it has redesigned its privacy tools, giving its 400 million users “the power to control exactly who can see the information and content they share.”

 

2011

 

The Federal Trade Commission reaches a consent decree with Facebook after an investigation of its broken privacy promises to consumers.

 

The FTC alleges, among other things, that:

 

  • Facebook made its users’ friend lists public in December 2009, even if they had been set to private, without telling them.

 

  • Even if users limited data sharing to “friends only,” data was actually shared with third party apps that friends used.

 

  • Facebook failed to verify the security of apps it put on a “verified apps” list.

 

  • Facebook promised not to share personal information with advertisers, but did.

 

Facebook promises to submit to a privacy audit every two years for the next 20 years, and Zuckerberg owns up to mistakes.

 

2012

 

Facebook introduces new methods to help advertisers reach people in ways “that protect your privacy,” including an encryption tool called Custom Audiences that lets marketers match the email addresses of sales leads to the addresses that Facebook users used to set up their accounts.

 

Facebook also rolls out new privacy tools aimed at simplifying its convoluted and confusing privacy controls. Among other things, it narrows the scope of app permissions so they don’t suck in as much user data automatically.

 

2013

 

Facebook shares two-year-old anonymized data on billions of friendships between countries with Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan and co-authors a research paper with him (published in 2015).

 

Kogan creates a quiz app, installed by around 300,000 people , giving him access to tens of millions of their friends’ data.

 

2014

 

Facebook says it dramatically limits the access apps have to friend data, preventing the type of data scoop Kogan and others were capable of. It also requires developers to get approval from Facebook before accessing sensitive data.

 

2015

 

Facebook says it learns from Guardian journalists that Kogan has shared data with Cambridge Analytica in violation of its policies. It bans the app and asks Kogan and Cambridge Analytica to certify they had deleted the data.

 

It rolls out “Security Checkup,” a new tool aimed at simplifying its convoluted and confusing privacy controls.

 

2017

 

Facebook introduces “Privacy Basics,” a Frequently Asked Questions site aimed at simplifying its convoluted and confusing privacy controls.

 

2018

 

Facebook says it learns from The Guardian and other media outlets that Cambridge Analytica did not delete improperly obtained Facebook data and suspends the company, Kogan, and whistleblower Christopher Wylie from its service.

Zuckerberg tells CNN that “I’m really sorry that this happened.” He promises to audit app makers that gathered massive amounts of data prior to 2014 and to notify affected users. Amid calls for investigations in the U.S. and U.K., the FTC begins investigating whether Facebook broke its 2011 consent decree.

 

“Our responsibility now is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Zuckerberg says.

 

Facebook redesigns its privacy settings menu on mobile devices and says in a blog post, “It’s time to make our privacy tools easier to find.”

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Overcoming Barriers, African Scientists Creating Award-winning Innovations

When Cameroonian medical doctor Conrad Tankou won the top health award at an international innovation competition, he breathed a sigh of relief. 

Winning the $25,000 prize at the Next Einstein Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, last week was the culmination of years of struggle.

“Sometimes, I doubted I would get this far,” 30-year-old Tankou said. “We’ve come a long way. It’s the first time this project is actually getting any recognition. So, many people didn’t believe in it in the beginning, and up ‘till now, some people are still doubting.” 

WATCH: Next Einstein Forum

​Tankou, a general practitioner based in Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon, led a team to invent what he calls GIC Med. It’s a portable digital microscope that connects to a smartphone to remotely scan for cervical cancers for medical analysis. About 7,000 cases of cervical cancer are discovered yearly. The disease is the second most frequent cancer among women in Cameroon. 

While creating his technology and seeking support, Tankou said he faced resistance from medical professionals. There was also the challenge of an unreliable internet, which he said is necessary for today’s scientists. Only about 25 percent of Cameroon’s population has Internet access, and the connection is prone to blackouts. 

Some of the blackouts are political. The Cameroonian government has periodically shut down the internet in Anglophone regions, including Bamenda, where citizens are accusing the Francophone-dominated government of marginalizing English-speaking people. One blackout last year reportedly lasted a record 93 days. 

Tankou said he also had to confront what he described as a “sad” mindset.

“There is mindset here in Africa where we don’t believe in the ability of another African to solve our problems. We have doubts that solutions in Africa can come from an African. We expect solutions to come from the West,” he explained. 

Tankou is determined to make his technology available to help save lives. He said the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) was the best platform to showcase his innovation.

Africa has been left behind

Created by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) with the underlying belief that “the next Einstein will be African,” NEF brings together the largest gathering of African scientists to discuss innovations in climate change research, health and data technology to solve local problems. The first was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2016, where nearly 1,000 people convened. 

More than 1,600 people gathered in Rwanda last week for the second edition. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame opened the forum. 

“For too long, Africa has allowed itself to be left behind, but that’s starting to change, as we see in the important work on display at this forum,” Kagame said in his opening address.

Kagame’s government has heavily pushed education in science-based fields.

According to the World Bank, less than 2 percent of total global scientific research output comes from Africa. Some of the barriers are cultural.

“There’s also this old mentality prevailing in Africa where elders are respected more than youth. So, young people are not always supported. They have to find their own way,” said Joel Gasana, who is in his final year as a medical student at the University of Rwanda.

Gasama received $5,000 from an organization affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Nigeria-based Tony Elumelu Foundation awarded him another $5,000 grant. 

The mobile app he created to help HIV patients keep up with their treatments lost to Tankou in the competition.

Rachel Sibande, a Malawian scientist who devised a tool to generate electricity from maize (corn), won in the “climate smart” category. 

She noted that 90 percent of Malawi’s population is not connected to the national power grid. 

Sibande, 32, said Africa is left behind when it comes to scientific research and innovation, due to a lack of funding, lack of opportunities for collaboration, few incentives and an educational system that does not enable students to think critically. 

Abdoulaye Diallo, whose artificial intelligence project won in the “deep tech” category, said he did not think he would have been able to develop his technology in his native Guinea. He created it in Canada, where he has access to world-class labs as a university professor. But he admits that many scientists in Africa do not have such opportunities.

Steps of progress 

These days, several initiatives are springing up to boost research-based science in Africa. A report jointly issued by the World Bank and Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of academic journals, revealed that between 2003 and 2012, African researchers more than doubled their production of research in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

At this year’s NEF, Elsevier and AIMS announced the launch of The Scientific African, a first-of-its-kind pan-African, peer-reviewed, open-access publishing journal dedicated to amplifying the global reach and impact of African research. News of the launch has generated positive buzz on social media over the past few days.

Scientists in Africa have long felt they were at a disadvantage simply by being in Africa, but NEF hopes to change that. The next edition will be in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2020. 

NEF is setting up a $1 million fund to encourage scientific breakthroughs in Africa. 

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New Hope for Frog Once Feared Extinct in Australia

Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has released a specially-bred group of critically endangered yellow-spotted bell frogs into the wild. Yellow-spotted bell frogs were thought to have become extinct until a chance discovery a decade ago. It allowed scientists to breed a so-called insurance population’ in captivity to help the species recover.

Historically, yellow spotted-bell frogs were found in two separate highland ranges in the north and south of New South Wales state in eastern Australia.

But disaster struck in the 1970s following an outbreak of an infectious disease that affects amphibians around the world.

For 30 years there were no recorded sightings of yellow-spotted bell frogs and scientists thought they were extinct.

However, a small group of these rare frogs was found near the New South Wales town of Yass in 2009 on the Southern Tablelands. Researchers moved quickly to harvest eggs and they became part of a so-called insurance population. It has been a success.This week experts from Taronga Zoo in Sydney released 200 juvenile frogs back into the area near Yass in an attempt to re-establish a wild population.

Michael McFadden is a supervisor at the zoo.

“In the Northern and Southern Tablelands this species used to be extremely common up until the late 1970s and at that time the species almost went extinct over a couple of years. So it disappeared, it was thought to have gone extinct. The reason for that decline was due to the introduction of an introduced pathogen called chytrid fungus. Unfortunately for this species they showed very little immunity and as a result they were wiped out over a period of one or two years,” he said.

Insurance populations’ of endangered Tasmanian Devils have also been bred in captivity in Australia. In the wild, the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial has been devastated by a contagious facial cancer that was first recognized in the 1990s. A small number of animals bred in captivity have been released into the wild, fueling hopes this iconic species can recover.

There are hopes, too, the yellow-spotted bell frogs can do the same.

Chytrid fungus causes chytridiomycosis, which has been described by scientists as one of the most devastating wildlife diseases ever known. It has devastated frog populations in Australia, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.

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Steven Bochco, Creator of ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Dies at 74

Steven Bochco, a writer and producer known for creating the groundbreaking police drama “Hill Street Blues,” died Sunday. He was 74. A family spokesman says Bochco died in his sleep after a battle with cancer. 

Bochco, who won 10 primetime Emmys, created several hit television shows including “L.A. Law,” “NYPD Blue,” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.”

Premiering in January 1981, “Hill Street Blues” challenged, even confounded the meager audience that sampled it. Then, on a wave of critical acclaim, the series began to click with viewers, while scoring a history-making 27 Emmy nominations its first year.

During its seven-season run, it won 26 Emmys and launched Bochco on a course that led to dozens of series and earned him four Peabody awards, in addition to the 10 Emmys.

“Hill Street Blues” had a sprawling universe of engaging yet flawed characters, a zippy pace and layers of overlapping, scripted dialogue, shot in a documentary style.

But what really set the show apart were the multiple narratives that interlaced each episode with those that came before and after. With the rare exception of the few prime-time soaps, almost every series up to that time – whether comedy or drama – made each episode freestanding, with a reset button for the one that came next.

Bochco once recalled a fan telling him that “Hill Street Blues” was the first TV series with a memory.

“That’s what I always thought of myself doing in the context of TV: craft a show that over time would have a memory,” he told The Associated Press in an interview two years ago. “I sensed that very early in my career. It just took me another 10 or 12 years to get to the point where I earned the right to take a shot at it.”

Bochco grew up in Manhattan, the son of a painter and a concert violinist. On arriving in Los Angeles after college, he wrote for several series at Universal Studios. Then he got a big break: writing the screenplay for the 1972 sci-fi film “Silent Running.” But Bochco said the disrespect he confronted as the writer soured him on writing for the big screen.

“Once you’ve delivered the screenplay they don’t want you around, because you’re gonna get in the way of someone else’s vision,” Bochco said.

In his self-published memoir “Truth Is a Total Defense: My Fifty Years in Television,” Bochco tells the story of his prolific career, which he began at 22 as a story editor on a popular NBC drama, “The Name of the Game,” all the way to “Murder in the First,” which ran on TNT from 2014 to 2016.

In his book, Bochco recalls his great collaborations and his battles with actors, studio heads and network execs, along with the flops (”Bay City Blues”! “Cop Rock”!) that made the triumphs even sweeter.

Details of a memorial service were not immediately released.

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African Scientists Compete at 2018 Next Einstein Forum

Sixteen African scientists competed in Rwanda last week for a chance to solve some of the most pressing problems in their communities. Chika Oduah reports for VOA from Kigali, which hosted the 4th annual Next Einstein Forum March 26-28.

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Coral Farms Revive the Reefs

Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the world’s ocean beds, yet they are home to a quarter of all marine life on the planet. But they are facing serious challenges that threaten their survival. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean island nation of the Seychelles, conservationists are coming up with new ways to save the reefs. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.

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Using Humor to Promote ReligiousTolerance

Dialogue and social discourse are among the most effective tools for promoting cultural understanding. So is humor. That’s the tool of choice for one white, Christian comedian from South Carolina, who claims an affinity for Muslims and a spicy South Asian rice dish called Biryani. VOA’s Deewa Service correspondent Niala Mohammad took in one of his shows and filed this report.

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Chinese Space Lab Burns Up in the Atmosphere

A defunct Chinese space lab met its expected end early Monday morning as its remaining fragments plunged into the South Pacific.

China’s Manned Space Engineering Office said the Tiangong-1 spacecraft “mostly” burned up in the atmosphere.

Any pieces that failed to disintegrate during the fiery trip back to Earth fell harmlessly into the ocean. 

It took about two hours for the craft burn up once it hit Earth’s atmosphere.

There had been predictions parts of the space lab would land in the South Atlantic with some pieces posing a very small threat to people on the ground

Tiangong-1, was the size of a school bus and weighed eight and a half tons. 

Tiangong-1, which means “Heavenly Palace” in English, was the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade.

It was launched in 2011 and served as an orbiting laboratory for manned Chinese space missions until officials determined its lifespan was complete. It was taken out of service in 2016. 

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In ‘Ready Player One,’ Reality is Virtual, but Characters, Story Are Real

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg is going into the future with his virtual reality adventure Ready Player One. Based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller of the same name, the film takes place in the dystopian world of 2045, while referencing 1980s popular culture.

Set more than 25 years in the future, the characters are driven by overpopulation and poverty to escape into a digital universe. One of them is young Wade Watts, a poor orphan living in the stacks, a poverty-ridden area in Columbus, Ohio, who escapes to the Oasis through his virtual avatar, Parzival.

WATCH: Spielberg’s New Film Goes into the Future

He is not alone. Billions of displaced people the world over escape into the digital universe, using aliases and idealized appearance through their avatars. The reason? As Watts says in the film, this “is a place where the limits of reality are your imagination. People come to the oasis for all the things they can do, but they stay because of all the things they can be.”

He describes the Oasis as “the only place it feels like I mean anything.”

Control the Oasis

The Oasis is the brainchild of reclusive James Halliday, played by Oscar winner Mark Rylance. Halliday is a genius and also a fan of 1980s popular culture.

Upon his death, Halliday reveals he has created a virtual reality game where players are called to discover a hidden object, an Easter egg. Whoever finds it first gets a half-trillion dollars and total control of the Oasis.

That sets Parzival and his friends on a collision course with the head of iOi, Innovative Online Industries, a huge virtual reality corporation, and its CEO Nolan Sorrento, played by Ben Mendelsohn. Sorrento will do anything to win the contest and control the Oasis. So, a brutal hunt for the Easter egg begins inside the virtual world, and also outside, in the real world.

​World run amok

Spielberg says this spectacular, escapist and addictive virtual future is the product of a world run amok.

“Having spent so much time trying to imagine what the future could be for all of us in that circumstance, I suddenly saw a future that Ernest Cline, the writer of the book, and Zak Penn, the screenwriter, envisioned, and it wasn’t that far away from what I think is going to happen,” Spielberg said in a release about the film.

To further accentuate the stark contrast between the Oasis and the grittier real world, Spielberg shot the scenes of the dystopian future on film, while scenes in the virtual universe were captured digitally.

Tye Sheridan, who plays Wade and his avatar Parzival, describes shooting the digital part of the film. 

“We did that in a motion-capture studio. We are wearing these suits with head cams and dots all over our face so that they can track, they can record our facial performances and put those on our avatar, animate us and create a virtual world around us.”

Sheridan says during filming, a monitor displayed the virtual version of their movements in real time. This enabled the actors to perform while seeing themselves as their avatars walking around, tracking the actors’ movements.

1980s deja vu

Throughout the film, Spielberg references 1980s popular culture, building on the nostalgia of his fan base. Video games like Adventure released for the Atari 2600 video game console, 1979-1980; movies such as Stanley Kubrick’s horror flick blockbuster The Shining, and Stephen King’s equally popular book by the same title, or dance moves from Saturday Night Fever. They all happen in the seductive cyber world of the Oasis, where the main character finds purpose, love and social justice.

Spielberg notes, however, that though Ready Player One builds on virtual reality cutting-edge technology, it also warns about VR’s addictive potential and encourages its viewers to disconnect from technology regularly in order to find real beauty in the world. He also says as impressive as his digital production is, it is ultimately meant to advance a story about real characters and the human condition.

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Tech Startups Add Automation, Drones to Aid Construction Industry

Having robots to do the dirty, tedious parts of the job is a dream come true in the construction business. Automation technology developers say robotics are transforming the industry, making it safer, and helping companies take on more projects and finish them faster. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.

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Exhibit Highlights Inclusive Design for People with Disabilities

More than 1 billion people around the world have some sort of disability. Rong Shi of VOA’s Mandarin service toured an exhibit in New York that showcases the latest gadgets and inventions designed to help those with a range of physical, sensory or cognitive abilities lead more independent lives and engage more fully in the world. Faith Lapidus reports.

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Facebook Faces Calls for Change

The fallout continues for Facebook over how it handles user data and privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers are calling for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify, and regulators have opened investigations. Michelle Quinn reports on how the social media giant is facing a tipping point when it comes to dealing with user privacy.

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Washington Event Celebrates All Things Pop Culture

Thousands of fans gathered in Washington for the city’s comic convention, called Awesome Con. During the three-day event, they meet their favorite artists and actors, have their comic books autographed, and do a little shopping. Many also dress up in costume. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.

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K-Pop Diplomacy: South Koreans fly to Pyongyang for Rare Concerts

From aging crooners to bubbly K-Pop starlets, some of South Korea’s biggest pop stars flew to North Korea on Saturday for rare performances that highlight the sudden thaw in inter-Korean ties after years of tensions over the North’s nuclear ambitions.

The concerts in Pyongyang on Sunday and Tuesday come ahead of a historic summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a border village April 27. The meeting, which will precede a planned summit between Kim and President Donald Trump in May, could prove to be significant in the global diplomatic push to resolve the standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons and missiles program.

The 120-member group that flew to Pyongyang also included government officials, reporters and a taekwondo demonstration team that will perform in Pyongyang on Sunday and Monday. Another team of 70 South Korean technicians went to Pyongyang on Thursday to set up equipment.

Singer Yoon Do-hyun, who previously performed in Pyongyang in 2002, was emotional after landing in the North Korean capital.

“My heart is bursting,” Yoon told reporters, his eyes welling up with tears. “I am most curious about the reaction of the audience, how it would be different from 16 years ago.”

The artists were greeted by Hyon Song Wol, the photogenic leader of Kim Jong Un’s hand-picked Moranbong girl band who has been working out the details of the performances with South Korean officials.

“Your arrival in Pyongyang brings big expectations,” she said. “A lot of famous singers have come.”

A look at the South Korean singers who made the trip and a certain horse-dancing specialist who didn’t:

​The legends

During stormier times, North Korea described the South’s society and culture as a “corrupt bourgeois lifestyle.” Still, that didn’t stop southern pop singers from performing across the border when relations warmed.

It’s the second trip for the iconic Cho Yong-pil, perhaps South Korea’s most influential musician of the past 50 years. He staged a solo concert in Pyongyang in 2005 during a previous era of rapprochement between the rivals.

“It will be as comfortable performing in the North as it is to perform in the South,” the 68-year-old singer said at a news conference at South Korea’s Gimpo Airport on Saturday. “There’s no reason for me or other singers to be nervous. We all finished rehearsing and will have a fun and comfortable time showing our music.”

Seoul hasn’t officially announced the titles of the songs by the South Korean artists. Cho’s “Dear Friend,” a ballad about a long-lost friend that reportedly drew an enthusiastic response from the Pyongyang crowd 13 years ago, will almost certainly be one of them.

It would be the third North Korean performances for female balladeers Choi Jin-hee and Lee Sun-hee, who are relatively well-known in the North.

The 61-year-old Choi will likely sing her biggest hit, “Maze of Love,” which is rumored to have been a favorite of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the late father of current leader Kim. Lee, who at 53 still might have the best pipes in the business, may sing “To J,” one of several South Korean songs North Korean musicians performed during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

“I hope we can create a stage where we can make an emotional connection and convey the warm feelings between the South and North,” Choi said.

The girls

It won’t be all slow ballads in Pyongyang. It will be interesting to see how the North Koreans react to girl band Red Velvet, currently one of the most popular acts in the highly competitive K-Pop scene.

The genre, which has a huge following across Asia, has been defined by synthesized music, powerful visuals and dance moves, and teasing sexuality. In recent years, South Korea’s military has used K-Pop for psychological warfare, blaring it from loudspeakers along the heavily armored border between the rivals.

“Happiness! Hello, it’s Red Velvet!” band member Seulgi cheerfully shouted during the news conference.

“We’re the ‘maknae’ (youngest of the group), so we will make sure to deliver our bright energy to the North,” the 24-year-old said.

K-Pop groups have performed before in North Korea. The now-disbanded Sechs Kies and Fin.K.L sang and danced in Pyongyang in 1999, as did boy band Shinhwa in 2003. Some of the artists said later that the reaction from the audience was awkward and quiet.

Red Velvet may find a better reception more than a decade later as cultural tastes change, even in isolated North Korea. Currently, the most popular music act in North Korea is Hyon’s Moranbong band, whose members often perform suggestive shimmies in short skirts with electric guitars.

Park Hyeong-il, an official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, said North Korean officials didn’t show any discomfort about Red Velvet and also didn’t take issue with the “red” in the band’s name.

Red Velvet is originally a five-member band, but only four made the trip to Pyongyang — 22-year-old Joy stayed in South Korea to film a soap opera.

​No ‘Gangnam style,’ please 

Despite constant questioning from reporters, South Korean officials aren’t offering a clear explanation on why PSY, the “Gangnam Style” singer, was left out of the concert lineup.

South Korea’s culture ministry spokesman Hwang Seong-un said without specifying that the YouTube rapper had been initially considered for the Pyongyang events before being excluded. He said he couldn’t confirm a media report that North Korean officials had rejected PSY.

“What I can say is that we explored ways to include him, but it didn’t work out,” Hwang said. “We hope there will be better opportunities for him in the future.”

It’s possible that officials from either the North or the South concluded that PSY’s bizarre humor and highly sexualized music would be too provocative for the North Korean public.

It’s not that North Korea had entirely ignored the global Gangnam Style craze. In September 2012, the North posted a video on its Uriminzokkiri website of a horse-dancing PSY character that had a photo of conservative South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-hye’s face transposed on it. The lyrics had the character satirically defending Park’s late father, staunch anti-communist dictator Park Chung-hee.

Park went on to win the presidential race, only to be ousted from office and jailed over a corruption scandal in March last year.

Will Kim Jong Un attend?

The South Korean singers will perform at the 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theater on Sunday and then take part in a joint concert with North Korean artists on Tuesday at the 12,000-seat Ryugyong Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium. 

 

It’s unclear whether North Korean leader Kim will show up in any of these performances. His presence would be seen in the South as a proper response to Moon’s attending the North Korean performances in February. But Kim also was accused by Seoul in previous years of harshly punishing, and even executing, North Korean officials and people who were caught privately consuming South Korean popular culture. 

 

In 2014, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers that North Korea used firing squads to execute 10 officials that year for taking bribes or watching South Korean television dramas. 

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Asian-American, Brazilian Apostles Make Mormon History

The Mormon church made history and injected a bit of diversity into a previously all-white top leadership panel Saturday by selecting the first Latin-American apostle and the first apostle of Asian ancestry.

The selections of Ulisses Soares of Brazil and Gerrit W. Gong, a Chinese-American, were announced during a twice-annual conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The choices triggered excitement among a contingent of Mormons who for years have been hoping for the faith’s top leadership to be more representative of a religion that has more than half of the its 16 million members outside the United States.

“It’s a sign that the church is for everyone,” said Guilherme De Castro, a 37-year-old Mormon from Brazil who was in attendance for the announcement. “It doesn’t matter where you are from or the way you look.”

The selections come during a two-day conference happening as the faith grapples with heightened scrutiny about its handling of sexual abuse reports and one-on-one interviews between local lay leaders and youth. Mormon leaders hadn’t spoken about the topic as of Saturday afternoon, but a person in attendance shouted several times, “Stop protecting sexual predators,” as new people were announced to second-tier leadership posts.

The outburst came one day after about 1,000 current and former Mormons marched to the church’s headquarters, delivering petitions demanding an end to closed door, one-on-one interviews between youth and lay leaders where sexual questions sometimes arise.

The church changed policy this week to now allow children to bring a parent or adult with them to the interviews, but protesters said that doesn’t go far enough to keep children safe. The change came as part of more revisions to sexual abuse reporting guidelines following recent revelations that a former prominent missionary leader was accused of sexually assaulting two women in the 1980s. The ex-leader denied the allegations.

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With Paper, Phones, Atlanta Struggles to Recover From Cyberattack

Atlanta’s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a nine-day-old cyberattack that

plunged the Southeastern U.S. metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper.

On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend, city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come.

Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives, re-creating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating “ransomware” virus attacks to hit an American city.

Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta’s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems.

“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” said Councilman Howard Shook, whose office lost 16 years of digital records.

One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with “weapologize” and “imsorry” added to file names.

Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyberextortionists  moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations, including businesses, health care organizations and government agencies. Previous high-profile attacks have shut down factories, prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations.

Not theft, usually

Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it. The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents’ information is in the hands of hackers, but they do not know for sure.

City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices, including courts and the water department.

Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450,000 people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded $51,000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files.

“Everything on my hard drive is gone,” City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall. 

City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom.

Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish.

City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building.

Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device.

Not all computers were compromised. Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected, Noble said.

Old-school analog

Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases, department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters. He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files.

“Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future,” he said. By the weekend, he added, officers were returning to digital police reports.

Meanwhile, some city employees complained they have been left in the dark, unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers.

“We don’t know anything,” said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday. 

Like City Hall, whose 1930 neo-Gothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing, the city’s computer system is a combination of old and new.

“One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems,” Noble said.

The city published results from a recent cybersecurity audit in January, and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit. The audit called for better record-keeping and hiring more technology

workers.

Councilman Shook said he was worried about how much the recovery would cost the city, but that he supported funding a cybersecurity overhaul to counter future attacks.

For now his staff members are temporarily sharing one aging laptop.

“Things are very slow,” he said. “It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that.”

No word on payment

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who took office in January, has declined to say whether the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note, whose image was released by a local television station.

Shook, who chairs the city council’s finance subcommittee, said he did not know whether the city was negotiating with the hackers, but that it appeared no ransom had been paid to date.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is helping Atlanta respond, typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up.

FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency was helping Atlanta respond to the attack, but declined to comment further.

Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid, said Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyberofficial.

Weatherford, who previously served as California’s chief information security officer, said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment.

“The longer it goes, the worse it gets,” he said. “This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back.”

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