Facebook’s latest report lays out the sheer scale of its battle against fake accounts, spam, and other abuses.
Source: Wired
Julian Assange, founder of whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, has been charged with more than a dozen additional charges by U.S. federal prosecutors, including under the controversial Espionage Act — a case that will likely test the rights of freedom of speech and expression under the First Amendment.
Assange, 47, was arrested at the Ecuadorean embassy in London in April after the U.S. government charged him with conspiracy to hack a government computer used by then army officer Chelsea Manning to leak classified information about the Iraq War. Ecuador withdrew his asylum request seven years after he first entered the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face unrelated allegations of rape and sexual assault. Assange was later jailed in the U.K. for a year for breaking bail while he was in the embassy.
According to the newly unsealed indictment, Assange faces 17 new charges — including publishing classified information — under the Espionage Act, a law typically reserved for spies working against the U.S. or whistleblowers and leakers who worked for the U.S. intelligence community.
Both Manning and Edward Snowden, two former government employees turned whistleblowers, were both charged under the Espionage Act for leaking files to the media.
Prosecutors said Thursday that the WikiLeaks founder — who published numerous troves of highly classified diplomatic cables, military videos showing the killing of civilians and government hacking tools — was charged in part because Assange published a “narrow subset” of documents passed to him by Manning while she was working as an Army intelligence analyst that revealed the names of confidential sources.
A statement from the Justice Department read:
After agreeing to receive classified documents from Manning and aiding, abetting, and causing Manning to provide classified documents, the superseding indictment charges that Assange then published on WikiLeaks classified documents that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world.
According to the superseding indictment, Assange’s actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention.
The department said many of the files were classified as “secret,” meaning their release could do “serious damage” to U.S. national security.
Assange is also accused of engaging in “real-time discussions” with Manning to send over the classified files.
After Assange’s arrest in April, prosecutors had two months to lay additional charges before it sought extradition from the U.K. to the U.S., where he would be tried in court. In refusing to testify to a grand jury about Assange, Manning was held in contempt and jailed for two months. Prior to the release of Thursday’s superseding indictment, Manning was jailed again for refusing to provide testimony.
Debate remains over whether Assange, the self-styled editor of WikiLeaks, should be considered a journalist and granted protections as such. John Demers, who heads the Justice Department’s National Security Division, told reporters that Assange “is no journalist.”
But the case will likely strike at the heart of the First Amendment, which protects against government interference with citizen and reporters’ rights to freedom of speech and expression. It’s rare but not unheard of for reporters to be charged under the national security law — less so for publishing news reports embarrassing to the government but more so to obtain details of the sources who revealed the information in the first place.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said the indictment will be a “major test case” for press freedoms because the Espionage Act “doesn’t distinguish between what Assange allegedly did and what mainstream outlets sometimes do, even if the underlying facts [or] motives are radically different.”
The Obama administration, which charged several federal employees under the Espionage Act during the president’s two-term administration, reportedly wanted to charge Assange too but worried it would have a chilling effect on press freedoms.
News of the indictment has already sparked anger and frustration among free speech and civil liberties groups.
WikiLeaks called the news “madness” in a tweet. “It is the end of national security journalism and the First Amendment,” said its Twitter account.
“The Department of Justice just declared war — not on WikiLeaks, but on journalism itself,” tweeted Snowden. “This case will decide the future of media.”
Source: TechCrunch
E-commerce platform Shopify has quietly made an acquisition to continue its expansion of the services and products that merchants can sell and purchase through its platform. It has acquired Handshake, a New York startup that offers a commerce platform for businesses that sell wholesale goods.
Shopify has confirmed the deal in a short statement:
“Handshake is now a part of Shopify. We consider acquisitions in the normal course of business as we focus on making commerce better for everyone.” It hasn’t disclosed the value but a source tells us it was less than $100 million.
We also received an emailed tip that noted that the acquisition was announced to staff earlier this month, and that the team is operating as part of Shopify’s extended service tier, Shopify Plus, headed by David Moellenkamp. Indeed, Handshake’s profile on LinkedIn now indicates that it was acquired by Shopify, and Glen Coates, who had been the founder and CEO of Handshake, is now the director of product at Shopify Plus.
Handshake had raised about $23.5 million and was valued in its last round (in 2016 — note that it’s not this Handshake) at just under $54 million, according to PitchBook. Investors included Boldstart Ventures, Emergence Capital, SoftTech VC, Point Nine and others. (We’re trying to find out more on the price.)
The opportunity that Handshake had identified, and now Shopify is targeting, is the end of the e-commerce market for brands and other merchants selling items wholesale, potentially alongside consumer-focused retail efforts.
This is big business: a recent report found that B2B e-commerce sales in the U.S. alone passed $1 trillion for the first time in 2018. As with consumer-focused sales, platforms like Handshakes offer merchants the ability to handle these sales directly, rather than handing off the sales to third-party marketplaces.
Handshake’s customers include the likes of Bugaboo, Williams-Sonoma and Roland.
This deal comes at an interesting time for Shopify.
Some weeks ago, we reported on how Mailchimp and Shopify had stopped working together, only to find out days later that Mailchimp had actually also quietly acquired an e-commerce startup to start to build out more purchasing tools for its customers. In that regard, this latest acquisition by Shopify underscores how it’s also growing and expanding its scope — albeit in a way that puts it into closer competition with the likes of Alibaba and Amazon, which themselves have carved out a strong place as B2B marketplaces.
Source: TechCrunch
Amazon is offering discounts of up to $320 off on four refurbished 2018 MacBook Pros as part of its current Deal of the Day promotion. Interested customers can snag two different MacBook Pros with 256GB of SSD storage for $1,330 each.
The post Amazon drops killer deals on certified refurbished MacBook Pros for today only appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Aurora is buying Blackmore, whose “Doppler lidar” system can determine how far away an object it, and its speed.
Source: Wired
B&H’s DealZone sales offer deep price cuts on some quality products, but they only last for a single day. This means you’ll need to act quickly to save nearly 50% on LG’s 27MK430H-B 27-inch Monitor with FreeSync — making gaming on this monitor an absolute pleasure.
The post B&H cuts the price on this 27-inch LG monitor — save up to $90, today only appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
The ThinkPad is an icon in the laptop world and the X1 Carbon has been a favorite of ours for years. If you’re looking to score one for less than a grand, Lenovo has the 5th-gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon on sale right now for just $849.
The post Lenovo Memorial Day sale drops price of ThinkPad X1 Carbon Laptops by almost 50% appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger is, uh, back.
Source: Wired
Using mice whose neurons had been engineered to respond to light, researchers can dial up or down the emotional intensity of a memory.
Source: Wired
Next week, New York City’s Metro Transit Authority will be adding contactless payment support for Google Pay. In the meantime, Google’s getting ready by bringing a key new commuting feature to Android.
Starting today, NYC straphangers can use Google Assistant to find out the ETA of the next train. Saying, “Hey Google, when is the next 4 train arriving?” or “Hey Google, when is the next train?” Will pop up its estimated arrival in each direction, along with walking directions to the closet station. Something I could have used this morning, after narrowly missing the R train.
If you’re located in the New York City area, odds are you’ve already seen the contactless payments pop up in a handful of locations along the 4,5,6 line. Next week, those commuting between Grand Central in Manhattan and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center in Brooklyn will be able to swipe their phone as part of a public pilot.
For now, at least, it seems the future is limited to single ride payment (versus daily/weekly/monthly cards), as the MTA works on hammering out the finer details. Stations that accept Google Pay will be added to Maps in coming weeks. Android users will also be able to add in a credit or debit card via the app. That feature is also arriving for riders in Melbourne and London.
Source: TechCrunch