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The UK’s CCTV watchdog has criticised a Chinese firm for not saying if its cameras are used in Uyghur internment camps.

Professor Fraser Sampson, said: “If your company wasn’t involved in these awful places wouldn’t you be very keen to say so?”

In July, MPs said Hikvision provided the “primary camera technology” used in Uyghur internment camps.

The company said it respected human rights.

On 8 July, MPs on the foreign affairs committee published a report which said: “Cameras made by the Chinese firm Hikvision have been deployed throughout Xinjiang, and provide the primary camera technology used in the internment camps”.

More than a million Uyghurs and other minorities are estimated to have been detained at camps in the north-west region of Xinjiang, where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged.

China has denied the allegations and claimed the camps are “re-education” facilities used to combat terrorism.

The foreign affairs committee recommended that Hikvision “should not be permitted to operate within the UK”.

In June, President Biden signed an executive order prohibiting US investments in Hikvision.

Hikvision cameras are widely used in the UK, including by many local councils.

In a letter sent to “partners” after the report’s publication, Hikvision wrote that the committee’s accusations were “unsubstantiated and not underpinned by evidence”.

It called the suggestion of a ban a “knee-jerk response… disproportionate, ill-measured, and reinforces the notion that this is motivated by political influences”.

Biometrics Commissioner
On 16 July, Professor Sampson, the UK Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, followed up that response, asking the company if it accepted that crimes are being committed against the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

In a reply sent this week, Justin Hollis, Hikvision’s Marketing Director for UK & Ireland, wrote: “It is beyond our capability to make a judgement on this matter, particularly against a backdrop where the debate surrounding the Xinjiang issue comes with clashing geopolitical views.”

The firm said it was difficult to answer “narrow pointed questions on paper”, fearing what it called a “kangaroo trial by media”.

It added that an “independent” report by former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (2001-2005), Pierre-Richard Prosper, had concluded: “We do not find that Hikvision entered into the five projects in Xinjiang with the intent to knowingly engage in human rights abuses or find that Hikvision knowingly or intentionally committed human rights abuses itself or that it acted in wilful disregard.”

The company has previously said it had retained a law firm led by Ambassador Prosper “to advise on human rights compliance”.

Hikvision said it fully embraced the UN guiding principles of business and human rights.

The firm said that it did not oversee or control its devices once they are passed to installers, adding that “operational matters are not within our remit”.

Simple Questions
But the letter’s answers were not a satisfactory response for Professor Sampson, who told the BBC: “It’s a simple enough question – ‘Were your cameras used in these internment camps?'”

“Saying ‘we’re not involved in operations’ or ‘we don’t have any control over what’s done with them’ isn’t really an answer.”

He wrote: “Our parliamentary committee accepted that these internment camps exist and that substantial and sustained human rights abuses are being enabled by sophisticated surveillance technology. I need to understand the level of Hikvision’s involvement.

He said he was “unimpressed” with what he had heard, and remained unconvinced he was getting a “full account”.

The company has invited Professor Sampson to meet Ambassador Prosper, but the commissioner says he wants answers to “basic questions” first.

Hikvision told the BBC: “We are looking forward to meeting the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, and have nothing to add to our letter.”

Apple says its announcement of automated tools to detect child sexual abuse on the iPhone and iPad was “jumbled pretty badly”.

On 5 August, the company revealed new image detection software that can alert Apple if known illegal images are uploaded to its iCloud storage.

Privacy groups criticised the news, with some saying Apple had created a security backdoor in its software.

The company says its announcement had been widely “misunderstood”.

“We wish that this had come out a little more clearly for everyone,” said Apple software chief Craig Federighi, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

He said that – in hindsight – introducing two features at the same time was “a recipe for this kind of confusion”.

What are the new tools?
Apple announced two new tools designed to protect children. They will be deployed in the US first.

Image detection

The first tool can identify known child sex abuse material (CSAM) when a user uploads photos to iCloud storage.

The US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) maintains a database of known illegal child abuse images. It stores them as hashes – a digital “fingerprint” of the illegal material.

Cloud service providers such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft, already check images against these hashes to make sure people are not sharing CSAM.

Apple decided to implement a similar process, but said it would do the image-matching on a user’s iPhone or iPad, before it was uploaded to iCloud.

Mr Federighi said the iPhone would not be checking for things such as photos of your children in the bath, or looking for pornography.

The system could only match “exact fingerprints” of specific known child sexual abuse images, he said.

If a user tries to upload several images that match child abuse fingerprints, their account will be flagged to Apple so the specific images can be reviewed.

Mr Federighi said a user would have to upload in the region of 30 matching images before this feature would be triggered.

Message filtering

In addition to the iCloud tool, Apple also announced a parental control that users could activate on their children’s accounts.

If activated, the system would check photographs sent by – or to – the child over Apple’s iMessage app.

If the machine learning system judged that a photo contained nudity, it would obscure the photo and warn the child.

Parents can also choose to receive an alert if the child chooses to view the photo.

Criticism
Privacy groups have shared concerns that the technology could be expanded and used by authoritarian governments to spy on its own citizens.

WhatsApp head Will Cathcart called Apple’s move “very concerning” while US whistleblower Edward Snowden called the iPhone a “spyPhone”.

Mr Federighi said the “soundbyte” that spread after the announcement was that Apple was scanning iPhones for images.

“That is not what is happening,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

“We feel very positively and strongly about what we’re doing and we can see that it’s been widely misunderstood.”

The tools are due to be added to the new versions of iOS and iPadOS later this year.

Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong has been released from a South Korean prison and is now on parole.

He served 207 days in jail – just over half the sentence he received after being convicted of bribery and embezzlement in January.

The case involved the country’s former President Park Guen-hye, who is also in jail for bribery and corruption.

Samsung Electronics was founded by Lee’s grandfather and he has been the de facto head since 2014 .

Lee made a brief statement to reporters outside the prison.

“I’ve caused much concern for the people. I deeply apologise,” Lee said. “I am listening to the concerns, criticisms, worries and high expectations for me. I will work hard.”

The 53-year old was sent to prison for two-and-a-half years by a high court in January.

He was accused of paying 43bn won ($37.7m; £26.7m) to two non-profit foundations operated by Choi Soon-sil, a friend of Park’s, in exchange for political support – alleged to include backing for a controversial Samsung merger which paved the way for Lee to become eventual head of the conglomerate.

The deal needed support from the government-run national pension fund.

At the time of his verdict, the court said that Lee “actively provided bribes and implicitly asked the president to use her power to help his smooth succession” at the head of Samsung.

The court found Lee guilty of bribery, embezzlement and concealment of criminal proceeds worth about 8.6 billion won ($7.8m; £5.75m).

The Justice Ministry said it made the decision to release Lee after considering the effects of the pandemic on South Korea’s economy and global markets.

However, Lee’s parole conditions include five years of business restrictions – it is unclear if he will be able to run the company unless he gets an exemption.

He will also need approval for any trips abroad.

Lee is also under investigation for fraud and stock manipulation and if found guilty could be jailed again.

This appears to be an economic decision by South Korea’s Justice Ministry. Free the Samsung heir and aid the country’s Covid recovery. But it comes at a political cost.

President Moon Jae-in came to power with a firm promise to break the link between big business and government.

Millions protested for months to impeach his predecessor Park Geun-hye and more than one thousand civic groups related to these protests wrote a letter asking for the so-called “Crown Prince of Samsung” not to be pardoned.

But pressure to free Jay Y Lee came from the US Chamber of Commerce alongside Samsung. American businesses argued that his release was vital to help combat a shortfall of computer chips. Samsung is currently mulling multi-billion dollar investments in semiconductor facilities in the US.

It’s also worth noting that earlier this year the law was changed to allow prisoners to be considered for parole after serving 60% of their sentence. That allowed Mr Lee to be released today. He has not been granted a pardon.

But, as we head full swing into presidential election season here in South Korea, the calculation being made by the current administration is that voters will reward the ruling party for its economic decisions more than if it stuck to its previous promises.

Apple has defended its new system that scans users’ phones for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), after a backlash from customers and privacy advocates.

The technology searches for matches of known abuse material before the image is uploaded to its iCloud storage.

Critics warned it could be a “backdoor” to spy on people, and more than 5,000 people and organisations have signed an open letter against the technology.

As a result, Apple has pledged not to “expand” the system for any reason.

Digital privacy campaigners warned last week that authoritarian governments could use the technology to bolster anti-LGBT regimes, or crack down on political dissidents in countries where protests are deemed illegal.

But Apple said it would “will not accede to any government’s request to expand” the system.

It published a question-and-answer document, saying it had numerous safeguards in place to stop its systems from being used for anything other than the detection of child abuse imagery.

“We have faced demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users before, and have steadfastly refused those demands. We will continue to refuse them in the future,” it said.

However, Apple has made some concessions in the past in order to keep operating in countries around the world.

Should encryption be curbed to combat child abuse?
Facebook encryption ‘must not cause children harm’
Last New Year’s Eve, the tech giant removed 39,000 apps from its Chinese App Store amid a crackdown on unlicensed games by authorities in the country.

Apple also said its anti-CSAM tool will not allow the company to see or scan a user’s photo album. It will only scan photos that are shared on iCloud.

The system will look for matches, securely on the device, based on a database of hashes of known CSAM images provided by child safety organisations.

Apple also claims it is nearly impossible to falsely flag innocent people to police. “The likelihood that the system would incorrectly flag any given account is less than one in one trillion per year,” it said. There is also a human review of positive matches.

Privacy advocates, however, have argued that the only thing preventing that technology being turned to other uses is Apple’s promise that it will not be.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, said that “all it would take… is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content”.

“That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully-built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change,” it warned.

Apple also provided reassurances regarding another new feature that will warn children and their parents using linked family accounts, when sexually explicit photos are sent or received.

The company says its two new features do not use the same technology, and says it will “never” gain access to users’ private communications.

While there was a backlash regarding Apple’s announcement from privacy advocates, some politicians welcomed the new technology.

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said it was time for others, especially Facebook, to follow suit.

Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and one of the world’s richest men, has been granted New Zealand residency under a category for wealthy investors.

Applicants are required to invest at least NZ$10m ($7m, £5m) in New Zealand over three years.

Mr Page entered New Zealand in January, when its borders were still closed because of Covid-19.

But the government said he was allowed in because of a medical emergency application involving his son.

Mr Page, 48, had applied for residence in November. However, his application could not be processed because he was offshore at the time.

But in January, the US tech billionaire was allowed into New Zealand so his son could be evacuated from Fiji because of a medical emergency, the government confirmed on Thursday. His application was approved in February.

In parliament this week, Health Minister Andrew Little defended the decision to grant him entry.

“[His entry] met all the standard conditions of a medical emergency requiring a medical evacuation from the islands, and every requirement and regulation that was in place… was complied with,” Mr Little said, according to a transcript on the parliament’s website.

Some critics of the decision highlighted its apparent unfairness.

“We have got these GPs or nurses who are stuck in an interminable waiting room to get their residence, whereas Larry [Page] comes in and boom, straight away can become a resident,” immigration adviser Katy Armstrong told Radio New Zealand.

Mr Page is listed as one of the richest people in the world with a reported wealth of more than $116 bn. He stepped down as chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2019, but remains a board member and controlling shareholder.

He is not the first Silicon Valley tech billionaire to have taken a particular interest in New Zealand.

Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Paypal and early investor in Facebook, once described the South Pacific island nation as “the future” and became a citizen back in 2011. He has since invested heavily there.

Located more than 6,000 miles (10,000km) from the US mainland, New Zealand was recently identified as a country more resilient than most to the threat of climate change.

In a study released last month, researchers at the UK-based Global Sustainability Institute described New Zealand as “best placed to survive the collapse of global civilisation”.

The temperate, mountainous country is well-placed to deal with threats such as rising sea levels.

Huawei revealed its biggest-ever decline in revenue in the first half of 2021 – it fell by almost 30% to Rmb320 billion (£35.5 billion).

The firm sold part of its mobile phone business following US sanctions, which analysts say contributed to the drop.

Sanctions make it hard for Huawei to buy components and software using US technology.

Revenue from Huawei’s consumer electronics arm, which includes phones, fell by 47%.

Huawei also cited the effect of the chip shortage on its business.

Earlier this year the company’s consumer devices chief acknowledged the challenges it faced: “US sanctions have posed great difficulties to our business operations and day-to-day work,” Richard Yu, said as the company announced the launch of a new phone.

The sanctions have also effectively prevented Huawei devices from working fully with Google’s Android Operating system, prompting the firm to expand the use of its own Harmony OS .

Slow rollout
Huawei’s telecoms equipment business also saw a decline in revenue.

A spokesperson for the company told Reuters this was due to the slow rollout of 5G in China.

But sales outside China increased, in spite of US pressure on its allies to exclude Huawei from 5G infrastructure over concerns about national security.

Huawei denies allegations that its equipment poses a security risk, and has called the claims politically motivated.

The company saw growth from its enterprise and cloud services businesses.

Efficiency improvements also saw profit margins increase, it said.

In a statement, Chairman Eric Xu said: “Our aim is to survive, and to do so sustainably,”

Apple has announced details of a system to find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on customers’ devices.

Before an image is stored onto iCloud Photos, the technology will search for matches of already known CSAM.

Apple said that if a match is found a human reviewer will then assess and report the user to law enforcement.

However there are privacy concerns that the technology could be expanded to scan phones for prohibited content or even political speech.

Experts worry that the technology could be used by authoritarian governments to spy on its citizens.

Apple said that new versions of iOS and iPadOS – due to be released later this year – will have “new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online, while designing for user privacy”.

The system works by comparing pictures to a database of known child sexual abuse images compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other child safety organisations.

Those images are translated into “hashes”, numerical codes that can be “matched” to an image on an Apple device.

Apple says the technology will also catch edited but similar versions of original images.

‘High level of accuracy’
“Before an image is stored in iCloud Photos, an on-device matching process is performed for that image against the known CSAM hashes,” Apple said.

The company claimed the system had an “extremely high level of accuracy and ensures less than a one in one trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account”.

Apple says that it will manually review each report to confirm there is a match. It can then take steps to disable a user’s account and report to law enforcement.

The company says that the new technology offers “significant” privacy benefits over existing techniques – as Apple only learns about users’ photos if they have a collection of known CSAM in their iCloud Photos account.

However some privacy experts have voiced concerns.

“Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal. In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content,” Matthew Green, a security researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said.

“Whether they turn out to be right or wrong on that point hardly matters. This will break the dam — governments will demand it from everyone.”

Blizzard Entertainment president J Allen Brack has “stepped down”, the World of Warcraft and Call of Duty game-maker says.

Parent company Activision Blizzard said Mr Brack was “leaving the company to pursue new opportunities”.

California is suing the company, alleging a workplace culture of sexism and harassment.

Activision Blizzard denies this allegation and has called the legal action “disgraceful and unacceptable”.

Many Activision Blizzard staff walked out in protest against the company’s culture and response to the allegations.

‘Bro culture’
In a statement, Blizzard Entertainment said Mr Brack would be replaced by Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, who would co-lead the company.

While the statement made no reference to the allegations against Blizzard, it said the new leaders would, “ensure Blizzard is the safest, most welcoming workplace possible for women, and people of any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or background”.

In an accompanying statement Mr Brack thanked the Blizzard community “for your passion and determination for safety and equality for all”.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which brought the case against Activision Blizzard, in court filings criticised Mr Brack for not doing enough in response to complaints.

In internal emails to employees obtained by Bloomberg, Mr Brack said he disdained “bro culture” and had spent his career fighting against it and called the behaviour of employees detailed in the allegations “completely unacceptable”.

Twitter will collaborate with two of the largest international news providers, Reuters and the Associated Press, to debunk disinformation on its messaging site.

The news agencies will help Twitter give more context and background information on events which create a high volume of tweets.

Twitter hopes this will counteract the spread of misleading information.

There has been renewed pressure to remove false content from the platform.

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Twitter said the partnership will enable it to ensure accurate and credible information is rapidly available “when facts are in dispute”.

“Rather than waiting until something goes viral, Twitter will contextualize developing discourse at pace with or in anticipation of the public conversation,” Twitter said.

Currently, when large or rapidly growing conversations happen on Twitter that may be noteworthy or controversial, Twitter’s Curation team finds and promotes relevant context from reliable sources in order to counter potentially misleading information posted by users.

In a blogpost, Twitter said the new programme would “increase the scale and speed” of this work by increasing their “capacity to add reliable context to conversations happening on Twitter”.

The post said material from Reuters and AP would improve information credibility on the platform when Twitter’s Curation team “doesn’t have the specific expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting on Twitter”.

It is the first time Twitter has formally collaborated with news organisations to promote accurate information on its site, according to a spokesperson from the social media firm.

Earlier this year, Twitter launched Birdwatch, a new community-moderation system which enabled volunteers to label tweets they found to be inaccurate.

Twitter will work separately with the two rival news agencies, and will focus initially on English-language content.

Hazel Baker, head of user-generated content newsgathering at Reuters, said that trust, accuracy and impartiality were at the “heart of what Reuters does every day,” and “drive” the company’s “commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation”.

Tom Januszewski, the AP’s vice president of global business development, said in a statement that the news company had a “long history of working closely with Twitter, along with other platforms, to expand the reach of factual journalism”.

“We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts,” he continued.

Both Reuters and AP also work with Facebook on fact checks.

Twitter added that this work would be independent of the work its Trust & Safety teams do to determine whether Tweets are in violation of the Twitter rules. The work of these teams includes labelling tweets which contain manipulated media, electoral misinformation and sensitive media that violates the platforms’ rules.

A 2020 report by NYU Stern suggested Twitter has about 1,500 moderators – with 199 million daily Twitter users worldwide.

Tesla doesn’t have a press office.

Its CEO, Elon Musk, says the company doesn’t need one.

Instead, in a similar way to Donald Trump, he uses Twitter rather than press releases to communicate.

And on Friday, he was in full Elon Musk tweet mode.

A new book is coming out about the Tesla CEO. One story is that in 2016 – when Tesla was in trouble – Musk reached out to Apple’s Tim Cook, who he thought might want to buy the company.

The story goes that Elon Musk insisted that as part of the deal, he be made CEO of Apple. Tim Cook told him where to go.

Without a press office to comment on the story, I asked Musk on Twitter whether this was true.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
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Elon Musk said something similar last month whilst giving evidence in court.

Talking about being CEO of Tesla, he said: “I rather hate it and I would much prefer to spend my time on design and engineering.”

He also gave a reason for why he continues to be Tesla boss: “I have to or, frankly, Tesla is going to die.”

That he is repeatedly saying he doesn’t want to be CEO will worry some investors. Love him or loathe him, Musk’s vision and force of personality has driven Tesla’s incredible success.

Tesla is by far the most valuable car company in the world.

And yet it is striking that running that company isn’t enough for Musk.

He’s the boss of Space X – which was in April awarded a contract by NASA to put people onto the moon.

He also founded The Boring Company in 2016, which aims to revolutionise travel through advances in tunnelling technology. Perhaps tellingly, he is not CEO.

Musk gives the impression of a man trapped. He is clearly excited by ideas, innovation, engineering – the exciting start up part of a company.

But the transition from start up to large company turns the CEO position into a very different beast.

Apple’s Steve Jobs, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Microsoft’s Bill Gates were all visionaries.

The current CEOs of those companies are very different people. Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella are more than capable leaders. But few would describe them as revolutionaries.

Elon Musk on the other hand projects the image of a swashbuckling entrepreneur. You get the feeling that the often administrative process of running a company does not excite him.

Along with tremendous growth, the Tesla boss has caused all sorts of headaches for Tesla shareholders.

He is currently being sued by shareholders who claim the carmaker’s money was wasted on buying SolarCity, which – they say – was running out of money.

At the time of the deal, Mr Musk owned a 22% stake in both Tesla and SolarCity.

And in 2018 he agreed to step down as Tesla Chairman after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla off the stock market and into private ownership.

Elon Musk may be the second richest person on the planet, but, strangely, he doesn’t feel he has the freedom to do what he wants.

He’s living proof that you’re never too wealthy to be stuck in a job you don’t like.