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 APPLE TO RESPOND TO US PROBES INTO SLOWDOWN OF OLD iPHONES 06

FACEBOOK’S ‘FIXES’- MEANINGFUL OR JUST SKIN DEEP? 08

STRIKING AMAZON ‘SPHERES’ LANDMARK OPENS IN DOWNTOWN SEATTLE 18

CHILD EXPERTS: JUST SAY ‘NO’ TO FACEBOOK’S KIDS APP 20

DNA-GATHERING VACUUM, 3-D LASER SCANNER AMONG OMAHA POLICE’S TOOLS AS... 28

MEDICAL MARVELS 38

AMAZON, BUFFETT AND JPMORGAN JOIN FORCES ON HEALTH CARE 48

EMERGENCY ALERTS TO BE SENT LESS WIDELY TO MAKE THEM USEFUL 60

WORTH A COOK: MAKING AND ORDERING FOOD WITH APPLE DEVICES 62

ROBOTS COULD DESCEND INTO OLD MINES TO PREVENT TOXIC SPILLS 82

MICROSOFT AND LINKEDIN: IS THEIR MARRIAGE WORKING? 92

WHY ARE CRYPTO EXCHANGES VULNERABLE TO HACKS? 98

COURT REJECTS LAWSUIT AGAINST TWITTER OVER IS ATTACK 106

REPORTED PLAN FOR GOVERNMENT WIRELESS NETWORK GETS PANNED 110

iTUNES REVIEW 114

BOX OFFICE TOP 20: ‘MAZE RUNNER’ RACES TO NO. 1 WITH $24.2M 130

MARIO AND MINIONS? ILLUMINATION TO CO-PRODUCE NINTENDO FILM 140

‘BLACK PANTHER’ RECEIVES HIGH PRAISE AFTER FIRST SCREENINGS 146

FOX GETS THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL FOR 5 YEARS, $3B 162

AI IN THE COURT: WHEN ALGORITHMS RULE ON JAIL TIME 168

WISCONSIN DNR SETS HEARING ON FOXCONN WATER DIVERSION 180

PUBLICLY-FUNDED NEW MEXICO SPACEPORT SEEKS CONFIDENTIALITY 184

NASA, RCBI BRING ROBOTICS COMPETITION TO AREA STUDENTS 188

AUGMENTED REALITY APP GETS A TEST AT SCIENCE MUSEUM OKLAHOMA 194

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR PUSHES FOR 5 MILLION ZERO-EMISSION CARS 202

UAE CYBER FIRM DARKMATTER SLOWLY STEPS OUT OF THE SHADOWS 208

AUSSIE MILITARY SAYS TRACKING APP DOESN’T BREACH SECURITY 218

‘HALAL’ INTERNET MEANS MORE CONTROL IN IRAN AFTER UNREST 224

APPLE TO
RESPOND TO US
PROBES INTO
SLOWDOWN OF
OLD iPHONES

Apple is cooperating with U.S. government

inquiries into its secret slowdown of older
iPhones, further complicating its efforts to
move past an issue that irked customers whose
devices bogged down.

The company acknowledged the probes after

both The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg
had reported the U.S. Justice Department and
Securities and Exchange Commission were
investigating how investors have been affected
by Apple’s handling of the situation.

A software update released in 2016 began to

slow down older iPhones when their batteries
weakened to prevent them from abruptly
turning off, but Apple didn’t fully disclose what it
was doing until December.

Apple has since apologized for not being more

forthcoming and is replacing batteries on older
iPhones for $29, a $50 discount.

6
Image: Nazra Zahri
7
8
FACEBOOK’S ‘FIXES’-
MEANINGFUL OR
JUST SKIN DEEP?

To Mark Zuckerberg, fixing Facebook means

many things — protecting users from abuse,
preventing elections meddling from malicious
actors, weeding out fake news and “making sure
time spent on Facebook is well spent.”

To critics, it’s all that and then some. But many

of the steps Facebook has taken so far strike
them as insufficient, and in some cases aimed
as much at keeping people glued to the service
down the line as at really addressing Facebook’s
underlying problems.

Zuckerberg, who publicly sets himself a

“personal challenge” every year, is this year
focused on “fixing Facebook.”

But fixing Facebook, critics say, should also

involve making it less addictive and its business
model less dependent on as many people
logging in as often and for as long as possible.

9
10
And it’s definitely not about creating new
products for younger kids who can’t use its
flagship platform, particularly amid all the
worries about Facebook’s effects on the health
of adults and teens.

The company has already announced a slew of

new “fixes.” It’s just far from clear if these tweaks
will produce lasting change, or if they’re merely
cosmetic adjustments designed to generate
goodwill while also keeping Facebook’s
business strong.

Earlier this month, for instance, Facebook said

that it would show users more posts from
friends and family that it deems “meaningful,”
while deemphasizing posts from publishers
and businesses. The move did not affect
paid advertising on the site, and it follows
Zuckerberg’s declaration last year that Facebook
would focus on helping users find “meaningful”
online groups.

Much of that, said eMarketer analyst Debra

Aho Williamson, is about “making Facebook a
happier place for users.” Even though Facebook
warned that its changes might results in
people spending less time with it, she suspects
the company really hopes users will stick
around longer.

While Facebook enjoyed strong revenue, profit

and all-time stock highs in 2017, there are signs
that users — for whatever reason — may be
pulling back from the service. According to
comScore, Facebook visitor spent an average of
910 minutes on the platform in December 2017.
That’s down from 974 minutes in December
2016 and from 1050 minutes in the same month
in 2015.

11
12
At least some of this pullback might be
by design, and it might be temporary. On
Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company’s
work to encourage “meaningful connections”
has already reduced total time spent on
Facebook by “roughly 50 million hours every
day.” Divided across Facebook’s 1.4 billion daily
active users, that’s about two minutes a day.

He added that the changes will make Facebook’s

community — and business — “stronger over
the long term.” Zuckerberg has previously said
that it may take “months” for Facebook’s changes
to make their way to users. Facebook had no
immediate response to broader criticism of
its strategy.

In the fourth quarter, the company said net

income rose 20 percent on revenue that jumped
47 percent to $13 billion. Facebook saw a 14
percent increase in monthly users, to 2.13 billion;
daily users also grew by 14 percent.

Facebook’s other recent fixes amount to

somewhat murky efforts to boost the visibility of
“trusted” news sources — as determined by two-

13
question user surveys and Facebook’s vast trove
of data on user behavior — and of local news.

Such changes are “not meaningful,” Marc

Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit Electronic
Privacy Information Center and longtime
Facebook critic, said in an email. “Mark
Zuckerberg will not solve the problems of
Facebook by changing a few settings.”

Rotenberg would prefer Facebook to give users

more control how their data is collected and to
back efforts in Congress aimed at preventing
foreign governments from influencing
U.S. elections.

Like other social media companies, Facebook

has said it will try to prevent election meddling
and will require disclosure on political ads — but
it’s been silent about proposed legislation that
would require it to do so.

Some of its other steps are also half-measures.

For instance, while it set up a page to let people
see if they followed or “liked” Russia propaganda
accounts, it is not notifying anyone proactively
via email, the way Twitter is.

“Facebook’s recent changes do not address

the threats to elections or public health,” said
Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and early
Facebook investor who is now among the
company’s most vocal critics, in an email.

“If the news feed changes had been made in

2015, they might have had the perverse effect
of magnifying election interference,” McNamee
said. “And you cannot cure addiction by doing
more of the thing that got you addicted in the
first place, which is what Zuck recommends,”
he wrote.

14
Image: Bloomberg
15
18
 STRIKING
AMAZON
‘SPHERES’
LANDMARK OPENS
IN DOWNTOWN
SEATTLE

Amazon.com boss Jeff Bezos has inaugurated

his striking rainforest conservatory built of glass
and white steel in downtown Seattle.

“The Spheres” domed structure that opened

Monday is the newest headquarters building for
the online retail behemoth.

Bezos and his wife were on hand to celebrate

Amazon’s Amazon-esque rainforest
conservatory that is home to more than 40,000
plants from 50 countries on five continents.

The status of the new Seattle landmark is being

compared to the city’s iconic Space Needle, though
tourists shouldn’t expect unfettered access.

It’s first and foremost a corporate workspace.

Even employees for now must make

reservations to get into the selfie-worthy spot.

The four-story structure from the outside looks

like three connected glass orbs planted into the
ground resembling a caterpillar shape.

19
20
 CHILD EXPERTS:
JUST SAY ‘NO’
TO FACEBOOK’S
KIDS APP

Child development experts and advocates are

urging Facebook to pull the plug on its new
messaging app aimed at kids.

A group letter sent Tuesday to CEO Mark

Zuckerberg argues that younger children —
the app is intended for those under 13 — aren’t
ready to have social media accounts, navigate
the complexities of online relationships or
protect their own privacy.

21
Facebook launched the free Messenger Kids app
in December, pitching it as a way for children to
chat with family members and friends approved
by parents. It doesn’t give kids separate
Facebook or Messenger accounts. Rather, the
app works as an extension of a parent’s account,
and parents get controls such as the ability to
decide who their kids can chat with.

The social media giant has said it fills “a need

for a messaging app that lets kids connect
with people they love but also has the level of
control parents want.” But critics see the move
as a way for Facebook to lure in a younger
audience before they could move on to a rival
service such as Snapchat.

“TARGETING YOUNGER CHILDREN”

A group of 100 experts, advocates and parenting
organizations is contesting Facebook’s claims of
filling a need. Led by the Boston-based Campaign
for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the group
includes psychiatrists, pediatricians, educators
and the children’s music singer Raffi Cavoukian.

“Messenger Kids is not responding to a need —

it is creating one,” the letter states. “It appeals
primarily to children who otherwise would not
have their own social media accounts.” Another
passage criticized Facebook for “targeting
younger children with a new product.”

In a statement, Facebook said on Monday that

the app “helps parents and children to chat in
a safer way,” and emphasized that parents are
“always in control” of their kids’ activity. The
social media giant added that it consulted with
parenting experts and families, and said “there is
no advertising in Messenger Kids.”

22
23
KIDS AND FACEBOOK
A variety of experts and technology
insiders have begun questioning the effects
smartphones and social media apps are
having on people’s health and mental well-
being — whether kids, teens or adults. Sean
Parker, Facebook’s first president, said late
last year that the social media platform
exploits “vulnerability in human psychology”
to addict users. A chorus of other early
employees and investors piled on with
similar criticisms.

Many preteens have already found their way

onto Facebook and more youth-oriented
social media platforms such as Snapchat and
Facebook’s own Instagram, despite internal
rules that require users to be at least 13 years
old. Those rules are based in part on federal
law, which prohibits internet companies from
collecting personal information on children
without their parents’ permission and imposes
restrictions on advertising to them.

Some companies have offered parental

controls as a way of curbing unauthorized
preteen use of their platforms. But Facebook’s
new kid-focused app, which features
animations and emojis, seems to cater
to a younger audience, said Josh Golin,
executive director of Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood.

“It looks like something that would appeal to a

6-year-old or 7-year-old,” he said.

He said the app gets those younger ones

used to Facebook’s platform “and then they
transition to the mature version of Facebook.”

24
25
UNCERTAIN IMPACT
Facebook wouldn’t answer questions about
how popular the messaging app has been.
But App Annie, an app analytics firm, said
Messenger Kids has been downloaded about
80,000 times on Apple’s iOS devices — iPhones,
iPads and the iPod Touch — since it launched
on Dec. 4. It’s been in the top 40 most popular
kids’ apps since then. That sounds like a
lukewarm reception at best.

University of Michigan developmental

behavioral pediatrician Jenny Radesky, who
co-signed the letter, said she’s never met a
parent who was clamoring to get their
children onto social media at an earlier age.

“One can only assume that Facebook introduced

it to engage users younger and younger,”
Radesky said.

That’s troubling, she said, because younger

children haven’t yet developed the cognitive
skills that enable them to think about and
regulate their thoughts and actions and “allow
them to realize when persuasive technology
design might be manipulating them.”

At the time it launched Messenger Kids,

Facebook said it won’t show ads or collect data
for marketing to kids. And it stressed that it
won’t automatically move users to the regular
Messenger or Facebook when they get old
enough — though it might give them the
option to move contacts to Messenger down
the line.

Child experts letter to Facebook

26
27
28
 DNA-GATHERING VACUUM,
3-D LASER SCANNER AMONG
OMAHA POLICE’S TOOLS AS
DETECTIVE WORK GETS EVEN
MORE HIGH-TECH

29
Gone are the days of strictly old-school
detective work.

Omaha police can now collect more DNA from

cold-case evidence and analyze data from smart
watches, homes and vehicles.

The department also may acquire software

allowing detectives to walk through a
crime scene in virtual reality so they can
examine angles, search for clues and see a
witness’s viewpoint.

While detectives have been able to search

cellphones and swab for DNA for years,
technology for both electronic and physical
forensics has advanced even further — securing
solid evidence that can aid law enforcement in
solving crimes.

“It helps us identify potential suspects, and

then once they’re identified, it helps us build a
concrete case against them,” said Omaha Police
Officer Nick Herfordt, who analyzes electronics.

Herfordt went through the cellphones that

investigators found in a 2015 double homicide.
A witness had told police that a “nerdy white
guy” fatally shot two men.

Herfordt noticed that one victim recently

had taken multiple pictures of himself in a
hotel bathroom.

Who was in the corner of one of the photos? A

nerdy-looking white guy.

Herfordt looked up the GPS information

embedded in the photo. Investigators then
called the hotel in Indiana and got the name of
the man who rented the room — Michael Nolt.
Herfordt then tracked Nolt’s cellphone, which
led investigators to Arizona, where Nolt was

30
31
32
arrested. Last year, Nolt was sentenced to life
in prison for the murders of Arelius Hassell and
Malquan King.

Last spring, the department paid about $28,000

for a special sterile wet vacuum that can grab
five to 200 times more DNA than normal cotton-
swab collection.

The device, known as the M-Vac, works

especially well on such porous surfaces as
stone, brick and rock, or years-old clothing
that contains a scant amount of DNA.
Extracting DNA from such items used to be
nearly impossible.

So far, the M-Vac has been used on evidence

in three unsolved homicides, said Detective
Dave Schneider. Results from those items
are pending.

The Nebraska State Patrol purchased an M-Vac

in the fall using money from a grant, but the
agency has yet to use the device. More than
30 agencies nationwide have the device, a
company spokesperson said.

Because it’s so powerful, the M-Vac can collect

a mixture of different DNA profiles, and lab
technicians must determine which person is the
primary contributor. That’s why investigators
limit the machine’s use.

“We’re trying to narrow it to those scenarios

where it’s difficult DNA extraction or when prior
methods of normal DNA collection have not
been successful,” said William Henningsen, the
acting forensic manager of the department’s
forensic investigations section. “This is not a tool
that solves every case for us, but it’s another tool
in our kit that gives us more options.”

33
34
Forensic technicians already can scan crime
scenes using a three-dimensional laser scanner
that can map a room in 90 seconds, Henningsen
said. The forensics investigations unit soon may
get a drone to map larger areas.

Officers and crime lab technicians will attend

a virtual reality demonstration in February in
the hopes of dedicating a room for the virtual
technology by the end of this year.

Investigators wearing a virtual reality headset

could step into a recreated crime scene and
walk around, making notes and seeing what
other detectives may or may not have noticed
years earlier.

“That type of information is going to be amazing

to have, where I’m not looking at a Polaroid
or something,” said Schneider, who works in
the cold case squad in the homicide unit. “It’s
incredible where it walks you through the scene
and you can get an eyewitness perspective of
what the area looked like.”

As the Michael Nolt case showed, detectives

already can get insight into victims’ and
suspects’ lives by looking at their photos and
scrolling through their digital devices. That
will only continue as technology advances
and the number of devices that can be
mined increases.

Downloading cellphone data became the new

normal in 2013, when smartphones became
cheaper and more accessible.

“It’s rare that there’s any major case which

doesn’t come through our office in some
capacity,” Herfordt said. “Everybody has a
cellphone, and they always have it with them.

35
And even though you’re not using it, it still likely
is probably doing something in the background.”

Herfordt is one of two digital forensic officers

who work cases for homicide, assault, robbery
and traffic units at Omaha Police Headquarters.
Another officer works at Project Harmony,
focusing on child victims and sex-assault
cases. Information from apps, text messages,
phone calls and Internet searches are up
for grabs.

Increasingly, the unit is analyzing records

collected from newer vehicles equipped with
GPS technology that can track where a car
has been. Vehicle data can show which doors
were opened during a trip, something that
could tell investigators how many people were
in the car.

Herfordt said officers analyze vehicle data about

once a month, but he wants detectives to collect
more of that data for cases and to see record
collection as a viable investigative resource.

“We’re trying to push our investigators to use

that more,” he said. “Something like that could
be beneficial.”

Fitness watches, personal assistants such as the

Amazon Echo, home security systems and smart
refrigerators all can be analyzed, Herfordt said.
The unit hasn’t analyzed any smartwatches or
Echos for a case yet, he said. But the advantage
of data, Herfordt said, is that it can open doors to
new leads. Most importantly, it’s concrete.

“That evidence helps you get additional

evidence,” Herfordt said. “These are facts right
here. It’s harder to refute them.”

36
37
38
 MEDICAL MARVELS

Technological advancements are in every part

of our lives, including the medical field. X-rays
once made on film now are digital and can be
transmitted anywhere in seconds. The amount
of oxygen in one’s blood can be measured by
sliding a soft, thimble-like device onto the end
of a finger. A pill-size video camera/transmitter
can be swallowed to give a doctor an inside look
at the digestive system. Inflatable plastic bags
serve as splints for broken bones.

The advancements in medical technology

keep coming...

REMOTE MONITORING
A company called Eko has created a device that
attaches to a regular stethoscope and creates
digital displays and recordings for physicians.
The information can be transmitted to others for
study. Eko also has developed a small monitor
about the size of an open flip-phone that can
be used in an exam room or sent home with a
patient to monitor heart and lung information
that can be transmitted elsewhere later.

39
GLUCOSE DETECTIVE
Echo Therapeutics (not to be confused with
Eko above) is working to develop a patch that
detects glucose levels in a patient’s blood
without having to poke a needle into the
patient. The information is sent wirelessly to a
remote unit that collects long-term data and
sets off alarms if glucose levels go out of bounds.

ELECTRONIC ASPIRIN
Autonomic Technologies of California is waiting
for approval of its electronic aspirin, which it says
will help relieve the pain of migraine and cluster
headaches. A nerve stimulator is surgically
inserted in the mouth, and when the patient
feels a killer headache coming on, the touch of
a remote control causes the stimulator to send
electrical impulses to a set of nerves, countering
the headache. Tests of electronic aspirin on
severe headaches have shown about a two-
thirds success rate.

DISAPPEARING STENTS
New, biodegradable stents are being developed
that will retain their form for two years, then be
absorbed into the body, much like dissolvable
sutures. The biodegradability is designed to
prevent problems caused by traditional stents
— the thin tubes inserted into clogged blood
vessels that are then inflated to widen arteries
and veins — which remain in blood vessels.
Clots that form on traditional stents can re-block
blood vessels.

40
41
TISSUE ANALYSIS
For years, surgeons have cauterized areas they
cut to stem blood loss. The iKnife, developed
in London, analyzes particles in smoke created
during by cauterization and provides near-
instant feedback on whether the tissue is
malignant or benign. The rapid feedback
shortens the time a patient must be kept
sedated while doctors wait for a tissue analysis.

BODY SCANS
For those who have watched “Star Trek”
physician Dr. Leonard McCoy use his medical
tricorder to diagnose conditions, that time is
nearly here. Viatom is working on CheckMe, a
device that will monitor blood pressure, blood
oxygenation, body temperature, pulse and
blood pressure, plus act as a pedometer and
serve as a sleep monitor.

Smaller than a smartphone, CheckMe will be

able to transmit information to a patient’s
physician or family.

TELEHEALTH
In 2004, Dr. Tom Magnuson, who specializes in
geriatric psychiatry at UNMC, and others noticed
that the state’s telenetwork was being used
primarily for service and educational purposes.
He wondered about using it to connect patients
in faraway places with Omaha specialists.

“This allows me to see someone who’s in Mullen

or at a nursing home somewhere else, just
like I do here in the clinic,” Magnuson said. For
privacy, the system is encrypted on both ends of
the connection.

42
43
44
It allows patients to connect with
endocrinologists — specialist physicians who
treat conditions of glands such as the thyroid
and adrenal and pituitary glands.

Dr. Leslie Eiland, an endocrinologist, runs a

telehealth program that brings such medical
care to rural Nebraska and parts of western Iowa,
where endocrinologists are in short supply.

From her UNMC office, Eiland visits with about

200 patients a month via the telehealth network,
which connects her to community hospitals in
Columbus, Scottsbluff, Alliance and Hastings
in Nebraska and Red Oak, Onawa and Denison
in Iowa.

“There’s always a point person on the local side

who collects vitals and other information. The
patient is in a room with a large screen, and we
can see each other,” said Eiland, who faces two
screens in her office. One shows the patient,
and the other displays the patient’s medical
information.

She prefers to work with patients referred to

her by their primary care physicians, instead
of self-referrals.

“I do try to require that all patients I see are

under the care of local primary care physicians
so someone can lay their hands on them,”
Eiland said.

45
46
3-D PROSTHETICS
UNO researcher Jorge Zuniga wants to improve
the beast.

The assistant professor of biomechanics

envisions an electronically driven hand that will
be more expensive but more effective than his
current $50 mechanical hand.

“We have big, big plans,” he said.

Conventional prosthetic hands can cost

thousands of dollars. And as children grow, the
cost of replacing the devices can be prohibitive
for many families, Zuniga said.

Zuniga wrote a manual for how to make his 3-D

hand, called the Cyborg Beast, and put it online
three years ago, free for anyone to use. The
device can be built with 3-D printing technology
for about $50 in materials.

The improved, electronically driven hand

will cost about $200. Zuniga wants to have a
prototype built within a year. Several scientists
from across the NU system will work with him.

Zuniga estimated that 3,000 children used the

Cyborg Beast last year. That includes children in
Zuniga’s native Chile.

The device can match a child’s skin color or be

loud and colorful like the hand of a superhero.

47
48
AMAZON, BUFFETT
AND JPMORGAN
JOIN FORCES ON
HEALTH CARE

Three of corporate America’s heaviest hitters —

Amazon, Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase
— sent a shudder through the health industry
Tuesday when they announced plans to jointly
create a company to provide their employees
with high-quality, affordable care.

The announcement was short on details about

precisely what the independent company
will do. But given the three players’ outsize
influence — and Amazon’s ability to transform
just about everything it touches — the alliance
has the potential to shake up how Americans
shop for health care, and the stocks of insurance
companies, drug distributors and others
slumped in reaction.

“One of the messages they are sending is they’ve

given up on traditional ways in which employers
have tried to reduce costs or manage costs
better,” said Paul Fronstin, an economist with the
nonprofit Employee Benefits Research Institute.

49
50
Benefits experts speculated that this new
company could create a virtual marketplace
that makes shopping for health care as easy
as buying a shirt on Amazon. Or it could move
directly into buying prescription drugs. Or it
could be a system that bypasses insurance
companies altogether and contracts directly
with doctors and hospitals for better deals.

Employers are up for trying almost anything to

control rising health care costs, which have been
consuming bigger portions of their budgets for
years and burdening their employees.

“The sky’s the limit on where they could possibly

go with this,” said Brian Marcotte, CEO of the
National Business Group on Health, another
nonprofit that represents large employers.
“We’re always supportive of disruptive
innovation, and health care certainly is in
need of it.”

The venture was announced by Amazon

founder Jeff Bezos; JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie
Dimon; and Buffett, the investment wizard of
Berkshire Hathaway. The three companies have
an estimated 1 million employees in the U.S.

The three businesses said their new venture will

be independent and “free from profit-making
incentives and constraints.” It will have an initial
focus on technology that provides “simplified,
high-quality and transparent” care.

Those involved said the idea is still in the early

planning stages. It was not clear whether the
ultimate intention is to move beyond the three
companies. But Dimon said: “Our goal is to
create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees,
their families and, potentially, all Americans.”

51
 Image: Bloomberg
52
Employer-sponsored health insurance covers
about 157 million people in the U.S., constituting
the biggest piece of the nation’s patchwork
health care market, and neither companies nor
their employees are happy with the system.

Health care costs — branded by Buffett “a

hungry tapeworm on the American economy”
— routinely rise faster than inflation. Employers
have been reacting by asking their workers to
pay more of the bill and to shop around for
better deals, something many people find hard
to do.

Insurers and other companies already offer

applications or programs that help people wade
through the health care system’s often baffling
mix of prices for procedures or prescriptions.
But Amazon appears well-positioned to create a
more user-friendly way to shop, Marcotte said.

“They have customer trust, they are already

in people’s homes, and they’re already part
of many people’s routines in how they shop,”
he said.

The potential disruption from three renowned

innovators in technology and finance sent a
shock wave through the health care sector on
Wall Street, erasing billions in value in seconds.

Several of the biggest losers on a down day

for the market Tuesday were health care
companies. They included the insurers Anthem
and Cigna and the pharmacy benefits manager
Express Scripts.

The new venture gives Amazon another industry

to shake up. The company, which mostly sold
books when it was founded more than 20 years
ago, has transformed how many people buy

53
54
 diapers, toys and paper towels. And it has been
blamed for the decline of department stores, toy
stores and bookstores.

Last year it pushed its way into the supermarket

industry when it bought Whole Foods for nearly
$14 billion.

BUSINESS TITANS FACE COMPLEX

SYSTEM IN US HEALTH CARE PUSH
The leaders announced the ambitious goal
of improving health care coverage all of their
employees. They say they are forming a new
company that will be “free from profit-making
incentives and constraints” and hint its results
might be applied on a broader scale. But the
campaign is in its early planning stages.

Here is some of what we know, and don’t know,

about the plan and about the health care crisis
in the United States.

WHERE TO BEGIN
When Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and JPMorgan’s
Jamie Dimon say they want to improve health
care for potentially millions in the U.S., among
the first questions will be: Where to start? Lower
the cost of research? Increase transparency about
pricing? Create a large pool of customers to
increase negotiation power? Cut out middleman,
such as pharmacy benefits managers, to lower
costs? Lobby for new legislation to overhaul the
industry? All of the above?

Image: Bloomberg
55
WHEN AND HOW FAR
All that we know is that the company is in
the “early planning stages.” The crisis facing
Americans is here and now. In the past five years,
premiums for family insurance plans arranged
by employers are up 19 percent, according to
a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation
and the Health Research & Education Trust.

EMPLOYEES
The initial goal is to improve health care
at Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway, and
JPMorgan Chase & Co. The companies
have an estimated 1 million workers in the
U.S., combined. It is not known how many
dependents rely on the companies for health
care coverage. JPMorgan said previously that it
spent $1.25 billion on medical benefits in 2017
for 300,000 U.S. employees and family members.

56
57
U.S. COMPANIES, LARGE AND SMALL,
FACE A CRISIS IN COSTS
U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016,
according to the Department of Health. That’s $3.3
trillion, or $10,348 per person. Spending on health
care accounts for a staggering 17.9 percent of the
nation’s gross domestic product.

Spending on health care is expected to outpace

GDP growth for at least the next decade. There
are no longer-range forecast that would suggest
that trend will reverse itself.

AN INDUSTRY RIPE FOR DISRUPTION

The announcement by Amazon, Berkshire
Hathaway and JP Morgan erased billions in
stock market capitalization from companies in
the health care industry in seconds, potentially
a knee-jerk reaction on Wall Street to the
arrival three known innovators in finance and
technology: Berkshire’s Buffett, Amazon co-
founder Bezos, and Dimon of JPMorgan.

Shares in health insurance giant UnitedHealth

Group Inc. fell more than 4 percent Tuesday.
Other insurers, including MetLife Inc.,
Anthem Inc., Cigna Inc., and Aetna Inc. also
posted declines.

58
59
60
 EMERGENCY
ALERTS TO BE SENT
LESS WIDELY
TO MAKE
THEM USEFUL

Regulators want to make emergency alerts on

cellphones more useful by requiring wireless
carriers to distribute them less widely.

The Federal Communications Commission says

carriers must transmit the alerts to more specific
locations, rather than broadly. That could help
make alerts more relevant. The fear is that
consumers will disregard alerts if they come too
often or don’t address an emergency in their
immediate area.

These messages appear on phones like texts

with a loud buzzing and noise. Except for
messages from the president, phone users can
choose to stop receiving them.

The more precise geo-targeting was approved

this week and will go into effect in November
2019. By May 2019, wireless providers also have
to support alerts in Spanish and longer alerts —
up to 360 characters, from 90.

61
62
63
Many of our readers likely fondly remember
when, in early 2016, Apple debuted an iPhone
6s screen commercial in which that Sesame
Street favorite, Cookie Monster, used the device
in his attempt to bake a batch of succulent
cookies. Particularly highlighted was the ability
to activate Siri in a hands-free manner simply by
uttering “Hey Siri”, with Cookie Monster using
this feature to set a timer. Still, this is hardly even
a hint of the true extent to which Apple devices
can help us in our culinary efforts.

64
65
YUM’S THE WORD WITH THESE
RECIPE APPS
Much of the valuable functionality of an iPhone
for chefs - novice and veteran alike - is, of course,
in its apps. The mobile app revolution certainly
hasn’t left the kitchen untouched; download the
right apps and you could be delighted to see
how easily your iPhone can replace that musty-
looking print cookbook you probably routinely
pull off the shelf whenever you want to make
something special. Apps can not only provide
a huge selection of recipes but also help you
choose between them.

An especially good case in point is Oh She

Glows. This app provides over 95 recipes for
people who favor plant-based cuisine. In fact,
the meal options here can be as good for your
health as they are on your eyes; gazpacho,
cheesy lentil bolognese casserole and butternut
squash “mac ‘n cheeze” are just some of the
options. If you are still inexperienced with
cooking, you can narrow them down with the
“Quick + Easy” search filter; meanwhile, the “Kid
Friendly” filter could be very useful for families.

Still, the choice of recipes here is significantly

dwarfed by that of BigOven, an app which has
over 350,000 in its repository. It’s the kind of
staggering choice that could leave you wrecked
with indecisiveness; however, if you have friends
and family who could give you some pearls
of wisdom, invite them to use BigOven’s social
feature. This will enable you to readily see what
those people are cooking up, turning BigOven
into something closer to a Pinterest for foodies.

All of that’s great, but what if you would simply

prefer a sophisticated search engine - rather

Image: Matt Haas

66
67
68
Oh She Glows
By Glo Bakery Corporation
Category: Food & Drink
Requires iOS 9.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad,
and iPod touch.

BigOven 350,000+ Recipes

By Lakefront Software, Inc.
Category: Food & Drink
Requires iOS 10.1 or later. Compatible with iPhone,
iPad, and iPod touch.

69
like Google, except that it focuses on recipes
and lets you quickly find the ones best-suited
to specific occasions? You can get something
a lot like this with Yummly. Want a burger that
remains relatively diet-friendly? Worry that you
could inadvertently select a recipe for a meal
that would flare up an allergy? Yummly lets you
search hundreds of recipes while accounting for
such needs.

DON’T TAKE THE CAKE - TAKE THE

COOKIE INSTEAD
In recent years, Apple has been pushing its
virtual personal assistant, Siri, more and more
as an integral part of Apple devices. This begs
the question: Why don’t we take a leaf out of
Cookie Monster’s cookbook, so to say, and ask

70
Siri for help? Indeed, it’s heartening that, when
making food, we can call Siri into action in ways
that don’t even require us to touch our device’s
screen. This is especially straightforward with
recent devices, but can still work with older
ones as well.

Firstly, make sure that “Hey Siri” functionality is

enabled on your iPhone or iPad. You just need to
go into Settings and then the Siri section, where
you will find the relevant switch. If your device
has at least an A9 processor, you now only have
to say “Hey Siri” within your device’s hearing
range to get Siri’s attention. This is also possible
with iPhones or iPads that have an A8 processor
or older; however, the device must be charging
for the “Hey Siri” feature to work.

Yummly Recipes & Recipe Box

By Yummly, Inc
Category: Food & Drink
Requires iOS 10.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad,
and iPod touch. Apple TV…

71
72
The hands-free functionality can prove
incredibly useful once you have got really stuck
in, but water, cookie dough or another food
mixture on your hands prevents you quickly
using your phone in the more conventional way.
Following Cookie Monster’s example of setting
a timer, for example, is easy; just say “Hey Siri,
set timer for 10 minutes” - or whatever other
amount of time you favor. You can even have
more than one timer running at once if you have
multiple devices in the kitchen.
Siri can welcome an array of cooking-related
queries, too. Can’t remember the number
of tablespoons in a quart? Unsure what
temperature would be safe for your turkey?
Need to substitute buttermilk in a particular
recipe? Siri is capable of helping you on all
of these issues, says Boomer Web School.
When asked, Siri can also easily read out a recipe,
provided that you have placed the relevant text -
try to omit unnecessary introductory text - into a
note in the Notes app.
73
 Apple HomePod First Look

74
HOMEPOD IS WHERE MORE COOKING
POTENTIAL IS
Of course, all of this functionality will also be
possible with the HomePod, which is set for
retail release on February 9. Connected to your
iPhone, the HomePod will be able to not only
create notes but also set reminders - hey,
maybe there’s a particular ingredient that
you could too easily forget to buy otherwise
- and send messages. The last of those could
be especially useful if someone is trying to get
through to you, but you can’t practically pick up
your phone straight away.

Another reason why you might want to place

a HomePod in your kitchen is the smart
speaker’s integration with HomeKit. This home
automation framework lets its users activate
“scenes”, some of which could be particularly
time-effective during a cookery session. Perhaps
you would like to, with the issuing of just one
voice command, switch on your kitchen lights
and coffee maker simultaneously? This is a very
real possibility with HomePod and the right
HomeKit accessories.

Apple HomePod Special Event in 8 minutes

75
HOME, A DRONE: FOOD DELIVERY’S
PRESENT AND FUTURE
There might still be times when your cookery
efforts veer so far off course that you are led to
ask: “Hey Siri, where can I have food delivered?”
You might already habitually use apps to
order food that will be delivered to your home
address, effectively making the well-worn
phrase “going out for dinner” only half necessary.
Even the ride-sharing firm Uber has entered the
market; with the company’s Uber Eats app, you
can order from a nearby restaurant and expect
delivery in minutes.

However, while the Uber Eats service is available

in many of the United States’ major population
centers, you might prefer to use Grubhub if you
live somewhere more remote. Its availability
extends to over 1,200 US cities and, like Uber
Eats, this service lets you search for local
restaurants. You can even search by food type;
put “tacos”, for example, into that search field
to see what comes up. The app also integrates
Apple Pay at the checkout stage, making even
paying for orders speedy.

Food deliveries could become even more

convenient for customers in a not-too-distant
future. Ford has recently launched a research
project with Domino’s Pizza to investigate
how food could be effectively delivered by self-
driving vehicles. Having your food dispatched
by a drone doesn’t have to seem too outlandish,
either; in November 2016, Domino’s and Flirtey
collaborated in sending a drone to drop off a
pizza delivery order at a New Zealand home.

76
77
78
Uber Eats: Food Delivery
By Uber Technologies, Inc.
Category: Food & Drink
Requires iOS 9.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad,
and iPod touch.

Grubhub – Order Food Delivery

By GrubHub Inc
Category: Food & Drink
Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad,
and iPod touch. Apple TV.

79
80
Meanwhile, that same year, Amazon tested
drone deliveries for the first time, albeit with
only two customers in the United Kingdom. In
the US, drone delivery tests have been restricted
by the Federal Aviation Administration’s rule
requiring pilots to stay capable of seeing
drones when flying them. Hence, it has been
impossible for businesses to test long-distance
drone deliveries. However, drones could save
on shipping costs and, thus, prices - giving this
emerging trend a promising future.

by Benjamin Kerry & Gavin Lenaghan

81
82
 ROBOTS COULD
DESCEND INTO
OLD MINES
TO PREVENT
TOXIC SPILLS

Crumbling mine tunnels awash with polluted

waters perforate the Colorado mountains, and
scientists may one day send robots creeping
through the pitch-black passages to study the
mysterious currents that sometimes burst to the
surface with devastating effects.

One such disaster happened at the inactive Gold

King Mine in southwestern Colorado in 2015,
when the Environmental Protection Agency
accidentally triggered the release of 3 million
gallons (11 million liters) of mustard-colored
water laden with arsenic, lead and other toxins.
The spill tainted rivers in three states.

Now the EPA is considering using robots and

other sophisticated technology to help prevent
these types of “blowouts” or clean them up if
they happen. But first the agency has to find out
what’s inside the mines, some of which date to
Colorado’s gold rush in the 1860s.

83
Wastewater laden with toxic heavy metals
has been spewing from hundreds of inactive
mines nationwide for decades, the product of
complicated and sometimes poorly understood
subterranean flows.

Mining creates tainted water in steps: Blasting

out tunnels and processing ore exposes long-
buried, sulfur-bearing rocks to oxygen. The sulfur
and oxygen mix with natural underground water
flows to create sulfuric acid. The acidic water then
leaches heavy metals out of the rocks.

To manage and treat the wastewater, the

EPA needs a clear idea of what’s inside the
mines, some of which penetrate thousands of
feet into the mountains. But many old mines
are poorly documented.

Investigating with robots would be cheaper,

faster and safer than humans.

“You can send a robot into an area that doesn’t

have good air quality. You can send a robot into
an area that doesn’t have much space,” said
Rebecca Thomas, project manager for the EPA’s
newly created Gold King Superfund site, officially
known as the Bonita Peak Mining District.

Instruments on the robots could map the mines

and analyze pollutants in the water.

They would look more like golf carts than the

personable robots from “Star Wars” movies.
Hao Zhang, an assistant professor of computer
science at the Colorado School of Mines,
envisions a battery-powered robot about 5 feet
(1.5 meters) long with wheels or tracks to get
through collapsing, rubble-strewn tunnels.

Zhang and a team of students demonstrated a

smaller robot in a mine west of Denver recently.

84
85
 Scientists are developing robots that might someday be able
to creep through the pitch-black mines to help prevent spills. A
2015 spill from Colorado’s Gold King Mine unleashed 3 million
gallons of water that fouled rivers in three states with toxins.

Image: Brent Lewis

86
87
88
It purred smoothly along flat tunnel floors
but toppled over trying to negotiate a
cluttered passage.

“The terrain is pretty rough,” Zhang said.

“It’s hard for even humans to navigate in
that environment.”

A commercial robot modified to explore

abandoned mines — including those
swamped with acidic wastewater — could cost
about $90,000 and take three to four years to
develop, Zhang said.

Significant obstacles remain, including

finding a way to operate remotely while
deep inside a mine, beyond the reach of
radio signals. One option is dropping signal-
relay devices along the way so the robot
stays in touch with operators. Another is
designing an autonomous robot that could
find its own way.

Researchers are also developing sophisticated

computerized maps showing mines in three
dimensions. The maps illustrate where the shafts
intersect with natural faults and provide clues
about how water courses through the mountains.

“It really helps us understand where we have

certainty and where we have a lot of uncertainty
about what we think’s happening in the
subsurface,” said Ian Bowen, an EPA hydrologist.
“So it’s a wonderful, wonderful tool.”

The EPA also plans to drill into mines from the

surface and lower instruments into the bore
holes, measuring the depth, pressure and
direction of underground water currents.

Tracing the currents is a challenge because they

flow through multiple mines and surface debris.

89
90
Many tunnels and faults are connected, so
blocking one might send water out another.

“You put your finger in the dike here, where’s the

water going to come out?” Thomas said.

Once the EPA finishes investigating, it will look at

technologies for cleansing the wastewater.

Options range from traditional lime

neutralization — which causes the heavy metals
dissolved in the water to form particles and drop
out — to more unusual techniques that involve
introducing microbes.

The choice has consequences for taxpayers. If

no company is found financially responsible,
the EPA pays the bill for about 10 years and then
turns it over to the state. Colorado currently pays
about $1 million a year to operate a treatment
plant at one Superfund mine. By 2028, it will pay
about $5.7 million annually to operate plants
at three mines, not including anything at the
Bonita Peak site.

The EPA views the Colorado project as a

chance for the government and entrepreneurs
to take risks and try technology that might be
useful elsewhere.

But the agency — already dealing with a

distrustful public and critical politicians after
triggering the Gold King spill — said any
technology deployed in Colorado will be
tested first, and the public will have a chance to
comment before decisions are made.

“We’re certainly not going to be in the position

of making things worse,” Thomas said. “So when I
say we want to take risks, we do, but we want to
take calculated, educated risks and not worsen
water quality.”

91
92
 MICROSOFT
AND LINKEDIN:
IS THEIR MARRIAGE
WORKING?

It’s been just over a year since Microsoft

swallowed the career networking site LinkedIn.
That’s long enough to start asking: Was the $27
billion deal worth it?

Critics warned at the time of the deal that Microsoft

was overpaying for a declining business. Others
argued that Microsoft’s largest-ever acquisition fit
into a strategy of building up the company’s Office
suite of workplace productivity products and its
cloud-computing business.

“I don’t think we’ll know for a couple years

if this will really pay off, but the signs thus
far are positive,” said Jillian Ryan, an analyst
for eMarketer.

Most people who use LinkedIn to connect with

colleagues or search for career opportunities
could be forgiven if they haven’t noticed
many changes since the acquisition closed in
December 2016.
Image: Richard Drew
93
LinkedIn’s longtime CEO Jeff Weiner continues to
hold that title. Its co-founder, Reid Hoffman, now
sits on Microsoft’s board. The LinkedIn brand
is operating with a “great level of autonomy,”
Ryan said.

“Microsoft hasn’t really intervened that much,

considering the vast scope and price tag of this
integration,” she said.

Microsoft on Wednesday posted second-

quarter revenue of $28.92 billion, a 12 percent
increase over the same quarter a year earlier. The
company also reported a loss of $6.3 billion, tied
to a $13.8 billion tax charge related to the new
federal tax law signed in December.

LinkedIn’s contribution to quarterly revenue

was $1.3 billion, the highest it’s been since the
acquisition closed in December 2016, though it’s
still too early to compare year-over-year growth.

Still, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood

and CEO Satya Nadella were effusive about the
network’s performance in a conference call with
investors Wednesday.

Hood said the acquisition is “performing better

than we expected, and I think today we would
even say it’s a more strategic asset than we even
maybe thought a year ago.” She referred to its
power to add to the company’s understanding
of its customers and their connections with
one another.

LinkedIn boasts of more than 530 million users

on its professional network, most of whom
use it for free. But the service also contributes
to Microsoft’s bottom line through its three
business divisions. The biggest, dubbed “talent
solutions,” helps recruiters attract and find

94
Image: Stephen Lam
95
jobs for workers. It also makes money from
advertisements on its platform and offers paid
subscriptions for online courses and premium
access on its network.

Among those buying into the platform are sales

representatives using it as a tool for “social selling,”
or targeting prospective customers through their
trusted social networks and connections.

Another of LinkedIn’s co-founders and its first

chief technology officer, Eric Ly, said in an
interview Wednesday that this is “really just
the beginning” of what LinkedIn could offer as
Microsoft taps into the professional network’s
database of work histories and other detailed
information that users share about themselves.

“There was a lot of value in the data alone,”

said Ly, who now runs a new company called
Hub. “Microsoft’s going to be able to recoup its
investments and get a lot more back.”

Nadella also says the integration fits into a larger

strategy. In an autobiography published last
year , he wrote that he has a “bias” for driving
investment toward advancing services such as
LinkedIn and Office that help people create and
“become more productive rather than software
that is simply entertaining — memes for
conspicuous consumption.”

96
97
98
 WHY ARE CRYPTO
EXCHANGES
VULNERABLE
TO HACKS?

Blockchain technology can make transactions

safe and secure, but crypto-currency exchanges
that trade bitcoins and other virtual currencies
that are based on this technology have been
hacked because they are not working on secure
networks, experts say. Late last week, the Tokyo-
based Coincheck exchange reported a 58
billion yen ($530 million) loss of crypto currency
due to hacking. The Coincheck exchange has
halted trading of the stolen currency, NEM
and restricted dealings in most other crypto
currencies. It was the second major hacking
assault on a Japanese crypto exchange after
the Mt. Gox debacle in 2014. Here’s a look at the
security concerns surrounding crypto currencies.

99
WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN?
As its name implies, blockchain is a chain
of digital “blocks” that contain records of
transactions, says Curtis Miles at IBM Blockchain.
Each such block is connected to those before
and behind it, making it difficult to tamper
with because a hacker would need to change
the block containing that record and all those
linked to it to avoid detection. The records on a
blockchain are secured through cryptography
and network participants have their own private
keys that are assigned to the transactions they
make and act as personal digital signatures. Any
alteration will make those signatures invalid
and alert others in the network to the changes.
Blockchains are kept in so-called “peer-to-peer”
networks that are continually updated and
kept in synchronization. It would require huge
amounts of computing power to access every
instance of a certain blockchain and alter all its
blocks at the same time.

POOR SECURITY
While a blockchain can be secure, the exchanges
that play a crucial role in increasing the amount
of crypto trading, enabling bitcoin and other
such currencies go mainstream, do not use the
same technology, says Simon Choi, a director
at anti-virus software company Hauri Inc. South
Korean exchanges reportedly get poor reviews
for cyber security, and officials have said those
that fail to beef up such precautions will face
fines. “If security on the exchanges’ is not secure,
their currencies can be stolen,” Choi said. “If the
exchanges are to play their intermediary role,
they should be as safe as banks and strengthen
their security.”

100
101
RISING HACKS
According to crypto currency research firm
Chainalysis, losses of bitcoin, including stealing
individuals’ holdings through scams, malicious
computer software known as ransom ware and
hacks, increased at least 30 times to $95 million
in 2016 from at least $3 million in 2013.

The attack on Coincheck, which did not

affect its holdings of bitcoin, was the second
major hacking assault on a Japanese crypto
exchange after Mt. Gox, the world’s largest
bitcoin trading exchange before its collapse, lost
hundreds of thousands of bitcoins likely stolen
through hacking.

Coincheck has apologized and promised to

reimburse customers for their NEM losses.
It has pledged to comply with a Financial
Services Agency’s order to determine why the
losses happened, and improve its security to
prevent a recurrence.

Details of how the losses happened or who

might be behind them are still unclear.

The Mt. Gox case put many Japanese investors

off bitcoin, at least for a time, and prompted
authorities to impose more regulations.
Chainalysis estimates that the bitcoins lost at
Mt. Gox were worth $7.5 million at the time the
coins were stolen but now worth nearly $10
billion as of January.

102
103
104
IDENTIFYING HACKERS
It’s possible to trace blockchain transactions but
not to identify the owners of the “wallets” where
the crypto currencies are kept, says Choi.

“It’s the biggest weakness,” said Choi. “You can

track the blocks based on the records in the
blocks but you cannot tell whose wallet it is.
They went to hackers’ wallet but if we don’t know
who the hackers are we cannot catch them.”

The rising hacks have prompted the cryp to

community to seek ways to halt the bad guys.

South Korea’s government is trying to make

crypto transactions traceable by implementing
a system that links crypto accounts to existing
bank accounts that have been vetted by
financial institutions. Such efforts however will
not help identify hackers if they send crypto
currencies to exchanges outside Korea that do
not identify their users.

105
106
 COURT REJECTS
LAWSUIT AGAINST
TWITTER OVER
IS ATTACK

A federal appeals court this week rejected a

lawsuit that sought to hold Twitter liable for the
deaths of two U.S. contractors in Jordan three
years ago in an attack for which the Islamic State
group claimed responsibility.

The lawsuit failed to establish Twitter accounts

used by IS directly caused the men’s deaths,
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The
unanimous decision by a three-judge panel
upheld a lower court ruling.

Lloyd Fields and James Creach were shot and

killed in Jordan in 2015 by a Jordanian police
captain while training law enforcement officers.

Their families argued that IS Twitter accounts

were a substantial factor in the men’s deaths
and that the company should have anticipated
attacks. They said Twitter knew about the
accounts and that the accounts helped IS to
recruit, raise money and spread its message.

107
The group “used Twitter accounts to amass the
resources needed for carrying out numerous
terrorist attacks, including the November 9, 2015
shooting in Amman, Jordan in which Mr. Fields
and Mr. Creach were killed,” Joshua Arisohn, an
attorney for the families, said in a statement. He
said he was considering an appeal.

An email to Twitter seeking comment was not

immediately returned. The company said in
court documents its service was available to
anyone, and there was no allegation it provided
any specialized platform to IS.

The 9th Circuit said the families had to show

the Twitter accounts were a direct factor in the
men’s deaths, not just one that was forseeable.

The court cited a lower court judge’s finding that

the lawsuit showed no connection between the
man who shot Fields and Creach and Twitter, or
that the attack was impacted, helped or resulted
in any way from IS’s presence on the social
media site.

108
Image: Bloomberg
109
110
 REPORTED PLAN
FOR GOVERNMENT
WIRELESS NETWORK
GETS PANNED

Telecommunications regulators and industry

groups voiced opposition this week to a
government-built wireless network that the
Trump administration is reportedly considering.

The news website Axios reported that national

security officials may want a government-built
next-generation “5G” mobile network because
of concerns about China and cybersecurity.

111
112
A White House spokesman referred inquiries
to the National Security Council, which did not
immediately respond to questions.

The telecom industry, which is powerful in

Washington, is already working on 5G, which
heralds better internet on smartphones as well
as potential applications for self-driving cars
and other new technology. The new standard
is already being tested and could be widely
available by 2020. AT&T has said that it expects
to launch a mobile 5G service in 12 U.S. locations
later this year.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman

Ajit Pai, a Republican, said in a statement that
the federal government should not build
and operate a nationwide 5G network. The
agency’s four other voting commissioners, both
Democrats and Republicans, also criticized and
expressed skepticism about such a proposal. The
FCC regulates the nation’s airwaves and auctions
them off to phone, cable and broadcasting
companies for use in networks.

The industry group USTelecom panned

the idea as well.

“There is nothing that would slam the breaks

more quickly on our hard-won momentum
to be the leader in the global race for 5G
network deployment more quickly than the
federal government stepping in to build those
networks,” said its president, Jonathan Spalter, in
an emailed statement.

The wireless trade group CTIA said

the government should stick to “free
market policies.”

113
 Trailer

Movies
&TV Shows
Movies
&
114
TV Shows
 The Foreigner

Quan, a businessman with a buried past,

seeks justice when his daughter is killed in
an act of terrorism. A cat and mouse conflict
ensues with a government official, whose
past might lead to clues to the identities of
the killers.

FIVE FACTS:
1. Jackie Chan sings “A Common Man”, the
song in the closing credits.
2. The movie is based on the 1992 book The
Chinaman by Stephen Leather. However,
despite the change from the novel’s title, Quan
is still referred to as this six times in the movie.
by Martin Campbell 3. This is the first movie directed by Martin
Genre: Action & Adventure Campbell in six years, his last being Green
Released: 2017
Price: $14.99 Lantern in 2011.
4. Nick Cassavetes was offered to direct.
182 Ratings 5. This is Jackie Chan’s second appearance
in a movie with a former James Bond actor,
the first being Cannonball Run in which he
starred alongside Roger Moore.

Rotten Tomatoes

63 %
115
116
Who Killed My Daughter?

117
Geostorm

When the network of satellites designed

to control the Earth’s global climate begins
to attack, it’s a race against the clock for its
creator to uncover the real threat before a
worldwide Geostorm wipes out everything
and everyone in its path.

FIVE FACTS:
1. Some of the NASA scenes were filmed at
the NASA facility in New Orleans, Louisiana.
2. The movie is a possible reboot of The
Noah’s Ark Principle (1984), a science fiction
movie about a weather-manipulating
satellite directed by Roland Emmerich.
3. Sticky Studios released a game under the by Dean Devlin
same name, which Apple featured. Genre: Action & Adventure
Released: 2017
4. This is the second movie featuring Jim Price: $19.99

Sturgess and Ed Harris, the first one being

The Way Back (2010).
162 Ratings
5. Several cast and crew noted that Gerard
Butler kept forgetting his lines.

Rotten Tomatoes

13 %
118
Trailer

119
 Getaway

120
121
 Genre: Alternative
Released: Jan 26, 2018
19 Songs
Price: $9.99

33 Ratings

122
Music
 Freedom’s Goblin
Ty Segall

From the very first track to the very last, Segall

and his band seize upon a swath of classic
rock inputs and turn them into a kaleidoscopic
journey that includes gargantuan riffs, fuzzy
atmospheres and guitar heroics.

“Despoiler Of Cadaver”
FIVE FACTS:
1. Segall is a member of the bands Fuzz,
Broken Bat and GØGGS.
2. He has his own record label imprint on
Drag City called GOD? Records.
3. Notable glam rockers David Bowie and
Marc Bolan heavily influenced Segall’s early
career as well as heavy rock and punk bands
such as Black Sabbath, Kiss, The Stooges,
and Black Flag.
4. He began his recording career as a part-
time musician in various underground
bands in Orange County and San Francisco.
5. During live performances, he is currently
backed by The Freedom Band.

123
124
“Break A Guitar”

125
Common Ground
Above & Beyond

After years of touring, the London trio have

gathered ideas and influences that have
allowed them to craft this dance odyssey. The
album skips from cinematic melodies such as
“My Own Hymn” to heady dance tracks like
“Northern Soul” and euphoric electronic in
“Tightrope”. This is undoubtedly their most
diverse album yet with their closing track
“Common Ground” standing as a tribute to
the enthusiasm for electronic music.
Genre: Dance
Released: Mar 18, 2017
13 Songs
FIVE FACTS: Price: $9.99
1. The trio has been consistently ranked
among DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs Poll,
126 Ratings
placing at #27 in 2017.
2. Above & Beyond produce a weekly show
called Group Therapy and have produced
several radio shows since 2004, including
Anjunabeats Worldwide.
3. They have appeared numerous times on
BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix and in 2014 were
inducted into Pete Tong’s Hall of Fame.
4. The trio also established the vocal trance
group OceanLab with Justine Suissa.
5. They are the only artist to have ever won
the Essential Mix of the Year twice.

126
“Always”

127
 Group Therapy Best Of 2017 pt.1
with Above & Beyond

128
129
130
BOX OFFICE TOP 20:
‘MAZE RUNNER’
RACES TO NO.1
WITH $24.2M

“Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” the third

installment in the young adult dystopian series,
raced to the top of the box office in its opening
weekend in theaters with $24.2 million 20th
Century Fox said Monday.

It bumped “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” into

second place after its $16.1 million weekend.
The Dwayne Johnson pic had been resting easy
at No. 1 for three straight weeks and has earned
$337.8 million to date.

The Christian Bale-led Western “Hostiles”

expanded to more theaters this weekend and
took the third-place spot with $10.1 million. “The
Greatest Showman” sung its way to fourth place
with $9.6 million, and the Pentagon Papers drama
“The Post” nabbed fifth place with $9.1 million.

131
The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters
Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution
studio, gross, number of theater locations,
average receipts per location, total gross and
number of weeks in release, as compiled
Monday by comScore:

1. “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,”

20th Century Fox, $24,167,011,
3,787 locations, $6,382 average,
$24,167,011, 1 Week.

2. “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” Sony,

$16,144,874, 3,553 locations,
$4,544 average, $337,802,077, 6 Weeks.

3. “Hostiles,” Entertainment Studios Motion

Pictures, $10,110,739, 2,816 locations,
$3,590 average, $11,958,534, 6 Weeks.

4. “The Greatest Showman,” 20th Century

Fox, $9,550,367, 2,663 locations,
$3,586 average, $126,525,599, 6 Weeks.

5. “The Post,” 20th Century Fox,

$9,107,141, 2,640 locations,
$3,450 average, $58,793,064, 6 Weeks.

132
133
6. “12 Strong,” Warner Bros., $8,686,066,
3,018 locations, $2,878 average,
$29,810,676, 2 Weeks.

7. “Den of Thieves,” STX Entertainment,

$8,632,808, 2,432 locations,
$3,550 average, $28,775,253, 2 Weeks.

8. “The Shape of Water,” Fox Searchlight,

$5,922,553, 1,854 locations,
$3,194 average, $37,901,298, 9 Weeks.

9. “Paddington 2,” Warner Bros.,

$5,668,433, 2,792 locations,
$2,030 average, $32,118,849, 3 Weeks.

10. “Padmaavat,” Viva Entertainment,

$4,430,255, 326 locations,
$13,590 average, $4,937,521, 1 Week.

134
135
11. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” Disney,
$4,254,001, 1,745 locations,
$2,438 average, $610,795,822, 7 Weeks.

12. “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing

Missouri,” Fox Searchlight,
$3,840,684, 1,457 locations, $2,636 average,
$37,251,635, 12 Weeks.

13. “Forever My Girl,” Roadside

Attractions, $3,567,978,
1,424 locations, $2,506 average,
$9,127,137, 2 Weeks.

14. “The Commuter,” Lionsgate,

$3,412,694, 1,811 locations,
$1,884 average, $31,389,883, 3 Weeks.

15. “Insidious: The Last Key,” Universal,

$3,189,055, 1,901 locations,
$1,678 average, $63,449,355, 4 Weeks.

136
137
16. “I, Tonya,” Neon Rated, $3,028,658,
960 locations, $3,155 average,
$18,903,403, 8 Weeks.

17. “Phantom Thread,” Focus Features,

$2,981,885, 1,021 locations,
$2,921 average, $10,713,694, 5 Weeks.

18. “Darkest Hour,” Focus Features,

$2,886,835, 1,333 locations,
$2,166 average, $45,199,242, 10 Weeks.

19. “MET Opera: Tosca (2018),” Fathom

Events, $2,000,000, 900 locations,
$2,222 average, $2,000,000, 1 Week.

20. “Lady Bird,” A24, $1,887,226,

1,172 locations, $1,610 average,
$41,610,318, 13 Weeks.

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast

Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics
are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney,
Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned
by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are
owned by 21st Century Fox; Warner Bros. and New Line are units
of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors
including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn;
Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by
AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

138
139
140
 MARIO AND
MINIONS?
ILLUMINATION
TO CO-PRODUCE
NINTENDO FILM

Mario is getting together with the Minions.

Japanese video-game company Nintendo Co.

says a movie starring the plumber in the Super
Mario franchise is in the works, co-produced
with Chris Meledandri, the chief executive of
Illumination Entertainment, the U.S. animation
studio behind the popular “Despicable Me” series.

Nintendo’s star game designer Shigeru

Miyamoto told reporters Thursday the script
is mostly finished. He’s promising a “fun”
movie, since Meledandri shares his thinking on
creative projects.

141
The movie, two years in the making after a
meeting between Meledandri and Miyamoto,
is set for global distribution through Universal,
which co-owns Illumination, according to the
Kyoto-based maker of Pokemon games and the
popular Switch machine.

They did not give other details, including the

release date.

Miyamoto said some people mistakenly think

that making games is similar to making movies.

“Creating in an interactive medium is totally

different from doing that in a passive medium,”
he said, saying he’d wanted to make such a film
for years.

Meledandri and he hit it right off: “We want to

make something great,” he said.

142
143
144
Nintendo reported Wednesday an October-
December profit of 83.66 billion yen ($768
million), up 29 percent from the previous fiscal
third quarter.

Quarterly sales ballooned to nearly 483 billion

yen, up from 174 billion yen the previous year,
on the success of its Switch, a hybrid game
machine that can be played both as a home
console as well as a handheld.

Nintendo now expects to sell 15 million Switch

consoles in this fiscal year, which ends in March.
That’s up from its initial projection to sell 10
million Switch machines, which was raised last
year to 14 million.

Nintendo brought the world the FamiCom

game machine in the 1980s and has had its
up and downs as people’s entertainment
tastes changed.

In recent years, Nintendo did an about-face to

its past policy of shunning smartphone games,
and has scored success in that sector as well.
It has brought back a revamped version of the
FamiCom, which proved so popular it will go on
sale again later this year.

Nintendo executives also expressed hopes for

its upcoming Nintendo Labo , whose trailer
shows the Switch being played with cardboard
concoctions, resembling a piano, fishing rod,
robot and other items.

Nintendo Labo, set to go on sale April 20, is

based on the idea that the Switch, which is a
controller packed with sensors, can be used
with different attachments for many kinds of
play. Executives joked that they initially thought
cardboard would be cheap but it turned out to
be more expensive than they thought.

145
146
 ‘BLACK PANTHER’
RECEIVES HIGH
PRAISE AFTER FIRST
SCREENINGS

“Incredible” and “kinetic” are just a few of the

loving words that people are using to describe
and praise Marvel’s “Black Panther.”

The film from director Ryan Coogler had its first

screenings Monday night and a premiere in
Los Angeles. Official reviews won’t go out until
Feb. 6, but audiences at the select screenings
were able to share non-spoiler reactions on
social media.

Los Angeles Times writer Jen Yamato wrote that

it is the first Marvel movie about something real.

147
148
“‘Black Panther’ is incredible, kinetic,
purposeful,” Yamato wrote. “A superhero movie
about why representation & identity matters,
and how tragic it is when those things are
denied to people.”

The film features a largely black cast including

Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan and
Lupita Nyong’o. It follows T’Challa (Boseman)
after the death of his father, the king of the
fictional African nation of Wakanda, and his
ascension to the throne.

“I never wanted this movie to end, and as soon

as it did I wanted to go back,” tweeted Mashable
critic Angie Han. “Solid action, smart story, tons
of personality.”

Han and Vulture editor Kyle Buchanan both

singled out Letitia Wright for her character Shuri,
T’Challa’s inventor sister. Many spoke highly
of Jordan’s Erik Killmonger, a villain, and Danai
Gurira’s warrior character Okoye too.

A few called it Marvel’s most political film to date.

Others were more tempered like writer Dave

Schilling who says, “‘Black Panther’ is not the best
Marvel movie. It’s not the worst Marvel movie.
It’s an entertaining movie.” IndieWire critic David
Ehrlich wrote that it’s, “Like a Marvel movie but
better. The action is predictably awful, but this
is the first MCU film that has an actual sense of
identity & history & musicality.”

149
150
 Stars from Marvel’s highly-anticipated “Black Panther”
pounced on Los Angeles Monday night for its world premiere.
Chadwick Boseman and the cast explain why the movie
is part of a powerful cultural movement.

151
COATES HOPES ‘BLACK PANTHER’
HYPE TRANSFERS TO COMIC BOOK
As people gear up for the “Black Panther”
movie, Ta-Nehisi Coates wants them to check
out the original source, Marvel’s Black Panther
comic book, where he’s booting up a massive
outer space adventure for the king of Wakanda.

The award-winning author and journalist, in an

interview with The Associated Press, predicted
that the Black Panther movie would “be the
best Marvel film so far.”

“(But) if people want something that they

can be deeply involved in, if people want
something that raises questions that extend
out of the comic book and into the real world,
if people want to see some amazing high-tech
(stuff ), this is a good jumping on point,” said
Coates, now in his second year writing the
adventures one of the first comic books heroes
of color for Marvel.

The Black Panther is the alter-ego of T’Challa,

the leader of Wakanda, a technologically-
advanced (but make-believe) African country.
A longtime ally and one-time member of both
the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, T’Challa
uses his wealth, inventions, and country’s
resources to battle against evil from both inside
and outside his country’s borders while serving
as the head of the government.

The character got a boost as a supporting

character in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil
War.” The much-hyped movie “Black Panther,”
starring Chadwick Boseman as the
eponymous superhero, opens on February
16, picking up the adventures of the African
king and superhero.

152
153
154
155
156
Coates said he’s seen parts of next month’s
movie helmed by “Fruitvale Station” and
“Creed” director Ryan Coogler, and calls the
director a “superior filmmaker” and a “once-in-
a-generation talent.”

“Black people have not really had avatars out

there like that they can identify with, and
Panther is the biggest one right now,” Coates
said. “I think what Ryan is going to do in terms
of how this is going to look is going to blow
people away ... It feels like thematically a
natural tie.”

Coates wrote his first Black Panther comic

book in 2016 but the series is getting a new
start in April with a story line called “The
Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda,” where
T’Challa discovers some of his Wakandan
subjects have colonized alien planets in his
name and created a civilization where he’s
almost worshipped as a god.

“This is not even just about T’Challa being

in space or the idea of Wakanda in space.
There have been core questions about
kings, responsibly and morality that have
extended throughout the book,” he said.
“There have been core questions especially
this year about the nature of divinity and
gods and this Intergalactic Empire is an
extension of that.”

Coates is best known for his political and social

commentary. He won the National Book Award
last year for “Between the World and Me,” an
anguished meditation on police violence
against blacks. He also released “We Were
Eight Years in Power,” which collects his
writings about Obama, last year.

157
158
159
160
Earlier this month, Coates deleted his widely
followed Twitter accounted; it followed after
criticism from activist Cornel West became a hot
and much debated topic on social media.

Coates said he feels his departure from

Twitter is akin to getting out of a
dysfunctional relationship.

“I miss it, but Twitter is that bad girlfriend I had

to catch in bed with two dudes in order to leave,
that I knew was a bad girlfriend before that, that
I knew I should have left, so I did and I’m gone
and I’m glad she’s out of my life,” he said.

Coates is also not interested in talking

about West.

“I wish Cornel the best. It’s the 25th anniversary

of his book, ‘Race Matters’ and I don’t really want
to do anything that would overshadow the work
that he’s doing. I also don’t want to do anything
to overshadow the work I’m doing,” he said.

“Black Panther” hits the multiplex on Feb. 16.

161
162
 FOX GETS
THURSDAY NIGHT
FOOTBALL FOR
5 YEARS, $3B

Fox and the NFL have agreed to a five-year deal

for Thursday night football games.

Those games previously were televised by CBS

and NBC, two of the league’s other network
partners. Fox announced Wednesday that it will
televise 11 games between Weeks 4 and 15, with
simulcasts on NFL Network and Fox Deportes.

Fox, which has the Sunday afternoon NFC

package, will produce all of the games under the
deal, which is worth a little more than $3 billion,
according to a person with direct knowledge
of the terms of the deal who spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity
because the league didn’t announce its value.

“This is a single partner deal, we are not splitting

the package,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
said in a conference call. “We had tremendous
amount of interest from all the broadcast

163
partners, all of whom wanted it exclusively. We
felt this was the best opportunity for the NFL to
grow the Thursday night package.”

Goodell added that the league is exploring

partnerships with digital outlets, also in
conjunction with Fox.

The NFL has broadcast deals “five years out” with

its other partners — ESPN has the Monday night
package — so five years on this agreement
made sense.

“Fundamentally, Fox was built on football,”

said Peter Rice, president of 21st Century Fox,
nothing that 25 years ago, the NFC package
“helped launch a fledgling network into what it
is today.”

“These opportunities come along very, very

infrequently,” he added. “You either have the
rights to the most-watched content in media or
you don’t. If you don’t take the opportunity, this
won’t come up again for five years. We believe in
buying the very best rights, and the best rights
are the NFL.”

CBS and NBC each paid $450 million for the

previous two-year package.

“We explored a responsible bid for Thursday

Night Football but in the end are very pleased
to return to entertainment programming
on television’s biggest night,” CBS said in a
statement. “At the same time, we look forward
to continuing our terrific long-term partnership
with the NFL on Sunday afternoons, with more
than 100 games per season including next year’s
Super Bowl 53.”

Fox could have a conflict if weather causes a World

Series game to be postponed from Wednesday to

164
165
Thursday. In recent years, Series Game 2 and 6 have
been scheduled for Wednesday.

“In that hypothetical kind of a scenario, the

World Series game would stay on Fox and our
Thursday night game would become an FS1/
NFL Network simulcast,” Fox spokesman Eddie
Motl said.

Goodell noted that the Thursday night games

are a place for innovation.

“One of the things we’ve taken into consideration

with Thursday night in general is to evolve this
package, to use it as an opportunity to learn, to
understand where these various platforms are
going, and what we can do to make it a more
attractive experience for our fans,” he said. “We
will look at that in that context, and the term will
be consistent with what it will take to make sure
that we continue to evolve that platform as well
as the experience for our fans.”

That means streaming outlets, of course.

“We have accepted bids for digital partners,”

Goodell said. “We have very healthy competition.
In fact, I would say it’s unprecedented
competition from a number of digital partners.

“As I say, we put our focus on the broadcast

package first. ... We are not required to go
coterminous with the broadcasts. We can do any
length of deal that we get to an agreement on with
that digital partner. As I mentioned earlier, we will
be doing this in cooperation with our Fox partners.”

For more NFL coverage:

http://www.pro32.ap.org

and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL

166
167
168
 AI IN THE
COURT: WHEN
ALGORITHMS RULE
ON JAIL TIME

The centuries-old process of releasing

defendants on bail, long the province of judicial
discretion, is getting a major assist ... courtesy of
artificial intelligence.

In late August, Hercules Shepherd Jr. walked up to

the stand in a Cleveland courtroom, dressed in an
orange jumpsuit. Two nights earlier, an officer had
arrested him at a traffic stop with a small bag of
cocaine, and he was about to be arraigned.

Judge Jimmy Jackson Jr. looked at Shepherd,

then down at a computer-generated score
on the front of the 18-year-old’s case file. Two
out of six for likelihood of committing another
crime. One out of six for likelihood of skipping
court. The scores marked Shepherd as a prime
candidate for pretrial release with low bail.

“We ask the court to take that all into

consideration,” said Shepherd’s public defender,
David Magee.

169
170
Not long ago, Jackson would have decided
Shepherd’s near-term future based on a reading
of court files and his own intuition. But in
Cleveland and a growing number of other local
and state courts, judges are now guided by
computer algorithms before ruling whether
criminal defendants can return to everyday life,
or remain locked up awaiting trial.

Experts say the use of these risk assessments

may be the biggest shift in courtroom decision-
making since American judges began accepting
social science and other expert evidence more
than a century ago. Christopher Griffin, a
research director at Harvard Law School’s Access
to Justice Lab, calls the new digital tools “the
next step in that revolution.”

Critics, however, worry that such algorithms

might end up supplanting judges’ own
judgment, and possibly even perpetuate biases
in ostensibly neutral form.

AI gets a lot of attention for the jobs it

eradicates. That’s not happening to judges,
at least not yet. But as in many other white-
collar careers that require advanced degrees
or other specialized education, AI is reshaping,
if not eliminating, some of judges’ most basic
tasks — many of which can still have enormous
consequences for the people involved.

Cash bail, which is designed to ensure that

people charged of crimes turn up for trial, has
been part of the U.S. court system since its
beginning. But forcing defendants to pony up
large sums has drawn fire in recent years for
keeping poorer defendants in jail while letting
the wealthier go free. Studies have also shown it
widens racial disparities in pretrial incarceration.

171
A bipartisan bail reform movement looking for
alternatives to cash bail has found it in statistics
and computer science: AI algorithms that can
scour through large sets of courthouse data
to search for associations and predict how
individual defendants might behave.

States such as Arizona, Kentucky and Alaska

have adopted these tools, which aim to identify
people most likely to flee or commit another
crime. Defendants who receive low scores are
recommended for release under court supervision.

A year ago, New Jersey took an even bigger leap

into algorithmic assessments by overhauling
its entire state court system for pretrial
proceedings. The state’s judges now rely on
what’s called the Public Safety Assessment score,
developed by the Houston-based Laura and
John Arnold Foundation.

That tool is part of a larger package of bail

reforms that took effect in January 2017,
effectively wiping out the bail-bond industry,
emptying many jail cells and modernizing the
computer systems that handle court cases.
“We’re trying to go paperless, fully automated,”
said Judge Ernest Caposela, who helped usher
in the changes at the busy Passaic County
courthouse in Paterson, New Jersey.

New Jersey’s assessments begin as soon as

a suspect is fingerprinted by police. That
information flows to an entirely new office
division, called “Pretrial Services,” where cubicle
workers oversee how defendants are processed
through the computerized system.

The first hearing happens quickly, and from

the jailhouse — defendants appear by
videoconference as their risk score is presented

172
173
to the judge. If released, they get text alerts to
remind them of court appearances. Caposela
compares the automation to “the same way you
buy something from Amazon. Once you’re in the
system, they’ve got everything they need on you.”

All of that gives more time for judges to carefully

deliberate based on the best information
available, Caposela said, while also keeping
people out of jail when they’re not a safety threat.

Among other things, the algorithm aims to

reduce biased rulings that could be influenced
by a defendant’s race, gender or clothing — or
maybe just how cranky a judge might be feeling
after missing breakfast. The nine risk factors
used to evaluate a defendant include age and
past criminal convictions. But they exclude
race, gender, employment history and where
a person lives. They also exclude a history of
arrests, which can stack up against people more
likely to encounter police — even if they’re not
found to have done anything wrong.

The Arnold Foundation takes pains to

distinguish the Public Safety Assessment from
other efforts to automate judicial decisions
— in particular, a proprietary commercial
system called Compas that’s been used to
help determine prison sentences for convicted
criminals. An investigative report by ProPublica
found that Compas was falsely flagging black
defendants as likely future criminals at almost
twice the rate as white defendants.

Other experts have questioned those findings,

and the U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to
take up a case of an incarcerated Wisconsin man
who argued the use of gender as a factor in the
Compas assessment violated his rights.

174
175
176
Arnold notes that its algorithm is straightforward
and open to inspection by anyone — although
the underlying data it relies on is not. “There’s
no mystery as to how a risk score is arrived at
for a given defendant,” said Matt Alsdorf, who
directed the foundation’s risk-assessment efforts
until late last year.

Advocates of the new approach are quick to

note that the people in robes are still in charge.

“This is not something where you put in a ticket,

push a button and it tells you what bail to give
somebody,” said Judge Ronald Adrine, who
presides over the Cleveland Municipal Court.
Instead, he says, the algorithmic score is just one
among several factors for judges to consider.

But other experts worry the algorithms will

make judging more automatic and rote over
time — and that, instead of eliminating bias,
could perpetuate it under the mask of data-
driven objectivity. Research has shown that when
people receive specific advisory guidelines,
they tend to follow them in lieu of their own
judgment, said Bernard Harcourt, a law and
political science professor at Columbia.

“Those forms of expertise have a real gravitational

pull on decision-makers,” he said. “It’s naive to
think people are simply going to not rely on them.”

And if that happens, judges — like all people

— may find it easy to drop their critical thinking
skills when presented with what seems like
an easy answer, said Kristian Hammond, a
Northwestern University computer scientist who
has co-founded his own AI company.

The solution is to “refuse to build boxes that

give you answers,” he says.” What judges really

177
178
need are “boxes that give you answers and
explanations and ask you if there’s anything you
want to change.”

Before his arrest on Aug. 29, Hercules Shepherd

had no criminal record.

Coaches were interested in recruiting the

star high school basketball player for their
college teams. Recruitment would mean a big
scholarship that could help Shepherd realize
his dreams of becoming an engineer. But by
sitting in jail, Shepherd was missing two days
of classes. If he missed two more, he could get
kicked out of school.

Judge Jackson looked up. “Doing OK today, Mr.

Shepherd?” he asked. Shepherd nodded.

“If he sits in jail for another month, and gets

expelled from school, it has wider ramifications,”
Magee said.

“Duly noted. Mr. Shepherd? I’m giving you

personal bond,” Jackson said. “Your opportunity
to turn that around starts right now. Do so, and
you’ve got the whole world right in front of
you.” (Jackson subsequently lost an election in
November and is no longer a judge; his winning
opponent, however, also supports use of the
pretrial algorithm.)

Smiling, Shepherd walked out of the courtroom.

That night, he was led out of the Cuyahoga
County Jail; the next day, he was in class.
Shepherd says he wouldn’t have been able to
afford bail. Shepherd’s mother is in prison, and
his aging father is on Social Security.

His public defender said that Shepherd’s low

score helped him. If he isn’t arrested again within
a year, his record will be wiped clean.

179
 Image: Mark Hoffman
180
 WISCONSIN DNR
SETS HEARING
ON FOXCONN
WATER DIVERSION

The public will get a chance to sound off in March

about Racine officials’ request to pull 7 million
gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan to
serve a massive Foxconn Technology plant.

The state Department of Natural Resources

announced Wednesday that they’ve scheduled
a public hearing on the request for March 7
in Sturtevant. The agency also will take public
comments on the request through March 21.

The Taiwanese electronics company wants to

build a massive flat-screen facility in Mount
Pleasant, which is about 30 miles south of
Milwaukee and 60 miles north of Chicago.
Racine has asked the DNR for permission to
divert water from the lake to serve the facility.

Under the Great Lakes Compact, all water

diverted from Lake Michigan must be returned
minus what’s lost to evaporation or what’s used
for Foxconn’s manufacturing process. The city’s
application estimates about 2.7 million gallons
per day will be consumed and wouldn’t return
to the lake. All wastewater would return to the

181
Racine wastewater treatment plan and then
the lake. Foxconn has struggled with pollution
problems in China.

For a sense of scale, Waukesha, a city of about

72,000 people, won approval in 2016 to
withdraw 8.2 million gallons per day from Lake
Michigan. Racine withdrew an average of 16.9
million gallons per day in 2016 to serve the city
as well as Sturtevant, Mount Pleasant, Elmwood
Park, North Bay, Wind Point and Caledonia.

According to the DNR, the total surface water all

states withdrew from Lake Michigan per day in
2016 was about 9.6 billion gallons. The Racine
withdrawal for Foxconn would amount to 0.07
percent of that figure.

The lake contains about 1,180 cubic miles

of water.

182
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 PUBLICLY-FUNDED
NEW MEXICO
SPACEPORT SEEKS
CONFIDENTIALITY

Operators of a taxpayer-funded spacecraft

launch facility in southern New Mexico are
seeking greater confidentiality for tenants
that include aspiring commercial spaceflight
company Virgin Galactic.

Top officials with the New Mexico Spaceport

Authority that runs Spaceport America are
scheduled to visit the state Capitol this week
as they seek an increase in state funding.
Spaceport America operators also want
the Legislature to restrict public access to
information about technology, security and
customers at the facility.

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A bill backed by GOP Gov. Susana Martinez and
Democratic Senate President Mary Kay Papen
would exempt a variety of spaceport records
from the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act.

New Mexico Foundation for Open Government

Executive Director Peter St. Cyr says the bill
could interfere with appropriate public scrutiny
of spaceport management and operations.

187
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 NASA, RCBI BRING
ROBOTICS COMPETITION
TO AREA STUDENTS

They might just look like robots stacking cones,

but they are really part of a government ploy —
to encourage kids to pursue careers in science,
technology, engineering and math.

NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation

(IV&V) Program and the Robert C. Byrd Institute
brought the international VEX Robotics
Competition to Marshall University on Saturday
with a qualifying round, giving kids in the area
the chance to get scholarships and to compete
in a state championship March 3 in Fairmont,
West Virginia.

In the competition each year, students in high

school and middle school must use kits to
design and build robots that can accomplish
certain tasks. Teams this year were challenged
to mimic an essential function of NASA’s rover
missions on Mars — to build a robot capable of
quickly picking things up and putting them in a
precise location.

189
“West Virginia really rocks it,” said Pam
Casto, NASA education specialist at IV&V’s
Educator Resource Center. “West Virginians
are really innovative thinkers and builders
and problem-solvers.”

The Robert C. Byrd Institute started hosting

the competition two years ago as an additional
qualifier for the state championship.

Before getting involved in the VEX competition,

the Robert C. Byrd Institute hosted FIRST LEGO
League competitions, which have a similar
robotics component that helps kids think like
engineers and scientists.

Spokesman Mike Friel said the institute supports

advanced manufacturing and helping people
innovate with technology.

“The skill level required in manufacturing is

much higher than it used to be,” Friel said, noting
companies need more skilled workers to fill
advanced manufacturing jobs.

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“We want to introduce students at an early
age to the STEM fields ... in hopes that it will
spark an interest.”

Huntington and Cabell Midland high

schools didn’t qualify Saturday for the state
championship, but both will have one last
chance Feb. 3 during another qualifying
round in Fairmont.

Having the ability to compete in more than

one regional qualifying round gives teams the
chance to see what other teams are doing and
make adjustments to their robots.

The competition is tough — Casto said teams

from West Virginia have won all three of
NASA’s national robotics competitions in the
past three years, as well as 14 international
and world championships.

“Hopefully we’ll have a more qualified bot,”

said Alex Prichard, a 17-year-old senior on the
robotics team at Huntington High School.
“We’ll be putting in a lot of hours this week.”

Prichard became interested in robotics when he

learned his school had a team in ninth grade. He
didn’t get to do much work on the robot in his
first year, so he made his own.

Although he’s interested in pursuing a career

in computer science, Prichard is open to the
possibility of working with robotics. The chance
to do some programming was what originally
attracted him to the team in the first place, and
the past few years have been fun enough to
keep going.

“One of the VEX rules is no destroying the other

robot, sadly,” Prichard said. “Otherwise, we would
definitely (win) that.”

193
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 AUGMENTED
REALITY APP
GETS A TEST AT
SCIENCE MUSEUM
OKLAHOMA

Science Museum Oklahoma patrons got to try

new technology thanks to a pop-up exhibit.

ReLiveIt’s augmented reality application lets

people see animations around an object, such as
the full body of a rabbit around a rabbit’s skull.

ReLiveIt was one of four businesses to come out

of summer 2017’s Sooner Launch Pad program.
In the last several months, the company has
been able to raise an additional $13,000. CEO
Ben Campbell told The Journal Record that he
and Chief Operating Officer Michael Thomas
used that money to buy artifacts and then build
out the pop-up exhibit at the science museum.

195
With the app, every artifact the company
owns has content that goes with it, such as a
launching rocket, or a flying plane next to
an aviation suit. They set up their items in
the science museum, and then people were
given an iPad, which interacted with the icon
next to the item. The interaction created an
image on the screen, but it seemed like it
was actually happening.

Campbell said about 2,000 people came

through and used three iPads that were fitted
with the app. Another nearly 700 people
downloaded the program themselves.

People who used the app were given a

survey afterward. The reviews were positive
across the board and even better after the
app was updated.

“What was most encouraging was having kids

say this was the coolest thing they had ever
seen,” said Campbell. “We had multiple people
come back to try it, such as parents who wanted
to use it without their kids, or grandparents who
brought back a different set of grandchildren.”

Science Museum Oklahoma Communications

Director Lindsay Thomas said ReLiveIt’s app
served a dual purpose: It made the museum
experience better and used science to do it.

“Coding is such a big deal for kids,” she said.

“Being able to present a child with this kind of
technology was a special opportunity for us. You
never know what will get them started on their
career path.”

On ReLiveIt’s survey, more than 60 percent of

people said they have not used augmented
reality technology previously.

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198
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200
 ReLiveIt set up the pop-up museum from Dec.
18 to Jan. 15. During the winter people often
visit the science museum because it’s too cold
to go outside, Thomas said. But it isn’t cost-
efficient for the museum to constantly update
its exhibits. Thomas said the museum was in
between renovations of two areas, with one
being completed and another one in progress.

“Having this come in between those two

updates was unique for our guests,” she said.
“This is a different way to interact with an artifact
or object that meets the needs of our guests.”

For ReLiveIt, the pop-up museum gave them

their first data point for how interested people
are in using the technology. On the survey,
Michael Thomas said people were asked how
much they would pay for the app, and the
average price was $5.53.

Thomas said he and Campbell have heard from

other entities interested in using the technology,
including the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation,
which would like to use it along Route 66.

“We’re interested in staying in the museum

industry, but we’re also looking at other
avenues, such as sports tickets,” he said.
Image: Chris Ratcliffe
201
202
 CALIFORNIA
GOVERNOR
PUSHES FOR
5 MILLION ZERO-
EMISSION CARS

Gov. Jerry Brown outlined a $2.5 billion plan

to help Californians buy electric vehicles and
expand a network of charging stations as part of
a goal of getting 5 million zero-emission cars on
the road by 2030.

The ambitious proposal to transform California’s

car culture comes as Brown begins his final
year in office and works to set the stage for
his environmental legacy to continue under
his successor. The Democratic governor has
positioned California as a global leader in
fighting climate change amid President Donald
Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris
climate accord.

203
The number of zero-emission cars is a significant
expansion of Brown’s goal of selling 1.5 million
such vehicles by 2025. It’s a nearly 15-fold
increase over the 350,000 zero-emission vehicles
already on California’s roads. The $2.5 billion in
spending still needs legislative approval.

Reaching the goal will require that 40 percent of

vehicles sold in 2030 be clean, said Mary Nichols,
chairwoman of the California Air Resources
Board, up from about 5 percent now.

“We think that’s a very reasonable proposal,”

Nichols said. “It’s not a stretch.”

Brown’s plan would extend subsidies to help

people buy emission-free vehicles. It seeks to
have 250,000 electric-vehicle charging stations
and 200 hydrogen fueling stations, an increase
from about 14,000 charging stations and 31
hydrogen stations.

California offers subsidies of up to $7,000 for

the purchase or lease of a new electric, fuel-
cell or plug-in hybrid vehicle, though most
subsidies are smaller.

Brown’s proposal would offer $200 million worth

of subsidies in each of the next eight years.

California will need to radically reduce

pollution from the transportation sector
to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse
gases 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
Pollution from cars, trucks and other modes of
transportation account for the largest portion
of greenhouse gas emissions.

The state has successfully reduced emissions

from power plants thanks to the widespread
adoption of wind, solar and hydroelectricity, but
pollution from transportation has inched up.

204
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206
Brown proposes using money from a mixture
of existing programs at the California Energy
Commission and the state’s cap-and-trade
program, which caps pollution levels and
auctions off permits to pollute.

The plan faces a number of obstacles. Consumers

have been slow to warm to electric cars,
preferring pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles.
And while the number of electric options is
growing, automakers and dealers have not
aggressively marketed them to consumers, in
part because they’re not profitable.

Brown administration officials believe demand

will increase as the cars become more visible on
roadways and people learn more about them.

Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting of San

Francisco also is pushing legislation that would
require all new vehicles sold in California to be
emission-free by 2040 — a goal that automakers
say is unrealistic.

207
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 UAE CYBER FIRM
DARKMATTER
SLOWLY STEPS
OUT OF THE
SHADOWS

DarkMatter, a growing cybersecurity company

in the United Arab Emirates that’s recruited
Western intelligence analysts, is stepping out of
the shadows amid concerns by activists about its
power and potential targets.

The company’s founder and CEO, Faisal al-

Bannai, says DarkMatter takes part in no
hacking, although he acknowledges the firm’s
close business ties to the Emirati government,
as well as its hiring of former CIA and National
Security Agency analysts.

Activists warn such expertise could be used

to target human rights campaigners, some of
whom already have been jailed in the UAE, a
major U.S. ally in the Mideast.

Al-Bannai told The Associated Press his company

carefully chooses its clients, while leaving the
ethical decisions about privacy and surveillance
in wielding its powerful technology to its
governmental customers, which include the
Dubai police.

209
“Ignoring that use, in my view, would be silly,” he
said. “I think tackling that issue and saying, ‘What
is the right balance,’ is the right question and the
one I think everyone is trying to figure out.”

Surveillance is prolific across the UAE, a

federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian
Peninsula. Flashing cameras capture license
plates of vehicles pulling into gas stations. At
Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates, home to an indoor
ski slope, shoppers can use a kiosk to find their
cars via the mall’s surveillance system.

Authorities say surveillance keeps the UAE safe.

Surveillance footage helped authorities quickly
identify the woman who stabbed an American
school teacher to death at an Abu Dhabi
mall in 2014.

It also aided Dubai police in identifying

members of what it described as an Israeli
hit squad that killed an operative with the
Palestinian militant Hamas group in 2010, an
attack never acknowledged by Israel.

For al-Bannai, whose father is a retired major

general with the Dubai police, cybersecurity
seemed like a good bet after he found success
with his mobile phone reselling firm Axiom
Telecom. He formed DarkMatter in 2015 and
today, he said the company has some 650
employees. Most work out of its headquarters
in the disc-shaped Aldar building along a major
highway connecting Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The
firm also has research-and-development centers
in China, Finland and Toronto, he said.

“The only country in the region that’s strong in

cybersecurity is Israel,” al-Bannai told foreign
journalists who visited DarkMatter on Tuesday.
“Other than that, it’s blank.”

210
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212
He described DarkMatter as entirely privately
held, with a customer base that is 80 percent
government agencies and 20 percent
commercial. He declined to name specific
clients, but many suspect they include the
Signals Intelligence Agency, the Emirati version
of the NSA. The agency is also registered as
having offices in the Aldar building.

“Frankly, it’s an alignment of the stars,” al-Bannai

said of DarkMatter’s government contracts. “It is
a pure commercial transaction with them.”

Since its inception, rumors have swirled

around DarkMatter.

Some hackers described receiving aggressive,

repeated job offers by the firm. An Italian
hacker wrote a blog post in 2016 alleging that
DarkMatter tried to hire him through a third-
party recruiter who described the company as
setting up a vast domestic spying infrastructure,
something denied by al-Bannai.

However, human rights activists and others

have been targeted by hacks suspected
to be directed, if not carried out, by the
Emirati government.

Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor became famous

in August 2016 when he worked with security
experts to reveal three previously undisclosed
weaknesses in Apple’s mobile operating system
after he was allegedly targeted with a phishing
text message he didn’t open.

Mansoor and others believed the United Arab

Emirates was behind the attack, as it involved
so-called “zero day” exploits — flaws in
programming that hackers can use to potentially
install spyware or gain control of a system —

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that can be worth over a million dollars each.
Mansoor was arrested by UAE authorities last
March for his online posts. Authorities later said
he was being held at Abu Dhabi’s central prison
and had “the freedom to hire a lawyer” and
receive family visits.
Another hacking campaign targeting Mansoor
and others, dubbed “Stealth Falcon,” also
appeared to be coordinated by the government,
said Bill Marczak, a research fellow at Citizen
Lab. DarkMatter’s close work with the Emirati
government, and the experience of its staff,
raised flags about the company, Marczak said.
“When you’re talking about human rights
activists like Ahmed Mansoor ... there’s nothing
he can do and the government gets access to
him and his contacts and then can take further
actions against his contacts,” he said. “It’s one
thing to use them against people you may think
are committing terrorist acts or criminal acts, but
215
216
using them against someone who is just kind
of sitting around their living room tweeting, it
seems kind of disproportionate.”

Al-Bannai said DarkMatter had no depository

of “zero day” exploits, nor did it take part in
so-called “offensive hacking.” He pointed to
one of the company’s signature products, a
secure mobile phone called “Katim,” or “silence”
in Arabic, as showing the firm’s interest in
defensive technology.

He added that DarkMatter hired CIA, NSA and

other ex-government employees for their
experience.

“If you think an NSA guy is a spooky guy, the

NSA guy is the one protecting you in the U.S.,” al-
Bannai said. “These are not the bad guys.”

He did, however, acknowledge that questions

remain about how much information authorities
should have and be able to use.

Pegasus, a DarkMatter subsidiary, now has a “big

data” contract with Dubai police. An example
offered by al-Bannai suggested police could be
able to pool hours of surveillance video to track
anyone in the emirate.

“My team knows what they’re building,” he said.

“If they thought they were building funny stuff,
they wouldn’t be here.”

217
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 AUSSIE MILITARY
SAYS TRACKING
APP DOESN’T
BREACH SECURITY

Australia’s military said that a fitness tracking

application did not breach security despite
revelations that an interactive, online map
using its data can show troop locations
around the world.

The Pentagon announced this week that it was

doing a broad review of how the U.S. military
forces use exercise trackers and other wearable
electronic devices after the revelations about
GPS tracking company Strava’s application.
Strava’s online Global Heat Map shows the
locations of its users.

219
Australian Defense Industry Minister Christopher
Pyne said the Defense Department was
preparing a report for the government on the
matter. A department statement said it was
aware of the possible risks of the collection
of location data through personal electronic
devices and apps.

“The circumstances of this application do not

constitute a security breach,” the statement said.

The issue was first publicized last weekend

when Nathan Ruser, a 20-year-old student
who is studying international security with
a double major in Middle Eastern studies at
Australian National University in Canberra,
tweeted that “U.S. bases are clearly identifiable
and mappable.” It was later reported by The
Washington Post.

The map uses satellite information to show

the locations of subscribers to Strava’s fitness
service. The map shows activity from 2015
through September 2017.

Heavily populated areas are well lit, but

warzones such as Iraq and Syria show scattered
pockets of activity that could be caused by
military or government personnel using fitness
trackers as they move around. Those electronic
signals could potentially identify military bases
or other secure locations.

“Who knows if someone from any of the

intelligence services noticed it before, but as far
as I know, I’m the first person in public to put
two and two together,” Ruser told from Thailand,
where he is visiting family.

He said more people were interested in the issue

than he expected.

Image: Lukas Coch

220
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“I expected it to hang around pretty quietly
in some of the open-source analyst circles,
intelligence wonks would look at it and then for
the government or the company to quietly fix
the security vulnerabilities, but it’s got pretty
big,” he added.

He called the map a “wakeup call.”

“I wouldn’t say it provides an acute security risk

to any personnel because a lot of those bases
are known and even though this map gives
you a huge advantage if you were to prioritize
targeting the base, none of America’s current
adversaries like ISIS can walk up to one of those
bases and bomb it,” he said.

Ruser said he had not been contacted by

Strava or any security agency since his tweet
attracted attention.

222
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 ‘HALAL’ INTERNET
MEANS MORE
CONTROL IN IRAN
AFTER UNREST

Guns drawn, Iranian intelligence agents rushed

into the apartment of a Washington Post
reporter and his journalist wife in Tehran.

Threatening to kill Jason Rezaian in front of his

wife, Yeganeh, the 20 agents in the July 2014 raid
tore through their belongings and rifled through
drawers, clothes and valuables for an hour.

But perhaps their most eagerly sought target

wasn’t exactly inside the house: They forced
the couple to hand over the passwords to their
email and social media profiles.

225
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That raid demonstrated how much of a threat
Iran’s theocratic government sees in the internet.
It has long sought to strictly control cyberspace
and social media — and, thereby, the flow of
information to the public.

But the Islamic Republic’s relationship with the

world wide web is far more complicated than
simple repression. Over the past four years,
authorities have encouraged wider use of the
internet among Iranians, hoping to generate the
benefits of a more modern economy. As a result,
nearly half the population has in its pockets a
tool that the state is struggling to constrain:
smartphones, with cameras and internet links
that let anyone broadcast to the world.

Those smartphones helped spread the startling

burst of protests across Iran that opened 2018.
The government succeeded in suffocating the
flare-up in part by shutting off key social media
and messaging apps, but the lesson was clear:
The same oxygen that can resuscitate commerce
can also give breath to potential revolt.

Authorities’ solution has been to create a so-

called “halal net,” Iran’s own locally controlled
version of the internet aimed at restricting what
the public can see.

As Iran approaches the 40th anniversary of the

revolution that brought its cleric-led rule to
power, how it handles the power of cyberspace
will be crucial to its future, determining whether
it moves to greater openness or seals itself off
from the world.

“The Islamic Republic is not black and white.

It shows a myriad of contradictions and its
internet policy I think is one of the great
examples of those contradictions,” said Sanam

227
Vakil, an associate fellow at Chatham House
who studies Iran. “The government has taken
the internet and effectively used it for its own
purposes and also has realized the dangers
of it as well.”

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, how

information spreads across mass media has
been tightly controlled.

All television and radio broadcasts within Iran

are from state-run stations. Satellite dishes
remain ostensibly illegal, though they are
plentiful, drawing occasional attacks from bat-
wielding government enforcers. Journalists face
restrictions in what they can cover and where
they can travel across a country of 80 million
people that’s nearly two-and-a-half times the
size of Texas.

The internet helped collapse that distance.

During Iran’s 2009 protests surrounding
the disputed re-election of hard-line
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, still
nascent social media spread word of the
events among Iranians and brought videos
of the shooting death of 26-year-old Neda
Agha Soltan to the world.

Iran’s government, overseen by Supreme

Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, violently
suppressed the demonstrations. The crackdown
killed dozens and saw thousands imprisoned,
with some tortured by their jailers.

Even before the 2009 protests, Iran blocked

access to YouTube. Twitter and Facebook
followed amid the unrest, as did many other
sites later. Some in Iran began using virtual
private networks, or VPNs, which allow users to
bypass government censorship.

228
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The chief difference between then and the
protests that rocked the country coming
into 2018 was the massive proliferation of
smartphones. As recently as 2014, only
an estimated 2 million Iranians possessed
one. Today, estimates suggest Iranians own
48 million.

That explosive growth was spurred by the

administration of President Hasan Rouhani, a
cleric who is a relative moderate within Iran’s
system. His officials allowed more mobile
phone service providers to offer 3G and 4G
internet, suddenly making sharing photos and
images possible. Home internet connections
became faster. The encrypted messaging
platform Telegram spread like wildfire. Over
40 million Iranians are estimated to use it,
for everything from benign conversations to
commerce and political campaigning.

In the recent unrest, protesters used

Telegram’s mass-messaging channels to
share information and videos across 75 cities
and towns where demonstrations erupted.
Some showed people openly in the streets
shouting, “Death to Khamenei!” It shocked
many, especially as such cries could bring a
death sentence.

When the government temporarily blocked

Telegram as well as Instagram, it helped
smother the protests within days. Notably,
however, Telegram’s silencing quickly brought
complaints from businesspeople who use its
channels to promote and sell their goods.

Even after the unrest, Rouhani argued it was

futile trying to shut off an indispensable tool
of modern life.

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“If you want cyberspace to be useful to the
community, come forward with a solution
using it to promote the culture instead of
blocking it,” he said, noting that past Iranian
government tried to stop people from listening
to the radio “but this prevention was useless.”

The danger — and potential — of the internet

as a weapon came into focus for Iran when it
faced the world’s first cyberweapon almost a
decade ago.

At the height of tensions between Tehran

and the West over its nuclear program,
thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium
at Iran’s underground Natanz facility suddenly
began spinning themselves to death. They
had been hit by the Stuxnet computer
virus, widely believed to be an American
and Israeli creation.

Material leaked by Edward Snowden, the

former National Security Agency contractor
who exposed U.S. government surveillance
programs in 2013, suggested Iran at the
time was the country where American spies
collected the most electronic data.

Beginning in 2011, Iran worked to strike back.

Among the most spectacular cyberattacks

attributed to Iran is Shamoon, a virus that hit
the state-run giant Saudi Arabian Oil Co. and
Qatari natural gas producer RasGas, deleting
hard drives and displaying a picture of a
burning American flag on computer screens.
Saudi Aramco ultimately shut down its network
and destroyed over 30,000 computers. A later
iteration of Shamoon in late 2016 caused even
more damage.

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The U.S. blames Iranian hackers for a denial-
of-service attack that overwhelmed six major
American banks in 2012. U.S. prosecutors in
2016 accused hackers believed to be backed by
Iran of attacking dozens of banks and a small
dam near New York City. They also have been
suspected of targeting the email and social media
accounts of Obama administration officials.

Analysts and security experts believe many of

these hackers likely receive backing from Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard, a powerful paramilitary
and economic force in the country answerable
only to Khamenei himself.

The Guard employs more direct means as

well, like its wresting away of the passwords
of Rezaian and his wife, recounted in a lawsuit
he filed against the Guard and Iran in U.S.
federal court.

Similarly, it seized control of the Facebook

and email accounts of Iranian-American dual
national Siamak Namazi, who remains detained
in Iran along with his octogenarian father
Baquer. The Guard then pretended to be Namazi
in correspondence with U.S. government
officials and others, like New Yorker journalist
Robin Wright, tricking them into opening a file
that gave the hackers access to their computers.

Cyberespionage is even used in Iran’s internal

rivalries, with attacks on members of the
government, particularly officials in Rouhani’s
Foreign Ministry, including Zarif, according to a
recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.

“The targeting of members of government

— individuals that have already been vetted
by the regime — reflects the importance of

235
 Image: Ben Curtis

cybersurveillance as a tool of the hard-line

security establishment to monitor potential
rivals for power,” the report said.

Then Iran moved to target the internet itself.

The idea of Iran setting up its own “halal,” or

“permissible,” internet first came in 2011 in the
wake of the 2009 protests. It’s evolved into what’s
known as the National Information Network.

It is essentially a net neutrality supporter’s

nightmare: The network has some 500
government-approved national websites
that stream content far faster than those
based abroad, which are intentionally slowed,
according to a recent report by the Campaign
for Human Rights in Iran. Service providers offer
cheaper packages to customers accessing only
the NIN websites. Search results also are gamed
within the network, allowing the government to
censor what users find.

One of the principal designers of the network

is the Iran Telecommunications Co., owned by
proxies of the Guard.

It resembles in a way China’s “Great Firewall,”

which blocks access to thousands of websites,
from Facebook to Twitter to some news outlets.
Chinese internet users also find access to
websites outside of the country slower.

“Iran’s National Information Network may lack

the name cachet of the ‘Great Firewall,’ but its
performance in strangling access to opposition
content during the most recent protests
proved that Iran is hard on China’s heels in
terms of controlling the flow of information,”
the private U.S. intelligence firm Stratfor wrote
in a Jan. 17 analysis.

236
237
Firuzeh Mahmoudi, the executive director of
the San Francisco-based group United for Iran,
said authorities have had success in getting
businesses to operate on the NIN. The more they
do so, he warned, “the easier it will be for them
to shut down or throttle the real internet when
they want to.”
Hard-liners have suggested removing Iran entirely
from the internet and creating its own at home.
238
“Cyberspace was the kindling in the fire of the
battle,” hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami
recently told worshippers at Friday prayers in
Tehran. “When cyberspace was closed down,
the sedition was stopped. The nation does not
support a social network that has its key in the
hands of the United States.”
239
240
Amid the protests, the Trump administration
said it wanted to help Iranians access the
internet. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the
Guard, Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace
and other officials for “engaging in censorship.”

Top Trump administration officials have met

with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other
leading tech companies to ask what more
they can do to help people in Iran and other
authoritarian-run countries communicate
freely, according to U.S. officials briefed
on the meetings.

But fear of crossing U.S. sanctions has made

companies skittish. Some firms don’t allow
their services to be used in Iran. That prevents
Iranians from accessing many encrypted
communication apps or VPNs.

Even when the Trump administration has

floated the possibility of easing some
sanctions or offering carve-outs, some tech
companies have been reluctant to offer more
services in Iran, said the officials, who weren’t
authorized to discuss the conversations and
demanded anonymity.

So it remains in question whether Iranians will

have access to an open internet if anger over
the economy boils over into protests again, as
many predict it will.

“We believe that the U.S. government could do

more to enable the free flow of information in
Iran and establish a thriving entrepreneurial
civil society independent of the regime,” said
Morad Ghorban of the Washington-based
Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans.
“This movement has continued despite
persecution by hard-line elements.”

241
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