2019年6月4日星期二

Your Wednesday Briefing

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Wednesday, June 5, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning,

We’re covering President Trump’s second day in London, the price of climate change and earthquake-mitigating innovations from Japan.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

President Donald Trump with Prime Minister Theresa May at the Foreign Office building in London. Doug Mills/The New York Times

From pageantry to politics in London

On the second day of his state visit, President Trump’s agenda shifted to politics.

In a joint news conference with Prime Minister Theresa May, he expressed confidence in Brexit, saying Britain is “a very, very special place and I think it deserves a special place” and that the withdrawal “will happen.”

He later met with Nigel Farage, the most recognizable face of the pro-Brexit campaign.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump and Mrs. May had a round-table discussion with business leaders from both countries to talk trade. “I think we’ll have a very substantial trade deal,” Mr. Trump said.

Go deeper: Mr. Trump’s extended family is also in London for the state visit, presenting themselves as the unofficial American royal family.

Photographs: See pictures from Mr. Trump’s state visit.

Trump faces resistance on Mexico tariffs

Republican senators sent the White House a sharp message, warning that they were opposed to President Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports on June 10.

They spoke just hours after Mr. Trump, speaking in London, said that Republican lawmakers would be “foolish” to try and stop him. His aim is to force Mexico to stem the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.

Mexican crackdown: Detentions and deportations in Mexico have multiplied in recent weeks, amid intense pressure from Washington. In April, Mexico deported nearly 15,000 migrants, up from about 9,100 in March, according to government statistics.

Impact: Two new analyses found that the president’s tariffs on Mexico, China, Europe and other governments could nullify the economic gains from his signature tax cuts, undermining his biggest political win.

The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, signaled that the central bank was prepared to cut interest rates if trade tensions worsen.

A fruit and vegetable market in Beijing. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

China confronts rising food prices

Already grappling with a slowing economy and a trade war with the United States, Beijing now has to worry about the rising price of food.

As China fights a devastating swine fever epidemic, agriculture officials have warned that the price of pork could go up by 70 percent this year. The price of fruits and vegetables has also increased sharply, although the authorities blame severe weather and say it will be temporary.

Quotable: “Whoever eats apples these days must be loaded,” said Li Tao, who has been selling the fruit for more than 20 years.

Businesses calculate the cost of climate change

Many of the world’s biggest companies are bracing for the prospect that a warming planet could substantially affect their bottom lines within the next five years.

Hundreds of companies potentially face roughly $1 trillion in costs related to climate change in the decades ahead unless they take proactive steps to prepare, according to an analysis by the international nonprofit CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project).

Real-world examples: Hitachi, a Japanese manufacturer, said that increased rainfall and flooding in Southeast Asia could knock out its suppliers and that it is taking defensive measures. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, noted that rising temperatures could increase the cost of cooling at its data centers.

U.S. policy: The Trump administration has rolled back more than 80 environmental rules and regulations. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, has introduced a plan to reinstate — and go beyond — Obama administration climate policies.

If you have 10 minutes, this is worth it

Lessons from Japan

For years, the country has invested in new technologies and building designs that greatly reduce the damage during earthquakes — an approach that could serve as a lesson for the U.S., which is also vulnerable to tremors.

But the world’s two most technologically advanced countries have differed drastically in their responses to earthquakes, reflecting a broader attitude toward risk and collective responsibility.

Here’s what else is happening

Darwin: A gunman opened fire in the main business district of the capital city of Darwin, killing four people and wounding at least one other person. The gunman was arrested and the police, though still figuring out the motive, said the mass shooting was not an act of terrorism.

Canberra: The authorities have searched the home, computer and cellphone of a journalist who wrote an article last year detailing top-secret correspondence between government ministries over a plan to allow intelligence agencies to surveil Australian citizens.

Sri Lanka: All nine Muslim ministers in the government and two Muslim provincial governors resigned, amid continued backlash from the Buddhist majority over the Easter Sunday bombings.

Perspective: In informal talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar, an Afghan-American woman found a glimmer of hope for women’s rights and freedoms in Afghanistan.

Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, an estimated 180,000 people attended Hong Kong’s annual candlelight vigil for the people who died in the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing 30 years ago, amid concerns that the semiautonomous Chinese territory is losing its freedoms.

iTunes: In an obituary for Apple’s “digital jukebox,” which the company is shutting down, our tech columnist explores how the platform not only created an entirely new business model for digital media but let us control what we consume.

Japan: More than 18,000 people signed a petition that was submitted to the country’s labor ministry this week, calling for a law barring employers from forcing women to wear high heels.

Dinosaur ID: A previously unknown dinosaur species was identified from a fossil discovered by an Australian opal miner, Bob Foster, in the 1980s and named Fostoria dhimbangunmal for him this week.

52 Places traveler: In his latest dispatch, our columnist takes a five-day solo drive through the Vestlandet region of Norway, which left him either speechless or swearing.

What we’re reading: This article in Topic. Our magazine writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner says the story, by Lindsay Jones, “about a woman raising a child after flesh-eating bacteria caused her to lose her hands and feet, is devastating and brilliant.”

Now, a break from the news

Romulo Yanes for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Vivian Lui.

Cook: The secret to this sheet-pan chicken recipe with chickpeas, cumin and turmeric is the yogurt marinade.

Watch: Anthony Huxley of New York City Ballet performs an excerpt from George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Read: The award-winning poet Ocean Vuong makes his fiction debut with “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.”

Listen: On her new single “Press,” Cardi B emphasizes raw energy over clarity, our critic writes.

Smarter Living: If you’re tired of tote bags taking up space in your closet, make room by sharing. Use them to bring clothing to shelters, houses of worship or Goodwill, and leave them as part of the donation. You can do the same when taking food to soup kitchens and food banks. Short-term shelters, libraries, senior centers, preschools and charitable organizations like Bags4Kids may welcome clean totes. And they make nice gift bags!

And we have a guide to making your commute more enjoyable.

And now for the Back Story on …

The Cricket World Cup

Sixes, wickets and the thwack of a ball hitting the bat. It’s cricket season in England.

The World Cup tournament takes place every four years. Its evolution offers an interesting reflection of British history.

As Britain’s empire expanded around the world, so too did its national sport, permeating the fabric of many of its colonies.

The West Indies team playing against Australia in the inaugural World Cup in 1975. Ed Lacey/Popperfoto, via Getty Images

An early version of the sport’s global governing body, the International Cricket Council, came into being in the late 1920s and initially covered only “countries within the Empire,” including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and the West Indies region.

In 1965, the I.C.C. started to let in other countries, like the Netherlands and Denmark, and in 1975, it organized the first World Cup.

Yet despite opening up the tournament over the years, every winner since the inaugural Cup has been a former colony. Oddly enough, England has never managed to win this tournament.

The sun never sets on England’s hopes. The finals are on July 14 in London.

That’s it for this briefing. Clear the ropes!

— Alisha

Thank you
To Mark Josephson, Eleanor Stanford and Kenneth R. Rosen for the break from the news. Alisha wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about how a U.S. cyberweapon backfired.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Monthly TV bill (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
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The Privacy Project: Why does Google know everything you’ve bought on Amazon?

It's six full years of data.

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Tuesday, June 4, 2019

The Privacy Project »

John Zeedick/Associated Press

Charlie Warzel

Opinion writer at large

Last month, CNBC reported on a page in Google's account settings titled "Purchases" — a month-by-month list of items you've bought across online services like Amazon and other apps that are collected via Google services like Gmail.

It's not quite fair to call the reveal of the Google Purchases page a scandal; the page is publicly accessible, and it's not as if the company is illicitly purchasing the information — instead, it's scanning your inbox and scraping information based on confirmation and purchase emails you directed to your Gmail account.

And yet, Purchases is a jarring example of how leaky our data really is and how large companies can aggregate that information unbeknown to the consumer. I, for one, was unaware that almost every concert ticket, Domino's pizza and Amazon purchase (including a 2014 accidental purchase of the film "Tango & Cash") was being logged by Google. Equally troubling: The purchases can't easily be deleted from the page without also deleting the receipt emails from your Gmail account.

When I scanned my list I was struck by the length of the trail of information — more than six years of online purchases. The depth of that digital record reminded me of other reports of individuals downloading their data from Facebook and Google after 2018's Cambridge Analytica scandal and despairing at the granular detail of the information collected. Every movement cataloged, analyzed and leveraged. But to what end?

Twitter screenshot

Google's explanation in this instance feels lacking. The company told CNBC that the Purchases page exists simply "to help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings and subscriptions in one place" and that it does not sell user data or use your Gmail information to show you ads. But the company's privacy page also notes that "information about your orders may also be saved with your activity in other Google services."

Scrolling through my Purchases, I couldn't shake the most basic questions: What good reason is there for Google to store six years of detailed purchase information? Why can't I delete it without deleting the emailed receipts? Why aren't there default time limits on how long information is stored?

I had the same reaction reading a story in The Washington Post last week that revealed how in just one week, 5,400 hidden app trackers transmitted personal data (in some cases, violating app privacy policies) to third parties. I found it hard to get through the piece without getting tripped up on a series of "whys": Why do our apps hoover up our personal information and funnel it out in the dead of night? Why aren't these behaviors limited by our phones by default? Patrick Jackson, a former National Security Agency researcher who helped The Post conduct the tracker experiment, had similar questions. "This is your data," he told The Post. "Why should it even leave your phone? Why should it be collected by someone when you don't know what they're going to do with it?"

Of course there are technical answers to many of these questions. In Google's case, perhaps your information is fed to train machine systems to help boost artificial intelligence or to improve intelligence in products like maps and search. In the case of the iPhone apps, data is transmitted in the night so as not to interfere with your daytime usage.

And yet these answers are rarely satisfying. They're logistical answers to bigger, structural questions: Why does the internet have to work this way? Why is the currency of the commercial web our increasingly granular information? Why is it collected, sorted and traded in ways that are nearly impossible to see in the aggregate? And why should we trust the sophistication of ad-targeting technology in an industry where advertisers will lose more than $23 billion globally to ad fraud just this year?

As the privacy discussion accelerates, grows more sophisticated and bleeds into headlines and the halls of Congress, it's worth asking these fundamental questions of tech companies, data brokers and lawmakers. It may seem overly simplistic, but our current privacy reckoning is about just that: finding satisfactory answers to the most basic questions about the future of our digital lives.

From the Archives: The Olden Days of Online Tracking

NYT archives

This week's dive into the archive is a fun 1998 column from Sabra Chartrand that chronicles the earliest days of online tracking through the development of one cookie-tracking patent.

As usual, there's some excellent musing about the future of the World Wide Web:

"That does not daunt those who believe that with customized information delivery and targeted advertising, someday the Internet will become the most lucrative way to sell goods and services. They picture a world in which customers will leave traces of information about their habits, preferences, spending patterns, economic needs and personal status every time they use a computer. The information will be sorted into data bases and used to fashion Web sites, promotional campaigns, advertisements and even junk mail that is tailored specifically to each user."

They pictured correctly!

Then there's this, which hits like a ton of bricks in 2019:

"Certainly such visions raise concerns about privacy. Without tackling those issues, however, many companies are at work on the software and hardware needed to make culling the information and setting up the data bases a reality. One company, the Thinking Media Corporation of New York, has a new patent for a method of tracking how people respond to internet advertisements and commercial Web sites."

You really ought to read the whole thing for a look at the beginning of the modern web and some much simpler times:

"What we've done is insert a very small homing beacon that goes along with an ad or a Web page," Mr. Davis explained. "It's a piece of Java, a Java applet."

I want to hear from you

Send me your pressing questions about tech and privacy. Each week, I'll select one to answer here. And if you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here.

Tip of the Week: Get Rid of Apps You Don't Use and Tweak Your Privacy Settings

There's an easy way to make sure apps aren't siphoning your data in the night (as mentioned above) and that's to delete sketchy or unused apps. My colleagues at the Wirecutter have a handy guide to decluttering your phone here.

You should read the whole post as well as their 7 Simple Ways to Protect Your Digital Privacy, but in case you're in a hurry, here's a snippet on how to audit your privacy settings on iPhone and Android:

"If you have an iPhone, open Settings and tap the Privacy option. On Android, head to Settings > Apps, and then tap the gear icon and select App Permissions. Here, you can see which apps have access to your location, contacts, microphone, and other data. Disable permissions where they don't make sense — for example, Google Maps needs your location to function, but your notes app doesn't. In the future, think about app permissions as you install new software; if an app is free, it's possibly collecting and selling your data."