默默新聞08

2019年7月9日星期二

Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

Jeffrey Epstein, Twitter, Wimbledon

View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

NYTimes.com »

Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

By REMY TUMIN AND HIROKO MASUIKE

Good evening. Here's the latest.

Jeenah Moon/Reuters

1. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta defended himself amid calls to resign because of his previous role in a lenient plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged on Monday with sex trafficking.

Mr. Acosta, pictured above in April, said the plea agreement from more than a decade ago was the "toughest deal" available in a complex and difficult case. Mr. Epstein served 13 months after being accused of sexually abusing dozens of young women and underage girls.

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, explains in an Op-Ed how that deal may end up sending Mr. Epstein to jail again.

Mr. Epstein lived an opulent life largely out of the spotlight. Here's what we know about him. We also looked at how Mr. Epstein is connected to former President Bill Clinton.

_____

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

2. Tensions between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and progressive Democrats known as "the squad" are heating up.

Tit-for-tat barbs traded between Ms. Pelosi and four House representatives — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib (pictured above left to right) and Ilhan Omar — spilled into public over the weekend after Ms. Pelosi said they didn't have a following in Congress. But the back and forth has less to do with ideological differences than their divergent styles and agendas, our congressional correspondent writes.

More from Congress: A House Committee will vote on Thursday whether to issue a blitz of subpoenas related to the Mueller inquiry and on the separation of migrant families at the southwestern border.

_____

Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

3. In Twitter news:

President Trump has been violating the Constitution by blocking Twitter users who criticize or mock him, a federal appeals court ruled. The decision could have wider implications for how freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment applies to the social media era.

Separately, the social media platform unveiled its first official guidelines on what constitutes "dehumanizing" speech, but the scope of the rules is narrower than the company had initially considered. For now, the guidelines focus only on those directed at religious groups.

_____

Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

4. The 2020 election is heating up — in Kentucky's Senate race.

Amy McGrath, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and combat pilot, will challenge Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, for his seat. Ms. McGrath's star power rose in the Democratic Party in 2018, above, though she failed to capture the House seat she ran for.

Also, Joe Biden and his wife have earned more than $15 million since he left office, filings show, raising questions about his everyman bona fides. And add one more to the Democrats' list of official presidential candidates: Tom Steyer, the hedge fund investor turned impeachment activist.

Separately, Ross Perot, a wiry Texas gadfly who made billions in the computer business and ran for president twice as a third-party populist, has died at the age of 89.

_____

Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

5. It was a big day for Obamacare.

A federal appeals court panel heard arguments on whether a Texas judge was correct in striking down the law, a ruling that threatens the health coverage of millions and possibly the political future of President Trump. Above, members of Congress talking about health care coverage on the Capitol steps today.

After 90 minutes of oral arguments, the panel sounded likely to uphold the lower-court ruling that a central provision of the Affordable Care Act — the requirement that most people have health insurance — is unconstitutional.

Separately, a federal judge blocked the Justice Department from withdrawing lawyers in a case challenging the addition of a citizenship question to the census.

_____

Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times

6. Two dozen governors urged President Trump to halt one of his biggest climate policy rollbacks: the weakening of federal clean car rules.

"Strong vehicle standards protect our communities from unnecessary air pollution and fuel costs, and they address the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States," the governors wrote, including three Republicans and governors of four states that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016.

In other climate news, an oil services company said it had no plans to conduct an aerial survey of part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska this summer. That means there will most likely be no new information about potential oil and gas riches in the refuge, possibly affecting prices when drilling leases are sold this year.

_____

Hannah Mckay/Reuters

7. Serena Williams is one step closer to another Grand Slam title.

She'll play Barbora Strycova, a Czech player who is unseeded at Wimbledon, in the semifinals on Thursday. Simona Halep and Elina Svitolina also advanced. The men's singles quarterfinals are Wednesday.

And tonight is the M.L.B. All-Star Game, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Eastern (Fox). Jason Verlander of the Houston Astros is pitching for the American League, but it may be past his bedtime. He sleeps at least 10 hours a night.

_____

Netflix

8. Aziz Ansari is back.

His new Netflix comedy special, "Right Now," is framed around his personal story, addressing accusations of sexual misconduct in "his finest, boldest and probably most polarizing work," our reviewer writes.

Also on TV: "Love Island," the raunchy, bizarre British reality TV dating show with millions of viewers, is coming to America. It airs tonight on CBS. Here's what you need to know.

_____

Maria Mavropoulou for The New York Times

9. Come with us to the center of the (ancient Greek) world.

While most travelers tend to use Athens as their base for seeing Greece's classical highlights, choosing Delphi as an exploratory hub can bring unexpected rewards, our writer found. She found visiting the Oracle at Delphi nothing short of soul-stirring. Above, the port of Galaxidi.

Traveling with a group this summer? Here are some tips and tools to help plan your next group getaway (and avoid the logistical nightmares).

Separately, our Travel desk will buy carbon offsets for its staff writers on assignment. "It's a start," the travel editor writes.

_____

Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

10. And now the final course.

To the chagrin of sweet tooths everywhere, dessert menus have been shrinking. Los Angeles is going in the other direction.

From jiggly cathedral window cakes, above, to chocolate soufflés, our California restaurant critic identifies the new restaurants making the case for a little sugar.

"Each put forward the sort of proper, go-getting, surprising plated desserts that I rarely see," Tejal Rao writes, "the kind that do what dessert is meant to do and reward you, in meaningful ways, for saving a little room."

Have a delectable night.

_____

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

And don't miss Your Morning Briefing. Sign up here to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning.

Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

LIKE THIS EMAIL?
Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here.

NEED HELP?
Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.

FOLLOW NYTimes

FACEBOOK

@nytimes

nytimes

Get more NYTimes.com newsletters »

The Privacy Project: Your inbox is spying on you

"A little less creepy is still creepy."

View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

The Privacy Project »

Your Inbox Is Spying on You

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Charlie Warzel

Opinion writer at large

Call it the Five Stages of Privacy Erosion.

Tech Company builds popular product.

Product is exposed in the press for doing something shady behind the scenes.

Tech Company apologizes/clarifies/signals a fix.

Brief phase of collective rejoicing and moving on.

It's revealed (usually by the same people) that Product was never really fixed.

That's the rough trajectory of two recent privacy stories in just the past week. The first is an update to a story I wrote last month about Google quietly monitoring and storing all your purchases across sites like Amazon. When the CNBC discovered the story, Google assured concerned users that they could delete their purchase history. A follow-up report from CNBC suggests that contrary to Google's claims, the fix doesn't remove the purchase history. The company, according to the report, "is looking into it."

Then there's Superhuman, the exclusive Silicon Valley start-up for power emailers. At the end of last month, a former Twitter engineer, Mike Davidson, wrote a blog post detailing the ways in which Superhuman violated the privacy of its users by tracking every time their emails have been viewed by recipients — all by default, with little room to opt out. The backlash prompted a response from Superhuman's C.E.O., Rahul Vohra, who promised to reconsider many of the tracking features. "When we built Superhuman," he wrote, "we focused only on the needs of our customers. We did not consider potential bad actors."

You can probably guess what happened next. On Monday, Davidson wrote a second blog post, praising the company for responding but calling the fix superficial. "You can still see exactly when and how many times someone has opened your email, complete with multiple timestamps — you just can't see the location anymore," he wrote. "That, to me, is not sufficient. 'A little less creepy' is still creepy."

Davidson's extremely detailed posts (which you should read in full here and here) get at a core issue of the privacy debate, which is that none of this invasive technology happens by accident. Our privacy crisis is a crisis of design. Take that telling line from Vohra, Superhuman's C.E.O., which is less than a week old and has already aged poorly. We did not consider potential bad actors. But, as Davidson goes on to explain, Superhuman did receive negative feedback about email tracking; it just didn't listen. "We did not consider" doesn't mean the company was unaware but that they didn't seem to take the feedback into consideration.

This line from Vohra's apology offers a clue as to why. "If one of us creates something new, and that innovation becomes popular, then market dynamics will pull us all in that direction," he wrote. It's worth noting because it's a line I've heard frequently from ad tech executives and tech companies in my reporting for The Privacy Project — this couldn't be wrong because it's the industry standard. But, as Davidson rightly notes, "just because technology is being used unethically by others does not mean you should use it unethically yourself."

(I want to pause here to offer an email-tracking disclosure and some clarification. Tracking is a tricky subject. It isn't inherently nefarious. This newsletter tracks things like how many times the newsletter email is opened and what links are clicked, which helps to improve the newsletter. But like all privacy issues, it's a matter of transparency and expectations. When it comes to marketing emails and newsletters, which often come from corporate entities, there's often more of an expectation that open rates might be tracked. In Superhuman's case, as Davidson notes, the tracking takes place with every personal email sent, which is more likely to violate the expectation of privacy.)

Protecting privacy is often about adding friction to the mechanisms that threaten it. But that's antithetical to the ethos of Silicon Valley, where innovation is all about simplifying. And so privacy, along with bad actors, is not considered and frequently tossed aside during the initial design, when the foundation of a product is built.

It's why genuine change in the digital privacy realm is so hard to come by. When flaws are exposed, superficial solutions are common because they don't threaten the core of the product. And when invasive tools are baked deep into the infrastructure of our technologies, there's no easy fix.

It's understandable: It's easier to add a coat of paint on a house than fix its crumbling foundation. But if it's left too long, chances are, the whole thing's coming down.

Here's a Crazy Security Flaw You Need to Know About

I'm forgoing the archive pick this week because of a wild story that broke last night about Zoom, a piece of videoconferencing software. In a Medium post, the security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh revealed that a vulnerability "in the Mac Zoom Client allows any malicious website to enable your camera without your permission." He suggests this flaw could expose "up to 750,000 companies" that use the software.

The flaw is a bit technical but basically: A major feature of Zoom is that you can send anyone a meeting link and with one click, you can join. That's because the company uses something called a local web server. But, according to Leitschuh, the server also allows users to be forcibly added to a call, with their camera on, without their permission. Additionally, he found that "this web server can do far more than just launch a Zoom meeting …[it] can also reinstall the Zoom app if a user has uninstalled it."

Leitschuh posted instructions for others to test the vulnerability, and, well, it's not good:

Twitter screenshot

We want to hear from you

Have stories, tips or questions on privacy? Email privacy-newsletter@nytimes.com. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here.

Tip of the Week: How to Fix the Zoom Nightmare

Jonathan Leitschuh

What can you do? First, simply uninstalling Zoom will not fix this problem. If you have a Mac and have used Zoom, your best bet is to disable the setting that lets Zoom to turn your camera on when you join a meeting. It looks like the image above.

If you've already uninstalled Zoom, the solution is trickier. I spoke with Leitschuh over Twitter DMs Tuesday afternoon, who told me that he and others are working on a forthcoming solution. I suggested perhaps users could reinstall Zoom, turn off video in settings and uninstall it. Leitschuh told me that could work, but cautioned strongly against it. "We really, really dislike that solution," he wrote. We'll be sure to include any new or better fixes in the next edition of this newsletter.

There is also a more technical solution to disable the web server, which Leitschuh includes at the bottom of his post.

In keeping with our theme of tech companies offering halfhearted fixes, Leitschuh writes that he found and disclosed the vulnerability to Zoom and gave the company a customary 90-day window to fix the issue. The company did not. In a statement to multiple outlets Monday night, it defended its use of the local web server, which allows Zoom to run, even if you've uninstalled it. The company announced it would make only a small tweak to its user settings so that if you toggle video "off" in your first Zoom call, it will apply that setting to future meetings.

My advice: Stay away from downloading Zoom or clicking on any Zoom links for the foreseeable future.