President Trump is considering clemency for Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road dark web marketplace, before he leaves office.

Sources told the Daily Beast that the president was considering commuting Ulbricht's sentence and had been reviewing documents related to his case at the White House.

Ulbricht, 36, launched Silk Road in February 2011. The site, which the FBI shut down in October 2013, connected buyers and sellers on the dark web, usually for drug deals. It facilitated at least 1,229,465 transactions and generated 614,305 bitcoins in commissions. At the time of his arrest, that represented $183 million. At today's values, that amounts to $12.7 billion in cryptocurrency.

In 2015, a jury convicted Ulbricht on seven charges: distributing or aiding in the distribution of narcotics, distributing narcotics over the internet, violating narcotics laws, conspiracy to run a continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking, distributing false identification, and money laundering.

The recommended sentence under US guidelines was life in prison with a 20-year mandatory minimum. Judge Katherine Forrest handed down two life sentences, one 20-year sentence, one 15-year sentence, and another five-year sentence, all to be served concurrently without the possibility of parole.

In a sentencing submission, prosecutors had requested 'a lengthy sentence, one substantially above the mandatory minimum." The submission letter argued the Silk Road leader was responsible for the drug-related deaths of at least six people and had also solicited multiple murders to protect his enterprise. None of the murders were carried out.

Ulbricht, who operated under the moniker Dread Pirate Roberts when running the site, appealed his life sentence but lost in 2017.

His supporters frequently point to the disparities between Ulbricht's sentence and those of others, including Thomas White, the creator of Silk Road 2.0, who received five years and four months in jail.

President Trump has pardoned 29 people so far, including 11 this year. His pardons have included people convicted of money laundering, attempted cocaine possession, aiding in the preparation of false tax returns, bank robbery, murder, racketeering, mail fraud, campaign contribution fraud, obstruction of justice, and violation of the White Slave Traffic Act. He has also commuted 16 sentences. His use of pardons lags behind all other modern presidents, according to Pew.

The UK's government has u-turned on so many things in 2020 that it's hard to know which decisions -if any - it will actually stick to. It almost resembles a Lazy Susan, slowly changing firm rebuffs into pitiful acceptances within a month or so. And, like lockdowns, furloughs and feeding poor children, Huawei seems to sense its own reprieve coming around.

Clearly emboldened by the electoral defeat of Donald Trump, the embattled Chinese firm wants the UK's government to reverse its decision to remove all of its equipment from the country's 5G networks by 2023.

"The decision was a political one motivated by US perceptions of Huawei and not those of the UK," Huawei's vice-president Victor Zhang told The Guardian. "This is not really motivated by security, but about a trade war between the US and China."

These so-called 'Trumped-up' accusations may have had some influence on our indecisive Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. The swell of Tory rebels who called for the Chinese firm to be ditched may also have impacted the decision. However, Huawei's call assumes that the UK's decision was based solely on those concerns.

The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) found that the Chinese firm failed to comply with "its own secure coding guidelines" during an incident which likely led to a vulnerability "of national significance". That's from a centre owned by Huawei but which is directed by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It didn't find state-sponsored surveillance, it found "sustained evidence of poor coding practices" - essentially, incompetence.

It's not exactly evidence of Ren Zhengfei in cahoots with the People's Republic of China. They haven't been caught embedding backdoors into the UK's 5G networks. They've simply been found wanting from a security perspective. So, by all means, the government can revisit the decision, but this isn't about Donald Trump and his mad ideas: it's about reassurance that Huawei is up to the job.

There are also pretty strong arguments for not reversing the decision. While it might cost the government in the short term, removing the biggest provider does open up the space for smaller businesses and greater competition, and it also gives a chance to more local startups. Until the ban, Huawei was potentially on course to be for 5G what Google is to search.

The damage caused by having a giant provider squashing competition should be especially obvious to Huawei. The company's smartphone sales have gone south, partly thanks to the fact that it can't use Google Play services, and there aren't that many viable alternatives to the Android mobile operating system.

I've previously argued for the US trade sanctions to be lifted, because it ruined the otherwise-excellent P40 and Mate 40 smartphones without addressing the problem of national cyber security. However, I can't say the same for the UK's ban. Unlike Trump's trade sanctions, I don't think Boris' Huawei blockade should be reversed, because it might actually end up being one of the few decisions that he actually got right.

The 2020 US presidential election has been one of the most divisive in recent memory, but after a seemingly endless wait for results, last Saturday saw Joe Biden predicted as the winner, and 46th president of the United States. Although current president Donald Trump still has three months left in the White House, the focus is now on the incoming leader and what his policy stances may be.

But how will a Biden administration approach the tech sector, and all the myriad social issues that intersect with it? Will the president-elect support calls from the likes of Senators Warren and Sanders to break up big tech companies? Will he reinstate Obama-era net neutrality laws repealed by the FCC under Trump? To discuss all these questions and more, we’re joined this week by IT Pro’s US managing editor Justin Cupler.

Footnotes

• What is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)?
• The pros and cons of net neutrality
• US appeals court won't reconsider Net Neutrality repeal
• What is 5G and how far are we from rollout?
• What is the 5G health scare?
• Republican senators introduce legislation targeting Section 230
• CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google face Senate hearing
• DoJ charges Google with multiple antitrust violations
• Steve Ballmer would "bet money" that big tech won't be broken up
• Oracle and TikTok deal close, but ByteDance wants majority ownership
• The visa system is failing the tech industry
• President Trump extends Huawei ban through May 2021
• Election day 2020: Each presidential candidate’s stance on tech
• Biden win 'would be good for global tech'
• The IT Pro Podcast: Beating Trump on tech

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If you’ve ever had to hold a conversation with an elderly relative about anything vaguely technical – or, heaven forbid, help them with some kind of computer trouble – you’ll be familiar with the toe-curling, hair-pulling frustration of hearing them get basic concepts completely wrong.

This, sadly, is the feeling that creeps over me every time I’m subjected to a politician or world leader talking about technology. Technology has become a pivotal part of both our daily lives and pretty much every major economy, which means that topics like ‘innovation’, ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘5G’ and other fancy-sounding buzzwords are trotted out on a regular basis, and every time it happens, it makes me want to pound six-inch nails into my living brain.

The latest example is President Trump proclaiming with smug self-assurance that hackers need to have an IQ of 197, and about 15% of your password, in order to hack you. This, as InfoSec professionals around the world gleefully took to Twitter to point out, is absolute bobbins, but it’s far from the only example of politicians hopelessly mangling technical concepts.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is no stranger to playing the armchair IT consultant, either. In one memorably cringeworthy speech to the UN last year, he spoke of “pink-eyed terminators sent back from the future to cull the human race”, and said: “In the future, voice connectivity will be in every room and almost every object: your mattress will monitor your nightmares; your fridge will beep for more cheese, your front door will sweep wide the moment you approach, like some silent butler.”

This is embarrassing to listen to for anyone who knows anything about the actual technology being referred to, and it underscores that these people haven’t the faintest idea what they’re talking about. And nor should we expect them to. Frankly, the ins and outs of topics like cyber security and AI are complicated enough for full-time IT professionals to get their heads around, and world leaders have enough to be getting on with as it is.

However, where this becomes an issue is that it betrays the fact that precious few of their cabinets or advisers understand the topic either. Technology policy (as with every other kind of policy) should be decided and articulated by experts with a detailed understanding of the subject, but when politicians start spouting half-baked nonsense about genius hackers or killer robots, it’s painfully obvious that no such experts have gone anywhere near it.

Instead, what we’re left with is a bunch of lay people making it up as they go along, and trying to stuff it with enough jargon that nobody notices there’s no actual substance or understanding there. If the policy behind the pronouncements was competently thought-out, then it wouldn’t sound like your befuddled great-auntie confusedly trying to explain why her iPad’s stopped working.

Politicians don’t need to be technical experts and nobody’s going to dock them points for not having a level 3 network certification. But when they try and pretend that they do understand these concepts, it’s an embarrassment for all concerned – and far from making them seem up-to-date and on-the-ball, it just reveals the depth of their own ignorance.

The looming ban of WeChat in the US has led downloads of the messaging app to leap, according to data from Sensor Tower.

President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order banning TikTok and WeChat from doing business in the US, citing national security concerns. The move comes amid an ongoing trade war with China, where the owners of both apps are based.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, but is widely expected to sell the video sharing app to Microsoft before the ban comes into force in mid-September, while WeChat is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.

According to figures from app tracker Sensor Tower, the number of downloads of WeChat in the US climbed by 41%. Rival messaging app Signal saw its downloads climb by 30% to 10,800 a day in the US and 90% in China, the company said in a blog post.

Signal is not particularly well used in China, with only 76,000 installs in the first half of the year, the analyst firm said.

"Not only are alternatives like WhatsApp and Telegram officially blocked in China, but Signal has an inherent advantage in that it’s well known for being strongly encrypted,” Stephanie Chan, Mobile Insights Strategist at Sensor Tower told Reuters.

That privacy protection could be behind the spike in downloads, as Chinese people with family in the US or vice versa seek a messaging app that isn't being threatened with a ban.

Another Tencent app, QQ, that is not normally widely used in the US also saw a climb in downloads, growing from 5,000 to 15,500 a day, but the spike has largely flattened since, the analyst firm said. "[It’s] also developed by Tencent and, depending on how or if the US government's directive is carried out, could potentially be affected in the future along with other businesses and apps in Tencent’s portfolio," Chan wrote in the blog post. "This uncertainty around its future may be the reason why its daily installs have since returned to near their levels prior to the order’s announcement, after an initial spike in downloads."

TikTok has been officially banned by the US government, after US President Donald Trump signed two executive orders against Chinese apps amid concerns about security, government interference, and a growing trade war.

The orders banning all transactions with the apps will come into effect in 45 days, giving Microsoft a short window in which to buy TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, which has valued the app at $50bn. The second order targets Tencent's WeChat, a messaging and payments app that's popular in China.

To date, Trump's ire has been directed at TikTok, but the executive order said the threat posed by WeChat was similar, saying the Chinese government could use the app to monitor Chinese nationals visiting the US, pointing to an incident in 2019 when a researcher spotted a leaked database of billions of WeChat messages from around the world. "The United States must take aggressive action against the owner of WeChat to protect our national security," the order reads.

Tencent said it was "reviewing the executive order to get a full understanding," according to Reuters. The company's shares fell 10% in Hong Kong after the news was revealed.

The order against TikTok says the video clip app threatens national security via the information it collects on users, saying the "risks are real". TikTok said it was "shocked" by the order, according to the BBC, and would "pursue all remedies available," suggesting legal action may ensue.

"TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories," the order signed by Trump reads. "This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage."

TikTok has repeatedly said it does not share user information with the Chinese government.

The order also accuses TikTok of censoring politically sensitive material, specifically around the ongoing protests in Hong Kong and the treatment of the Muslim Uyghur population, and of spreading disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year, it was accused of censoring videos about Tiananmen Square and Tibetan independence, and more recently the app was said to be suppressing posts about Black Lives Matter, though the company claimed that was a technical glitch. Ironically, Twitter and Facebook this week removed posts of a video shared by Trump that incorrectly claimed children are "almost immune" from COVID.

Though expected, the move will further worsen the relationship between the US and China. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters: "The US is using national security as an excuse and using state power to oppress non-American businesses. That’s just a hegemonic practice. China is firmly opposed to that." A wide range of American-made apps, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, have long been banned in China.

Livestreaming platform Twitch announced on Monday it was suspending President Donald Trump’s channel for “hateful conduct.”

While the president’s social media accounts have faced intense scrutiny over the last few weeks, this marks the first suspension of one of the president’s social media accounts.

The move to suspend President Trump’s Twitch account is a result of two recent streams that Twitch says violated the platform’s policies. The first stream featured a 2015 campaign event, in which President Trump alleges that Mexico has been sending drugs and criminals across the US border.

The second stream, taken at the president’s recent Tulsa rally, includes the president speaking about a “very tough hombre” breaking into a woman’s house at 1 am.

A Twitch spokesperson explained in a statement: “Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed.”

It remains unclear just how long the president’s suspension will last, though. At this time, President Trump’s Twitch account is hidden behind a message reading: “Sorry. Unless you’ve got a time machine, that content is unavailable.”

Cindy Otis, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab told the New York Times Twitch’s suspension of President Trump’s account may lead to other companies considering similar actions.

“You have to sort of wonder, if smaller platforms start taking more aggressive or harder action on what they consider harmful content or on the disinformation side — will that end up pressuring the larger platforms to do more as well?” Otis questioned.

While Otis’ questions are certainly valid, Twitter has recently begun taking some action against President Trump’s often controversial tweets. Last week, the company restricted a tweet from the president and hid it behind a warning label.

According to Twitter, the tweet violated its policies against abusive behavior. Before that, Twitter tagged a selection of the president’s tweets for violating its policies on manipulated media and glorifying violence.

There’s a quote I first came across on Twitter during the context of a political scandal of some description that I keep coming back to. While the furore it refers to has now faded from memory, buried beneath an endless onslaught of controversies, the quote has stuck with me.

“If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the window and find out which is true.”

It’s attributed to retired American journalism professor, Jonathan Foster, and illustrates the difference between balance and fairness, and how the quest for balance can often get in the way of the truth. Although the quote is about the practice of journalism, it's becoming increasingly applicable to social media, too. The world’s two biggest social media companies have once again been dragged into a public debate on whether or not they have a duty to hold their users to some standard of truth - sparked, of course, by one user in particular.

US president Donald Trump this week signed an executive order seeking to strip social media companies in general – and Twitter in particular – of the legal protections they enjoyed as public forums, rather than editorial publishers. His argument is that, by adding a small label to his demonstrably false and deliberately misleading public statements, Twitter is essentially taking an editorial stance.

This sounds ridiculous on its face; after all, how can fact-checking be a partisan issue? The sad reality, however, is that truth has become a partisan issue, and it’s largely the fault of social media companies.

Attention has been the currency of the internet for decades; since advertising is how the vast majority of websites pay their bills, they need to attract as many eyeballs as possible, and so sensationalism and hyperbole has been the overall tenor of the internet. Everything on the internet is the BEST THING EVER, or the ABSOLUTE WORST. Stories will SHOCK or DISGUST you; there is simply no middle ground.

This general tone has been the background radiation of internet discourse for years, but it’s been amplified beyond recognition by social media. Like every other online service, these companies need to keep users on their platforms as long as possible, so highly-shareable, viral content is promoted, rewarded and optimised for maximum transmission.

When this is cute cat videos or a ten-hour loop of Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace saying ‘buttery biscuit base’, this isn’t really a problem. Sadly, joy isn’t nearly as powerful an emotion as anger, and posts designed to shock and outrage are much more likely to be virally spread than harmless memes. The upshot of this is that social media has become increasingly toxic – a phenomenon that has been well-documented.

But it was in 2016 that the lid was truly lifted on this simmering digital cesspool.

On either side of the Atlantic, two separate political events took place that year that fundamentally altered the rules of society. Suddenly, blatant outright lies became an accepted political tool. In saner times, inflammatory and provably false claims were the sole province of conspiracy theorists and rabble-rousing demagogues, but from 2016 onwards, they’ve been a key part of mainstream political debate.

It’s easy for both users and providers of social media to dismiss wild pronouncements about political issues – such as the idea that the royal family murdered Princess Diana – as the ravings of online lunatics. When similarly wild allegations are coming from news broadcasters and world leaders, that background radiation of conspiracy theories and outright lies turns into a full-blown Fukushima of falsehoods, and the concept of truth itself has been so poisoned that any evidence contradicting a particular worldview can simply be dismissed as biased propaganda, or a lie itself.

Today, Trump constantly makes untrue statements about everything from mail-in ballots being rigged to a news anchor murdering his employee, and faces little or no censure from his party or the press. Worse still, those claims are amplified and repeated by his legions of social media fans. The same is true in the UK – just look at the vociferous defence of Dominic Cummings from various sections of the right-wing commentariat.

All of this also fuels the far end of the conspiracy theory spectrum, as the idea that 5G is somehow linked to coronavirus – something for which there is no scientific proof – becomes commonplace enough that telecoms masts up and down the country are targeted by mobs of vandals and protesters.

Social media has fuelled this whole problem. Figures like Alex Jones and Donald Trump do not exist in a vacuum; their populist lies are only a viable self-promotional tactic because Facebook and Twitter have engineered a global discourse where mass hysteria is the most profitable outcome. They are integral to the continued spread of damaging falsehoods, and if the situation continues to worsen, the entire concept of objective truth may be fundamentally undermined beyond repair.

Facebook and Twitter have a responsibility to fix the mess they’ve created. There is a difference between not wanting to police morality or ideology, and simply being too cowardly to take a stand. Some things are provably incorrect; banning the spread of such statements doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights. The mainstream press won’t fight this problem, and the legal system can’t – it’s time for social media to do the right thing.

With a global pandemic currently playing out and curfews, quarantine and restrictions in place almost everywhere, it’s easy to forget that other big news stories are playing out too. This week, Adam and Jane are joined by IT Pro’s US editor, Justin Cupler, to discuss what will still be one of the most important events of the year: the 2020 US presidential election.

While Donald Trump has had a tumultuous relationship with the country’s tech sector, the two Democratic candidates – Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden – both have plans that won’t necessarily please the giants of Silicon Valley either.

Elsewhere, the COVID-19 outbreak continues to affect almost every aspect of life and business. Microsoft and Google have both announced they’re putting non-critical software updates on hold, while networks struggle to adjust to a sudden shift to mass remote working. Cybercriminals, meanwhile, have taken the ‘opportunity’ to target the World Health Organisation, as well as hospitals in Spain and the Czech Republic, attempting to disrupt research into the novel coronavirus and in the process extort money.

Footnotes

News

Software updates on hold

• Microsoft halts Edge browser updates in light of coronavirus pandemic
• Microsoft puts Windows development on lockdown
• Google bins Chrome 82 development amid coronavirus delays

Hackers target healthcare services

• KCL and NIHR launch symptom tracking app to slow the spread of COVID-19
• WHO collaborates with Big Tech for mega COVID-19 hackathon
• Critical NHS cyber security checks suspended due to coronavirus response
• Hackers target WHO as coronavirus spread surges
• Hackers target hospital computer systems
• NHSX urged to “follow ethical best practice” in developing coronavirus app

Networks struggle with home working traffic

• Australian minister mistakenly cries DDoS attack after citizens flock to welfare site
• Microsoft Teams goes down as the world starts mass remote working
• Microsoft Teams surpasses 44 million users after remote working surge
• YouTube fails to clarify whether reduced streaming quality will hit live events
• Microsoft prioritises extra Azure capacity for 'key customers'
• IBM dedicates supercomputing power to coronavirus research
• ThousandEyes launches live Global Internet Outages Map

In-depth

• Encryption under threat from EARN IT Act
• What is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)?
• UK and US plead with Mark Zuckerberg to bin encryption plans
• The Story Behind Trump's Tech Tariffs
• Facebook bans deepfakes ahead of US election
• Net neutrality laws are now officially dead
• US officially accuses Russia of leaking DNC emails

Google has asked the White House for permission to work with Huawei once again in an arrangement that could see its most popular apps and services return to new devices built by the blacklisted Chinese company.

The tech giant has appealed to the Trump administration to grant an exemption to its blanket ban of the networking giant after it was blacklisted by the US government in mid-May 2019.

The company’s VP for Android and Google Play Sameer Samat has confirmed that Google has formally applied for a license to continue working with Huawei, according to German news service Finanzen.

Google has previously warned that the Huawei ban poses a risk to US security because it could force the company to build a less secure ‘hybrid’ version of Android. The company has wanted to continue to provide its technology to Huawei throughout the duration of the ban.

By consequence of the ban, a host of Google apps, including the entire G Suite, are incompatible with Huawei smartphones released since the ruling was made.

This means devices like the Huawei Mate 30 were launched sans compatibility with the likes of Gmail or Google Docs.

Phones released before the ban, however, including the excellent P30 Pro, still retain compatibility with open source versions of Google apps.

Since the ban, Huawei has started working on its own set of equivalent apps and services to replace those previously provided by Google. The firm, for example, signed an agreement with TomTom last month, according to Reuters, to work on an application to replicate the function and services of Google Maps.

Huawei has also started working on its own operating system, dubbed HarmonyOS, despite being able to use Android 10 in its devices. This one-size-fits-all system has been in progress for a decade but was initially designed to work with IoT devices.

The Huawei Mate Xs, a beefed-up successor to the prototype Mate X announced last year, will be released this year but, again, without compatibility with Google apps, although it will be powered by an open-sourced version of Android 10.

Most would say 2019 wasn't Facebook's easiest year, between allegations it enabled Russia to meddle in the 2016 US election, the ongoing fallout from the Cambridge Analytica debacle, and increasing attention from regulators and lawmakers. But Facebook thinks it wasn't as bad as the press made it out to be.

That's according to a leaked memo sent out to Facebook staff via its internal network by Andrew Bosworth, a vice-president at Facebook, who is reportedly seen as a proxy for founder Mark Zuckerberg. The memo, reprinted in full by The New York Times, reveals Bosworth's belief that media coverage of the company is often incorrect, that Facebook helped elect Trump — and may well again — and that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a "total non-event".

On that last count, Bosworth lays out why he thinks the press got coverage of Cambridge Analytica wrong, saying that it wasn't a data breach, though he admits the controversial company had been "shopping an old Facebook dataset that they were supposed to have deleted".

He says that once that was revealed — by journalists — the communications team at Facebook pulled the company from its now closed data-sharing platform. "This was a huge mistake," he writes. "It was not only bad form (justifiably angering the journalists) but we were also fighting the wrong battle. We wanted to be clear this had not been a data breach (which, to be fair to us, it absolutely was not) but the real concern was the existence of the dataset no matter how it happened."

It's unclear why he thinks the data set being misused isn't a data breach, but Bosworth sent legal letters to journalists telling them not to use the term, saying the New York Times agreed while The Guardian did not.

Bosworth added: "In practical terms, Cambridge Analytica is a total non-event. They were snake oil salespeople. The tools they used didn’t work, and the scale they used them at wasn’t meaningful. Every claim they have made about themselves is garbage."

That said, while Bosworth believes the press was wrong — despite bringing the existence of the database to Facebook, and everyone else's, attention — he said the scrutiny was welcome. "The platform was such a poor move that the risks associated were bound to come to light. That we shut it down in 2014 and never paid the piper on how bad it was makes this scrutiny justified in my opinion, even if it is narrowly misguided."

Bosworth also doesn't think Facebook was to blame for Russian interference in the US 2016 election, saying that only $100,000 in ads were spent in such a manner — a pittance versus what candidates were spending. Instead, Russia used the site in organic ways, such as hosting a Black Lives Matter event on the same day and in the same city as a Blue Lives Matter protest.

"The organic reach they managed sounds very big in absolute terms and unfortunately humans are bad at contextualizing big numbers," he wrote. "Whatever reach they managed represents an infinitesimal fraction of the overall content people saw in the same period of time and certainly over the course of an election across all media."

Despite claiming Cambridge Analytica as a non-issue and saying Russian interference was minimal, Bosworth is willing to accept credit for Donald Trump's success in the election. "He didn’t get elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica," Bosworth said, stressing he personally supported the Clinton campaign. "He got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period."

Because of that, Facebook shouldn't change its current policies, even if that leads to a repeat in the next election — something Bosworth personally would like to avoid, but he believes that way lies a slippery slope to corruption, making the point with a Lord of the Rings reference. "I find myself thinking of ... when Frodo offers the ring to Galadrial and she imagines using the power righteously, at first, but knows it will eventually corrupt her. As tempting as it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome, I am confident we must never do that or we will become that which we fear."

What's next? Bosworth admits Facebook was late to the conversation on data security, misinformation and foreign interference, but needs to lead the conversation on polarisation and algorithmic transparency.

A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times that the memo wasn't meant for the public, but was intended to encourage staff to "accept criticism with grace".

It's not Bosworth's first memo: in 2016, he published another internal missive saying "all growth is justified", even if people get hurt.

The latest memo comes alongside Facebook pledging to remove some deepfakes from the site ahead of the next US election, though it continues to refuse to fact check political advertising. Regulators are closely watching the social network for its impact on politics and more, but Facebook has been careful to stay in Trump's good books, with the US president bragging Zuckerberg had told him he was "number one" on the site.

When business mogul and US The Apprentice star Donald Trump won the US presidential election in 2016, many across the world were left flabbergasted. Not only was Trump a controversial candidate with no previous experience in politics, let alone government, he also touted strong, polarising views.

Trump's triumph over seasoned politician Hilary Clinton in the race for the White House saw a Democratic administration replaced with a Republican one and a politically moderate president replaced by one with controversial policies on immigration and the handling of foreign relations.

But Trump comes from a business background, and in a nation filled with some of the largest and most influential technology companies, there was scope that the new president could bring that business nous to bear on the US technology sector.

Trump has certainly has an impact on America's technology industry, but like his presidency thus far, the effect he has had on the sector has been controversial.

Accelerating AI

One of the more positive things Trump has done for the technology world centres around a recent executive order on artificial intelligence.

The president signed an order that aims to position the US as a world leader in AI. The "American AI Initiative" is something of a call-to-arms for federal agencies to prioritise the funding of research and development of the technology.

It outlined the need for "increasing access to Federal data and computing resources for America's AI researchers", "promoting a responsible approach to AI by encouraging transformative applications of AI, while continually improving outcomes for workers and users alike" and having regulatory agencies establish guidance on AI development across technology and industrial sectors,and to come up with technical and safety standards for AI systems.

The aspiration for the US to dominate in the AI arena was also made clear.

"As the pace of AI innovation increases around the world, we cannot sit idly by and presume that our leadership is guaranteed," the White House said. "We must ensure that advances in AI remain fueled by American ingenuity, reflect American values, and are applied for the benefit of the American people."

This appears to be a positive move for the technology world, as America is home to Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, IBM, and a whole host of other companies ranging from startups to specialist firms with skin in the AI game.

But there are two controversies here. Firstly, the order appears to have recommendations that closely resemble those in a report the Obama administration released a mere month after Trump took to the Oval Office. Secondly, there was no mention of funding being allocated to fuel this prioritisation of AI, meaning federal agencies will need to rework their budgets in order to meet the rigors of the executive order, rather than having extra money to allocate.

This raises the question of how the Trump administration will follow through on the executive order, as Jason Furman, a Harvard professor who chaired Obama's Council for Economic Advisers pointed out.

"The administration's American AI Initiative includes all of the right elements; the critical test will be to see if they follow through in a vigorous manner," Furman told MIT Technology Review. "The plan is aspirational with no details and is not self-executing."

Trade turbulence

The most significant move Trump has made in terms of affecting the technology industry has been on the trade ban with China and the subsequent prohibition of US companies from trading with Chinese companies deemed a threat to US security.

Since late 2012, the US has been concerned about the security and cyber espionage threat Huawei and ZTE pose to the US due to their alleged ties to the Chinese government, which has a contrasting ideology to America and a somewhat cold relationship with the US.

Over recent years such claims, which Huawei has strongly denied and no concrete evidence has been uncovered to back up, have escalated the situation.

In 2018, Trump signed a bill that banned the use of Huawei and ZTE technology across America's government. This lead to US officials encouraging other nations to follow suit, as well as touting considerations to further ban the use of technology from the two Chinese companies across the US.

Interestingly, there had already been a trade ban on ZTE due to the company violating US trade sanctions against Iran and North Korea. But that was lifted with Trump taking an active role in the process. However, such a move was not popular with senators and despite the Commerce Department coming up with a trade deal for ZTE, the ban was reinstated after the Senate voted in favour of an amendment that would see ZTE, Huawei and other Chinese companies, as well as any companies using their components, from working with the government.

In December 2018, Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US over accusations she'd breached US trade sanctions on dealings with Iran, further ramping up tensions between America, Huawei and China.

These security concerns and trade battles came to a head in May 2019 when Trump signed an executive order banning US companies from trading with Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies the US deemed a threat to its security.

While the crux of the ban from a security perspective was to prevent Huawei and ZTE telecoms equipment from being used in US infrastructure, it had a hefty knock-on effect.

The most significant impact of the ban was that Google was, and currently is, forced to block access to its services for Huawei phones. While existing Huawei phones will still have Google and Android services, new phones from the company will not; there was a 90-day relaxation of the ban so that Google could deliver updates to existing Huawei phones, but that window has since closed and at the time of writing the future support of such devices remains uncertain.

This has resulted in the recently revealed Huawei Mate 30 coming with Android 10 but no access to native Google apps such as the Play Store, Gmail and YouTube.

The ban also curtailed the likes of Android phone chip maker Qualcomm from dealing with Huawei.

Naturally, the ban hit Huawei hard, despite its positive attitude that it would weather the trade trouble, with the company forecasting a hefty revenue loss and laying off US workers.

But the ban, in its current form, also effects US tech firms. Given the growth of Huawei over the recent years, it provides Google with a huge reach for its Android operating system and the services the search giant provides on top of it. Banning Huawei access to such services stands to damage Google's spread of its own services.

And US tech companies that provide parts for smartphones and other electronics to Chinese companies have been affected. Qualcomm partly blamed its failure to hit its financial targets in the third quarter of 2019 on the US trade ban, with it being unable to ship as many mobile chips and modems as it previously had to China.

Both Qualcomm and Intel have reportedly approached the Commerce Department to voice their concerns over the ban and its effect on American technology companies.

To further confuse things, the Trump administration came out with the option for US companies to apply for a licence to deal with Huawei and other Chinese companies on the US trade blacklist. As a result, US tech companies could still have the scope to deal with banned Chinese technology firms, but they now have more hurdles to jump to come to a trade deal, and licences are by no means guaranteed to be granted.

So while the ban may ease the government's concerns over national security, it seems to have brought no benefit to US tech companies -- despite ostensibly removing a foreign rival -- and may even have damaged the sector.

Courting controversy

While AI and trade with China are the areas where the Trump administration has arguably had the greatest impact on the tech sector, they're not the only ones.

US net neutrality -- whereby all internet services are treated as equal on the internet rather than one being given more bandwidth than another by internet service providers -- was removed in June 2018. It's still early days, but that could be a boon for established streaming companies like Netflix, but a challenge for smaller companies looking to compete, which many not have the financial power to secure the bandwidth they need to thrive.

In an echo of the trade ban with China, US government agencies were forbidden from using Kaspersky Labs' cyber security products due to concerns that the company had links to the Russian government and its software could provide back doors into governmental systems. The resultant ban also saw Twitter strip Kaspersky adverts from its platform.

In a more positive move, Trump's administration did appoint meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, so there is now person to advise the president on science and technology within domestic and international affairs.

However, the position had been left vacant for two years after Trump took over from Obama, which is the longest it has been empty since it was formed in 1976. And under Trump, the OSTP staff dropped from 135 to 45, meaning there are fewer people to advise the president on technology and science issues.

Trump has also been pugnacious towards the European Union, claiming that the EU has "taken advantage of the US" after it hit Google with a $4.7 billion antitrust fine. Despite this show of support for Google, in August 2019 Trump attacked the search giant in a series of tweets citing a Fox interview with an ex-Google engineer who claimed Google executives vowed that Trump's election to president would "never happen again"; Trump's response was: "All very illegal. We are watching Google very closely!"

Trump also has a hot and cold relationship with Facebook. He previously accused it of having an anti-conservative bias, claiming "Facebook was against [him]" to Fox News in July 2019. But come September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Trump at the White House, with the president claiming the meeting was "nice", despite Zuckerberg reportedly clashing with Republican senator Josh Hawley over Facebook's record of data protection and privacy.

This fractiousness appears to be characteristic of Trump's relationship with the technology industry as president thus far. And while he has posted blusterous views on Twitter regarding his thoughts on various technology subjects, the administration appears not to have executed many policies or orders to particularly shape America's technology industry beyond the China trade ban.

There's an argument to be made that the Trump administration is more focussed on issues closer to the hearts of Republicans, such as immigration and rejecting climate change, rather than technology. And the US technology industry is such a powerhouse that governmental involvement is arguably not necessary for its future success.

If there's one thing the security community enjoys talking about more than the latest ransomware attack or the potential of a (witting or unwitting) insider threat, it's cyber warfare.

I've spoken and written innumerable times about incidents of suspected state-level attacks, with the 2007 DDoS attack that knocked out swathes of Estonian infrastructure being one of the most notable, as well as the BlackEnergy attacks in Ukraine ten years later.

The rhetoric has always been fairly apocalyptic - attacks that could take out the National Grid, cut off access to clean water, crash trains and planes. Crises on a par with a natural disaster or, indeed, conventional warfare.

While what happened to Estonia and Ukraine was no joke, cyber weapons are often more insidious. Stuxnet, long thought to have been a joint development by Israel's Mossad and the American Department of Defense, quietly and covertly sabotaged Iranian nuclear facilities for at least a year before its existence became public.

Indeed, the less explosive nature of cyber warfare has made it more attractive to some global leaders, as we recently found out care of US president Donald Trump.

It's alleged that the US launched a cyber attack on Iranian weapons systems on 18 June rather than using ballistic weapons. While there's been no official comment on the cyber strike, Trump has publicly said he pulled out of using conventional weapons when told doing so could kill in excess of 150 people.

Indeed, Splunk's SVP of security markets told CNBC the move was "game changing" and could remould "how we think about geopolitics".

And herein lies the rub. The information security industry, political talking heads and indeed journalists have all expected cyber warfare to be like something out of film or TV. Suddenly, our national infrastructure is crippled and people die en masse of cold or heat, from cholera and e.coli. The lights go out and never come back on again. 24-hour rolling news grinds to a halt.

This is certainly more exciting to write and talk about than cyber warfare as a way of saving, or at least minimising, loss of life. But perhaps it's not so bad if that, rather than a Terminator-style scenario, is the reality.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to hand over regulatory oversight of US internet service providers to another federal agency when net neutrality laws are revoked.

The FCC and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have entered into a 'Memorandum of Understanding', a draft agreement that will see the two agencies work together to ensure internet service providers stick to their promises to maintain a free and open internet, but critics believe enforcement would happen well after any infringements occur.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced plans last month to scale back current net neutrality laws that prevent ISPs from throttling speeds, restricting access to certain web content, or charging more for faster access. The rules, which were introduced under President Obama in 2015, are expected to be reversed when the Republican majority FCC gathers to vote on Thursday.

Pai said the move would "return jurisdiction to the FTC to police the conduct of ISPs", and that they would both "work together to take targeted action against bad actors", according to Reuters. The FCC has overseen ISPs under Obama's net neutrality rules, effectively classifying the internet as a public utility - this wouldn't be the case under the FTC.

Under the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, expected to replace net neutrality laws, agencies would no longer prevent ISPs from charging more for faster access, but instead require them to disclose whether they are placing restrictions on traffic, or favouring specific websites over others.

The agreement would see oversight return to the FTC, which will be able to investigate the activities of ISPs if they are considered to have deceived the agencies and customers over their practices.

However, the memorandum has been criticised by fellow FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who alongside Jessica Rosenworcel represents the Democratic minority on the commission.

"The agreement announced today between the FCC and FTC is a confusing, lacklustre, reactionary afterthought: an attempt to paper over weaknesses in the chairman's draft proposal repealing the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules," said Clyburn, speaking to Ars Technica.

Critics also argue that the proposed changes essentially allow ISPs to commit to whatever guidelines they choose to follow and that ISPs are already making moves to take advantage of the relaxing of net neutrality regulations. Comcast, one of the largest providers in the US, immediately deleted a "no paid prioritisation" pledge from its website, on the same day that Pai announced his plans.

"Not only is the FCC eliminating basic net neutrality rules, but it's joining forces with the FTC to say it will only act when a broadband provider is deceiving the public," said Chris Lewis, VP of broadband advocacy group Public Knowledge. "This gives free reign to broadband providers to block or throttle your broadband service as long as they inform you of it."

More than 20 industry leaders and early internet pioneers have publicly denounced the FCC's proposals, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

In an open letter to senators and representatives who have oversight of the FCC, they said: "We are the pioneers and technologists who created and now operate the internet, and some of the innovators and business people who, like many others, depend on it for our livelihood.

"The FCC's rushed and technically incorrect proposed order to repeal net neutrality protections without any replacement is an imminent threat to the internet we worked so hard to create. It should be stopped."

22/11/2017: US to axe net neutrality

The US is set to repeal net neutrality laws established to prevent the monopolisation of internet traffic by larger companies.

The plans were unveiled by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai, a noted opponent of net neutrality rules who has already removed a number of regulations since his appointment by president Donald Trump.

The proposal will be voted on when the FCC meets on 14 December. The five-seat body is currently controlled by a Republican majority, and Pai's plans are expected to be approved with few issues.

"For almost 20 years," Pai said in a statement, "the internet thrived under the light-touch regulatory approach established by President Clinton and a Republican Congress."

"Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet. Instead, the FCC would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that's best for them."

The FCC currently classifies internet providers as utilities - meaning that they are not allowed to artificially limit the speeds of certain web traffic or to charge certain companies more than others to allow customers to access them.

In practice, the removal of net neutrality rules means that US broadband providers could be free to throttle internet speeds for customers trying to access websites and services that aren't their commercial partners, effectively creating 'fast lanes' and 'slow lanes'.

For example, if a broadband provider owns its own video streaming service, it could greatly slow down - or even outright block - traffic to rival services like Netflix.

Equally, ISPs could charge customers for access to fast lanes that stream games or movies.

Alongside the net neutrality rollback, Pai has also announced his intentions to remove restrictions on telcos that prevent them from reaching more than 39% of US households - a further effort to prevent monopolies.

The move has been roundly condemned by digital rights and internet advocacy groups, who claim that removal of the rules will cripple competition and innovation, creating a market where only major companies will be able to afford speedy connections to customers.

"The FCC's new approach invites a future where only the largest Internet, cable, and telephone companies survive, while every start-up, small business, and new innovator is crowded out," said Electronic Frontier Foundation legal director Corynne McSherry, "and the voices of nonprofits and ordinary individuals are suppressed. Costs will go up, as ISPs take advantage of monopoly power to raise rates on edge providers and consumers alike."

Consumers appear to share this view. In fact, a poll of president Trump's own voter base conducted by competitive networks association Incompas in July found that 70% felt that the internet has improved in the two years since president Obama enacted the net neutrality regulations.

The prospect of repeal has also drawn criticism from major tech companies like Google, Facebook and Netflix, who fear the destruction of the 'open internet'.

"We are disappointed that the proposal announced today by the FCC fails to maintain the strong net neutrality protections that will ensure the internet remains open for everyone," Facebook vice president Erin Egan said in a statement.

Conversely, telcos welcomed the news, saying that the decision will put the reins of innovation back in the hands of private investors without being hampered by excessive government oversight.

US telecoms giant AT&T called the rules a "brief and ill-conceived experiment", and stated that consumers have little to fear.

"Make [sic] no doubt, the circulation of this order will bring the 'sky is falling' crowd to the fore, and they will foretell a day when websites will be blocked, content censored and internet access controlled by ISP overlords," wrote Joan Marsh, AT&T's executive vice president of regulatory & state external affairs. "Such claims, while great for fundraising, are as nonsensical now as they were a decade ago when they were first prophesied."

"Importantly, the adoption of this order will restore the careful balance needed between ensuring internet freedom while continuing to attract private investment in broadband facilities - investment that is essential to delivering on the promise of broadband for all Americans."

The FCC, for its part, has pledged that it will maintain a close watch on the practises of ISPs after the repeal.

According to the New York Times, officials said that the throttling of content could be viewed as a breach of competition regulations, and that such breaches would be investigated by the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission.

Tim Cook has sent a letter to Apple's global employees, pledging contributions of $1 million each to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League in the wake of Charlottesville, and criticising Donald Trump's response to the tragedy that left one woman dead.

According to Buzzfeed, who obtained the letter, Cook called on employees to be "unequivocal" about their resistance to hate and bigotry, before taking direct aim at Trump's approach to the violence in Charlottesville.

"I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights," writes Cook. "Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans."

The letter, which was sent out on Wednesday evening, came on the same day Trump pulled the plug on two White House business councils. A raft of prominent CEOs had stepped down from the councils in recent days, including Kevin Plank of Under Armour and Brian Krzanich of Intel.

Political leaders have also come out against Trump's weak approach to white supremacism, including Theresa May. When asked about the US president's response to clashes in Charlottesville, the UK Prime Minister said it is important to condemn far-right views "wherever we hear them". Although she didn't mention Trump by name, the remarks have been read in terms of Trump's approach to the violence, in which he said there was blame on both sides of the protests.

"I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them," said May.

Cook claims that Apple is "inclusive of everyone", and that the company will be "stepping up" to support anti-hate organisations. In addition to contribution of $1 million each to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, Cook claims Apple will We match two-for-one its employees' donations to these and a number of other human rights groups, until 30 September. There are also plans to provide links to these groups via iTunes.

Main image credit: Mike Deerkoski

Leaders of some of the world's largest tech companies have expressed "deep disappointment" over news that the US will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

Appeals from world leaders and technology companies for the US to remain with the accord were dismissed on Thursday when Donald Trump announced that he would be pulling out of the agreement, which is signed by 195 other nations.

The deal aimed to slow the pace of climate change by limiting carbon emissions, which has been largely embraced by business communities, particularly the US tech industry.

Reaction from industry leaders was swift and damning, with the likes of Amazon, Google, IBM and Twitter calling the move "incredibly short-sighted".

"Decision to withdraw from the #ParisAgreement was wrong for our planet," Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted on Thursday. "Apple is committed to fight climate change and we will never waver." He also said that despite repeated attempts to appeal to Trump, these had ultimately failed to change his mind.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said that the decision is "bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children's future at risk". The CEO also said that Facebook would remain committed to preventing climate change, and pledged that every new data centre built would be powered entirely by renewable energy.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has remained close to Trump despite his attacks on the US technology sector, announced that he would be stepping down from the presidential advisory council, stating that leaving Paris "is not good for America or the world".

Although IBM still supports US participation in the Paris accord, it confirmed in a statement that its CEO, Ginni Rometty, would remain a part of Trump's advisory committee. "IBM believes that it is easier to lead outcomes by being at the table, as a participant in the agreement, rather than from outside it," the statement read.

Microsoft's president Brad Smith said he was "disappointed with today's decision by the White House".

"In the past few months, Microsoft has actively engaged the Trump Administration on the business case for remaining in the Paris Agreement," said Smith, in a statement published on LinkedIn. "We've sent letters to and held meeting on this topic with senior officials in the State Department and the White House."

"We remain steadfastly committed to the sustainability, carbon and energy goals that we have set as a company and to the Paris Agreement's ultimate success. Our experience shows us that these investments and innovations are good for our planet, our company, our customers and the economy."

Apple is about to invest $1 billion in the US manufacturing business, CEO Tim Cook has revealed, helping to boost the American economy and bolster Donald Trump's mission to make the country a manufacturing powerhouse.

He told CNBC's Mad Money programme that it has already started investing in manufacturing companies, with an announcement about who it has invested in later in May.

He explained that manufacturing jobs are in demand in the US, so the technology giant is making it its mission to help home-grown talent come into the fore. It also means the company can focus on offering more US citizens jobs in its ranks, Cook said.

"By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond. Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them," the CEO said.

Cook went on to explain that it had already started opening up more positions for US-based talent, with two million new jobs on the horizon. However, he nudged off comments that it's a company's job to create jobs, adding that it should be part of the company's values, which runs much deeper than simply a duty.

"A company should have values because a company is a collection of people. And people should have values, so by extension, a company should. And one of the things you do is give back," he explained.

"So how do you give back? We give back through our work in the environment, in running the company on renewable energy. We give back in job creation."

Picture: Bigstock

McDonald's has blamed a vehemently anti-Trump tweet on hackers, after the company's official account blasted him as "a disgusting excuse of a President".

McDonald's has publicly apologised for the tweet, stating that the account was compromised. "Based on our investigation, we have determined that our Twitter account was hacked by an external source," a statement read. "We took swift action to secure it, and we apologise this tweet was sent through our corporate McDonald's account."

Although it was swiftly deleted, Donald Trump's personal Twitter account was tagged in the offending post, which was sent out to over 150,000 followers.

The tweet also expressed a desire for the return of former president Obama, and pointed out that Trump has "tiny hands".

Unsurprisingly, many Twitter users have reacted with hilarity at a global fast food brand getting into an apparent Twitter spat with the president of the United States.

Others, however, have called it a conspiracy, claiming that the stunt was orchestrated by Obama's former press secretary and calling for a boycott of the restaurant chain.

Security experts have warned that this should be a wakeup call for companies that aren't properly securing their social media accounts.

"Companies using Twitter in recent years have gotten much better about using group management software with 2FA/MFA options," said F-Secure security advisor Sean Sullivan. "But still, there's the possibility that an employee with access can be compromised."

"McDonalds and other companies can enforce multifactor authentication to limit damage via phishing, but if an employee's device is hacked? Well, then the hacker has access to whatever is logged on at the time."

Image credit: Bigstock

A claim that a UK intelligence agency helped former president Barack Obama "wiretap" Donald Trump during the 2016 election campaign has been dismissed as "utterly ridiculous".

The allegation, which was first raised by Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano on Thursday evening, but then repeated by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, suggests that Obama used GCHQ to spy on activities during the campaign so that there would be "no American fingerprints on this".

However, a spokesperson for GCHQ said in a statement seen by the Guardian: "Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

Napolitano, a judicial analyst for the Fox News network, mentioned during a TV interview on the "Fox & Friends" program that three intelligence sources had confirmed to him that the Obama administration had used the agency to conduct wiretapping on Trump.

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News, that president Obama went outside the chain of command - he didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the FBI, he didn't use the CIA, and he didn't use the Department of Justice," said Napolitano. "He used GCHQ. There's no American fingerprints on this."

Trump has since taken to Twitter to repeat the allegations, which so far are not supported by any firm evidence.

US and UK security agencies do work closely together as part of the Five-Eyes agreement, a shared intelligence program that includes agencies in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. As part of the Snowden revelations, it was discovered that the UK had allowed US counterparts to analyse the email records and internet activity of British citizens.

Trump started a political storm in March when he accused former president Obama of wiretapping his phones in a series of tweets. However, Trump appears to lack support for his claims, as both the Republican and the Democratic leaders of the Senate intelligence committee, as well as the House intelligence committee, have concluded there is no evidence to support the accusations.

In an interview on Wednesday with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Trump said that the administration would be submitting evidence of his claims about wiretapping to the House intelligence panel "very soon".

Worried about the impact of Brexit on your business? Don't be Tim Cook says we'll be "just fine".

The Apple CEO was in the UK to pick up an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow, and swung by Good Morning Britain for an interview.

Asked about Brexit, he said: "We are very optimistic about the UK's future. We are all in."

He added: "We're a big believer in the UK. The UK will be just fine. Yes, there will be bumps in the road along the way but the UK's going to be fine."

Cook didn't explain why he believed Brexit wouldn't have a negative impact, but did suggest Apple saw room for growth in the UK. The iPhone maker is building a new London office at the Battersea Power Station development, at a cost of 8 billion. "We're doubling down on a huge headquarters in the Battersea area and we're leaving significant space there to expand," he said of the project.

Cook also offered a similar message to Prime Minister Theresa May, reportedly saying in a meeting with her that he was "optimistic" about the UK's future.

Apple has bumped up prices of its MacBook Pro and App Store downloads following currency fluctuations after Brexit, as reports suggest leaving the EU is already hurting tech salaries and will hit the tech sector the hardest, with 2016 spending sliding.

Shaking voice

Cook also discussed American politics, in particular the recent travel ban that saw people from seven countries temporarily stopped from entering the country, catching out many Silicon Valley staff.

In a talk given after being awarded the degree in Glasgow, he told students that Apple would "speak out even when our voice shakes" against such policies.

He also revealed his personal work ethic and values. "My philosophy is don't work for money, it will wear out fast," he said. "Or you'll never make enough and you'll never be happy."

Easy to say, perhaps, when your company's cash reserves hit a record $246 billion last month.

Dozens more tech firms have lent their support to a legal challenge to President Donald Trump's controversial immigration ban, joining 96 other signatories.

In total, more than 120 companies are backing an 'amicus brief', a legal document offering official support to the State of Washington in its case against the president's 90-day travel ban affecting seven countries whose populations are mostly Muslim.

The executive order, issued by the president in late January, blocked travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US, before being temporarily struck down by a federal judge. A fierce battle is now underway in attempts to determine the legitimacy of the ban.

As well as public condemnation from activists, civil rights groups and world leaders, the travel ban has also drawn sharp criticism from Silicon Valley. Virtually every major tech company has slammed the order, and the list of firms officially opposing it is now a who's-who of top tech talent.

Alongside luminaries like Google, Facebook, Citrix and Microsoft, the list is now joined by HP Inc, Adobe, Slack, Brocade and more.

In what may be a particularly embarrassing blow to the president, Elon Musk's companies, Tesla and SpaceX, are also part of the latest batch of additions. Musk sits on the president's Strategic and Policy Forum, an advisory panel that meets with Trump regularly.

Although Musk's role on the panel has drawn condemnation from some quarters, he maintains that he does not support or endorse the current administration, He also argued that it was important he advise Trump - precisely because he does not agree with him.

The brief was filed on Sunday on behalf of 96 tech signatories, saying Trump's travel ban was harmful to business. Travellers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia were affected by the ban, but a Washington state legal challenge led to a federal judge temporarily blocking the order. An appeals court rejected a White appeal, and now a full case must be heard from the justice department as well as two states who mounted the legal challenge, Washington and Minnesota.

A decision is expected later this month, but will only determine whether the travel ban should be kept on hold or not while courts decide on its legality.

06/02/2017: 100 tech firms say Trump's travel ban is bad for business

Nearly 100 tech companies including Apple, Box, Intel and Google have signed a legal document saying their "operations are affected" by US President Donald Trump's travel ban.

The executive order imposing the 90-day ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries is already the subject of several legal challenges, including one from the state of Washington, which has called it "unlawful and unconstitutional".

A total of 97 tech firms filed an amicus brief to the US's Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, arguing that the travel ban is economically harmful and that it represents a significant break with the US's previous immigration stance.

"The Order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years," the brief, also signed by the likes of Airbnb, Microsoft and Lyft, states.

"The Order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result. The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for US companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world's best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies' ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States."

By filing the brief, the companies hope to demonstrate the travel ban will harm US businesses' operations and that it is unlawful.

Trump's executive order, issued on 27 January, banned travellers and refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia. Critics claim the ban is anti-religious, something the Trump administration denies. During his campaign, Trump discussed the idea of building a database of Muslims.

Washington state's attorney general, Bob Ferguson, filed the legal challenge to Trump's travel ban that resulted in a Seattle federal judge temporarily blocking the order from being enforced nationwide last Friday.

An appeals court rejected the White House's appeal on Saturday, meaning the case must be heard in full, with both Washington and Minnesota states, as well as the justice department, being asked to give more evidence today, before an expected decision later this month. That decision only concerns whether the ban should remain on hold while courts decide on its legality.

Main image: Tony Webster

01/02/2017: Amazon offers legal backing to fight Trump travel ban

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has said he'll fight against Donald Trump's controversial immigration policies in court in letter sent to employees at the company.

Bezos explained he's supporting the Washington State attorney general, the first state official to say they will be suing Trump over his executive order.

"We reached out to congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to explore legislative options. Our legal team has prepared a declaration of support for the Washington state attorney general who will be filing suit against the order. We are working other legal options as well," said Bezos.

On Saturday evening, Amazon issued its first letter to employees saying anyone affected by Trump's immigration policy will recieve the full support of the company. It urged those affected by the ban not to leave the country and said it would offer legal resources for those originating from the seven countries Trump has blacklisted, as well as their families.

"From the very beginning, Amazon has been committed to equal rights, tolerance and diversity and we always will be," the company said in its statement.

Bezos joins other tech leaders including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who have both offered their support for company employees who may be affected by the policy. Travel service Expedia's boss also announced his distaste for Trump's executive order.

"The president's order represents the worst of his proclivity toward rash action versus thoughtfulness. Ours is a nation of immigrants. These are our roots, this is our soul. All erased with the stroke of a pen."

30/01/2017: Tim Cook slams Trump's immigration policies

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, has hit out at US president Donald Trump's immigration policies, saying the company would not exist if it weren't for immigrants being allowed to move freely across borders.

"Apple would not exist without immigration, let alone thrive and innovate the way we do," wrote Cook in an email to Apple staff obtained by tech website Recode. "I've heard from many of you who are deeply concerned about the executive order issued yesterday restricting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. I share your concerns. It is not a policy we support."

He quoted civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King in the email, saying: "We may have all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now," which at least went some way to explain how Apple would support those who may no longer be able to re-enter the country or could be subjected to tougher reforms in the future.

He told employees Apple would support any employee who feels they are at risk and he will work closely with the company's HR, legal and security teams to give them the help they need to remain in the country.

"As I've said many times, diversity makes our team stronger," he said. "And if there's one thing I know about the people at Apple, it's the depth of our empathy and support for one another. It's as important now as it's ever been, and it will not weaken one bit. I know I can count on all of you to make sure everyone at Apple feels welcome, respected and valued."

President Trump's executive order restricts immigration from seven Muslim countries for 90 days, suspends any refugees trying to enter the country for 120 days and bars all Syrians seeking refuge indefinitely.

Senator John McCain has warned that the US "[doesn't] have a strategy" for dealing with cyberwarfare tactics that may be employed by Russian, Chinese or North Korean agents, The Guardian reports.

Speaking at the Republican party's annual retreat in Philadelphia, he reiterated the commonly-held belief among the US intelligence community that "the Russians were trying to influence the outcome of our election", and warned that America wasn't ready to respond to similar attacks on elections in Europe.

Many EU countries - France and Germany chief among them - are facing a groundswell of support for far-right parties in the upcoming elections, and there are fears that Russia may use offensive cyber capabilities to propel these parties to victory.

McCain was vocally critical about the state of US cyber security, saying "we don't have a policy and we don't have a strategy". "It is the one aspect of our confrontation where I believe our adversaries are ahead of us," he added.

"Much of the investment in the west has been on cyber defence and monitoring, rather than offence; whether at a government level or within the enterprise space," agreed Piers Wilson, Huntsman Security's head of product management.

He cautioned, however, that the ends does not always justify the means. "Whether the US or any other nation, if we claim to hold 'Western' values, we may find ourselves unwilling to take courses of action that others might find more acceptable," he said. "We shouldn't compromise those values just to reset a perceived asymmetry."

Despite McCain's scorn, signs would suggest infosec is front-of-mind for the Trump regime; the president's foreign policy makes specific mention of using "cyberwarfare" to fight terrorist groups.

However, there have also been recent indications that the personal security of Trump and his top aides may not be up to scratch. Eagle-eyed hackers recently spotted that Twitter accounts belonging to president Trump, vice president Mike Pence, the first lady and more were all vulnerable to security exploits due to a lack of basic protections including two-factor authentication and multi-stage verification.

By exploiting Twitter's password reset function, a hacker known as WauchulaGhost was able to ascertain the email addresses associated with these accounts, many of which were private accounts hosted by companies like Microsoft and Google.

Furthermore, TheNextWeb discovered that cabinet members and key advisors such as Steve Bannon, secretary of defense James Mattis and press secretary Sean Spicer were also vulnerable to the same tactics. Spicer also drew ridicule this week when he accidentally tweeted out an alphanumeric string that many suspected was his Twitter password.

President Trump has officially enshrined "cyberwarfare" as a specific element of his administration's foreign policy, particularly with regards to bringing down ISIS.

The new position was outlined as part of the president's 'America First Foreign Policy', a policy which emphasises "peace through strength" and states that "[America's] military dominance must be unquestioned".

"The Trump Administration will work with international partners to cut off funding for terrorist groups, to expand intelligence sharing, and to engage in cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable propaganda and recruiting," a post on WhiteHouse.gov read.

Online platforms like Twitter, Facebook and more are frequently used as tools by terror groups, and preventing this kind of activity has been a high priority for intelligence officials during the last few years. Similar sentiment in the UK has led to the government pushing through a series of wide-ranging state surveillance powers, in the form of the Snooper's Charter.

While the use of both aggressive and defensive cyber security tactics by US military and intelligence agencies has been common practice for years, this marks the first time that so-called 'cyberwarfare' has been a prominent feature of official foreign policy.

The area has been the subject of much scrutiny in recent months, with accusations that the Russian government used cyberwarfare tactics to influence and disrupt the US election. Intelligence Committees in both the house and the Senate are planning formal investigations into allegations that the Trump campaign had contact with Kremlin operatives during the election - allegations that the president denies.

The website of Rudy Giuliani's security company is currently offline, less than 12 hours after it was announced he would be leading a private sector group to advise the Trump administration on cybersecurity.

According to noted hacker The Jester, the site went down at about 5.00 am UK time and at the time of writing (10.20am) remains offline.

Shortly after Giuliani's role as a cybersecurity advisor was announced on US television network Fox News, the security community began examining how robust his company's own site was - and found it sorely lacking.

The site allegedly used a long-outdated version of Joomla! ridden with vulnerabilities, including SQL injection, remote authentication and bypass and numerous cross-site scripting (XSS) holes. A full list can be found here.

Others in the cybersecurity community noted the site's using an expired SSL certificate and was also found to have an exposed CMS admin login.

IT Pro was unable to determine at the time of writing whether Giuliani Security was unavailable as it had been taken offline deliberately, or whether it was being subject to a cyber attack of some kind.

US President-elect, Donald Trump, has named cybersecurity as one of the most important issues for his administration.

In a statement announcing Giuliani's role as an advisor to the incoming president, Trump's transition team said: "As the use of modern communications and technology has moved forward at unparalleled speed the necessary defenses have lagged behind. The President-elect recognizes that this needs immediate attention and input from private sector leaders to help the government plan to make us more secure."

Trump also used his Twitter account on Friday to announce his team "will have a full report on hacking within 90 days". In a press conference this week, Trump said he believed it was likely that Russia was behind the leaking of 19,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee during the run-up to the US election. Trump and President Barack Obama had been briefed on the claims, contained in a 35-page unverified report, allegedly authored by a former British spy.

Trump is set to take office on 20 January.

Main image credit: Bigstock

President-elect Donald Trump believes Russia was likely behind the leaking of 19,000 emails from Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers during the US election run-up, he said today in a press conference.

But he added that other countries also target the US with cyber attacks, and said the DNC's security systems were not tight enough.

It came after an unauthored 35-page report, which included allegations that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the US election through cyber attacks, was published by BuzzFeed News.

Those claims have previously been made by the White House and US security officials, including the director of the office of national intelligence. Russia has consistently dismissed the allegations, saying there is no evidence for them.

CNN, which said it had also seen the document but did not publish it, claimed the report was presented in a two-page summary to President Barack Obama and Trump in a classified briefing. The report allegedly in part comprises memos written by a former British intelligence worker.

Trump indicated today, however, that he had been shown the information in its totality during a classified briefing, but went on to say: "It's a disgrace that information [in a classified intelligence briefing] would be leaked." He also intimated that the US intelligence agencies may themselves be responsible for the information being released to the public.

According to the document, a confidential informant codenamed Source E "acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of e-mail messages, emanating from the [DNC] to the Wikileaks platform. The reason for using Wikileaks was 'plausible deniability'".

WikiLeaks has previously denied Russia was its source for the DNC emails it released, and Russia has rubbished the contents of the report, according to the Guardian.

The document further alleges that "Source E claimed that the intelligence network being used against CLINTON comprised three elements. Firstly there were agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party itself; secondly Russian migr and associated offensive cyber operators based in the US; and thirdly, state-sponsored cyber operatives working in Russia".

According to the document, Russia hacked the DNC and leaked the emails in order to swing the presidential election in favour of Trump as Russian president Vladimir Putin both hated and feared Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. The Kremlin was particularly hopeful that the content of the emails would influence young people who had supported Bernie Sanders to turn to the Republican candidate.

Russia, the report claimed, later became concerned, however, that the fallout of the hack was "spiralling out of control" following negative media attention and accusations of election interference made against the Kremlin.

15/12/2016: Vladimir Putin accused of involvement in US election hack

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of being personally involved in the Russian hack during US elections, in an attempt to get revenge for criticisms by Hillary Clinton, according to reports.

Two senior US intelligence officials have told the news broadcaster they believe with "a high level of confidence" that Putin was involved in the US election hack, which resulted in a leak of data from the Democratic National Committee and from Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta's email account.

The officials told NBC News that intelligence material gathered from diplomatic sources and spies working for US allies shows that Putin personally directed how the Democratic party's data was leaked and used.

A high-level intelligence source also told the news channel that Putin's intent was originally that of a 'vendetta' against Clinton, who had often criticised him.

However, the official told NBC the hack eventually became a way to reveal corruption in US politics, and "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] could not depend on the US to be a credible global leader anymore".

According to the report, the CIA ultimately concluded that the Russian President supported Trump's election, although the FBI and other agencies do not fully agree with this.

Rex Tillerson, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, is said to have close links to Russia, having spent time there while working for ExxonMobil, oil and gas company, where he is currently CEO.

Last weekend, Trump publicly dismissed a US intelligence report concluding that Russia might have intervened in the latest US elections. The president-elect has also been antagonising intelligence agencies and questioning their competence, which has led to fears of retaliation once the new president is sworn in on 20 January.

12/12/2016: CIA warns of Trump reprisals following Russian hacking review

Leading legislators of US intelligence services have warned of possible reprisals from President-elect Donald Trump, following an internal assessment that concluded Russia had intervened during the 2016 presidential election.

Over the weekend, Trump publicly dismissed the report and questioned the competence of intelligence agencies such as the CIA, which has led to fears of retaliation once the new president is sworn on 20 January.

"When the President-elect's transition team is attempting to discredit the entire intelligence community (IC), it has never been more important for the IC and Congress to guard against possible political pressure or retaliation against intelligence analysts," said Senate intelligence committee member and Oregon Democrat, Ron Wyden, speaking to the Guardian.

Following calls for investigations over Russia's involvement in election disruption, including the hack on the Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama ordered a new review on Friday to assess current evidence. Campaigners believe that Russia made a deliberate attempt to discredit the Democratic Party with the express goal of supporting Trump.

Trump's transition team has since rejected claims he was supported by Russian-backed hackers, adding that "these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction". Trump has publicly criticised the same intelligence agencies that he will come to rely on for national security during his tenure.

"If Trump is willing to disregard sound intelligence now, and demean the hard-working and patriotic Americans who produced it, I fear what he will do as president when confronted with unpleasant truths," said Adam Schiff, leading Democrat on the House intelligence committee, speaking to the Guardian.

Schiff believes Trump is simply reacting to the idea that Russian-backed hacking helped his campaign, and that his behaviour undermines the perception of his ability to handle high-level intelligence reports.

One former CIA officer believed Trump is likely to "destroy those individuals or organisations that say or do anything that he thinks harm his precious grandiosity," although civil service laws prevent a leadership 'purge'.

This is not simply a matter of Democrats against a new Republican President, as Republicans have been caught between Trump and Russia, long seen as an enemy of the US. Leading Republicans, including anti-Trump figures Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and Democrats Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed issued a joint statement on Friday calling for a cross-party investigation into alleged Russian involvement, which they claim is an issue of national security.

"Recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American," the statement reads. "Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyber attacks.

"We are committed to working in this bipartisan manner, and we will seek to unify our colleagues around the goal of stopping the grave threats that cyber attacks conducted by foreign governments pose to our national security."

Following news of Friday's review, Schiff said: "Given President-elect Trump's disturbing refusal to listen to our intelligence community and accept that the hacking was orchestrated by the Kremlin, there is an added urgency to the need for a thorough review before President Obama leaves office next month."

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Elon Musk as one of his advisors as part of his Strategic and Policy Forum, which will help the leader decide upon business-centric policies.

The appointement follows Trump's roundtable meeting with Silicon Valley's top figures, in which he advocated for more vocational education and asked tech companies for help eliminating government inefficiencies,

Musk joins a number of other leaders who have been selected to join Trump's team, including Uber's Travis Kalanick, General Motors' Mary Barra, JPMorgan Chase & Co's Jamie Dimon and Pepsi's Indra Nooyi.

They will collectively be responsible to give Trump business insights about the business world and how he can ensure he has the support of enterprises.

"The Forum, which is composed of some of America's most highly respected and successful business leaders, will be called upon to meet with the President frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his economic agenda," a statement issued by Trump's administration said.

Following his appointment as President-elect, Trump launched the Strategic and Policy Forum, explaining that it will be used to leverage the US' position in the world economy.

"America has the most innovative and vibrant companies in the world, and the pioneering CEOs joining this Forum today are at the top of their fields," said Trump. "My Administration is going to work together with the private sector to improve the business climate and make it attractive for firms to create new jobs across the United States from Silicon Valley to the heartland."

Both Musk and Trump agree that the US is a tech powerhouse and this provides a great opportunity to "make America Great again."

President-elect Donald Trump has summoned Silicon Valley tech leaders including the CEOs of Oracle and Cisco to a roundtable meeting in New York, according to an official within his transition team.

The meeting, which the New York Times reports is scheduled to take place next Wednesday, will be the first time that the heads of major tech firms have met the incoming president since he won the election last month. Oracle chief Safra Catz and Cisco boss Chuck Robbins confirmed their attendance to the Times, but other company leaders did not respond.

The tech industry at large was vehemently opposed to Trump's candidacy, and more than 140 industry players signed an open letter in July denouncing him as "a disaster for innovation". So strong was the opposition that several figures in Silicon Valley have even backed plans for California to secede from the United States altogether.

Trump, for his part, has largely responded in kind. He has made dramatic threats, such as investigating Amazon for its "huge antitrust problem" and forcing Apple to move its manufacturing stateside.

While the exact details are unknown, it is likely that next week's meeting will involve Trump attempting to get the tech industry in line with his presidential goals - namely increased US investment and job creation.

"I think he'd be wrong not to meet with them," said Creative Intellect UK analyst Bola Rotibi. "My interest would be in how he balances his rhetoric with reality," she said, pointing out that Trump cannot deal with the tech industry in isolation.

"Whatever he does for the tech industry he has to do for all industry," she said. "He can't make one rule for Apple and Microsoft and one rule for everyone else."

Spearheading these efforts will be Trump's top tech policy wonk, Peter Thiel. The PayPal co-founder and prominent Silicon Valley investor was one of the only figures in the tech industry to openly back Trump's campaign, and he has been given a prime spot in the new administration.

Japanese firm SoftBank, which bought ARM earlier this year, has already committed to creating 50,000 US jobs through $50 billion in investment, although experts have suggested that this may have been the company's plan regardless of who won the election.

Picture: Bigstock

Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman has admitted changing posts written by Donald Trump supporters on the internet forum.

He explained he redirected abuse targeted at him to moderators of the r/the_donald thread instead, but even this small action, rather than editing the content of the posts led to people accusing him of censorship.

Huffman said his decision to change the posts was a response to the attacks he received after the sharing site removed a thread suggesting Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief were involved in a paedophile ring that was running from a pizza restaurant in Washington DC.

The owner of the pizza restaurant contacted social media sites including Reddit asking them to take the posts down because he was receiving death threats from people who believed the conspiracy.

"It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff," Huffman said in a post on Reddit. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a paedophile constantly. As the CEO, I shouldn't play such games, and it's all fixed now."

He added that users of Reddit weren't the only ones who were angry with the website's CEO tweaking posts his staff were also upset he had put the network's reputation in jeapardy.

Huffman's controversial actions come only a few months after he returned to Reddit as the company's CEO. Although he co-founded the site, he left to work on travel service Hipmunk, but came back last year when previous interim chief executive Ellen Pao resigned.

Pao was forced to leave the company when Reddit moderators closed parts of the site down as a protest to the firing of community manager Victoria Taylor. However, it has since come to light that co-founder and board member Alexis Ohanian was responsible for the decision.

President elect Donald Trump could dissolve the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) when he takes office - if he follows the advice of one of the members of his tech policy transition team.

In a blog post written in late October, Mark Jamison, who on Monday became one of Trump's two advisors on technology, claimed the FCC, which protects consumer rights with regards to telecoms in the US, was "overkill" when it came to the prevention of monopolies.

The FCC notably upheld the principle of net neutrality in early 2015, voting three to two in favour of an open and free internet, thwarting some internet service providers' plans to introduce 'fast lanes' for some web content in exchange for charging customers a fee.

But Jamison's post read: "Most of the original motivations for having an FCC have gone away. Telecommunications network providers and ISPs are rarely, if ever, monopolies. If there are instances where there are monopolies, it would seem overkill to have an entire federal agency dedicated to ex ante regulation of their services."

"Content on the web competes well with content provided by broadcasters, seeming to eliminate any need for FCC oversight of broadcasters. Perhaps there is need for rules for use of the airwaves during times of emergency, but that can be handled without regulating the content providers themselves," he added.

Jamison puts forward three reasons that the FCC still exists: political inertia, as it's a cumbersome process to dissolve a government agency; some businesses and other groups have a vested interest in its continued existence and are able to apply political pressure to ensure it remains intact; and that it's important for radio spectrum allocation to be regulated.

Despite appearances, Jamison does not argue for total deregluation, however. Instead he states that the oversight and prevention of monopolies should fall under the purview of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), while an independent regulator of some sorts - but not the FCC - should oversee the provision of radio spectrum.

"Thus, at the end of the day, we don't need the FCC, but we still need an independent agency," he said.

Donald Trump's surprise win has sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley, with some prominent tech entrepreneurs even pushing for California to leave the United States of America.

The state is located deep in Democrat heartland, and voted overwhelmingly for Clinton in the presidential election on Tuesday.

Following Trump's unexpected victory, HyperLoop co-founder Shervin Pishevar reignited interest in a movement wishing to make California a free and independent territory, which was started last year by activist Louis Marinelli.

Pishevar, along with other well-known figures in the Valley, pledged political and financial support for the campaign. It has taken inspiration from Brexit and other European seccessionist movements, and is aiming to force a referendum on the issue by 2019.

The supporters of New California', as the independent state would be called, argue that its thriving economy, diverse population and progressive views make it better suited to being a self-contained body than part of the union. In fact, California has the largest economy in the country and the sixth-largest economy in the world, according to the IMF.

Silicon Valley has been apprehensive about the thought of a Trump presidency, as he has had a somewhat chequered relationship with the industry. He has had personal conflicts with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and has threatened to crack down on the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs by companies like Apple.

Trump's sole vocal supporters among the tech community are PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey.

It seems some Americans are also looking to flee to New Zealand, as their immigration website was knocked offline due to a surge of traffic as the US election results came in.

This follows the crash of Canada's immigration site on Wednesday as US voters began to reel from a shock win for Donald Trump.

The website run by Immigration New Zealand (INZ) received 56,300 visits in 24 hours, an almost 2,500% increase over the daily average of 2,300 visits.

Americans expressed their dismay at the election results on Twitter, with many considering New Zealand as their best bet.

New Zealand Now, a partner website offering advice for living and working in the country, saw a similar surge in traffic over the same period.

"In the 24 hours up to 9am local time on Wednesday, NZ Now received 70,500 visits from the US compared to a usual daily average of 1,500 visits," said Greg Forsythe, marking manager at INZ, speaking to the BBC.

American visitors made almost 7,300 registrations of interest in 24 hours, according to Forsythe, up from the normal 3,000.

09/11/2016: US voters crash Canada's immigration website after Trump win

A surge in traffic following Donald Trump's victory in the US election crashed the official website for Canada immigration, officials have confirmed.

People initially linked the outage with Trump's surprise win, saying it showed Clinton supporters were looking into the possibility of leaving the US altogether.

A spokeswoman has since told IT Pro that the crash was indeed down to a "significant increase" in traffic experienced earlier today.

She said: "On November 8th, The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship website (cic.gc.ca) became temporarily inaccessible to users as a result of a significant increase in the volume of traffic. Shared Services Canada worked through the night and continues to work to resolve the issue to ensure that the website is available for users as soon as possible.

"Please note that the Government of Canada is committed to secure and reliable IT infrastructure to ensure high quality services to all users."

Following Trump's victory, the website for Citizenship and Immigration Canada simply displayed a 'This site can't be reached' page, with some observers attributing this to plenty of Democrat-voting Americans trying to apply to live in Canada.

Parks & Recreation star Ben Schwartz tweeted: "I was gonna write this as a joke but found out it was real. The Canada Citizenship and Immigration site crashed around 8 PM"."

The site has since come back online, though the outage was one of several technical difficulties experienced at the close of the US election.

A Utah call centre providing a get-out-the-vote service for Hillary Clinton's campaign, called TCN, was a target of Republican-motivated hackers, according to The Verge.

A user posted on 4chan to say they would attack any pro-Clinton campaign tools "like a wild animal", using DDoS attacks based on the open source Mirai botnet to bring them down.

Only last month, a 4chan user managed to hack into Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's iCloud account and remotely wipe his iPhone, using a password published by WikiLeaks.

This story was originally published at 11.22am, and was updated at 2.15pm to include comment from a spokeswoman for the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship website.

Donald Trump's Aberdeenshire golf resort will not be investigated or prosecuted, despite failing to register with the Information Commissioner's Office under the Data Protection Act.

Every company that handles personal information is required by law to register under the DPA, but Trump International Golf Links Scotland, established in 2012, failed to do so until Thursday, the ICO told IT Pro.

The hotel and golf course complex has now registered under the act, and the data privacy watchdog says that it has no intentions of prosecuting the organisation for its four-year lapse.

"Where data controllers respond to advice from the ICO that they need to notify and complete the registration process," a spokesperson said, "it generally would not be a proportionate response to then commence a prosecution.

"We treat those that we regulate in a consistent way and to pursue the golf course in these circumstances would be inconsistent to how we have dealt with others in similar circumstances."

However, an ICO spokesman pointed out to IT Pro that just because an organisation is registered under the Data Protection Act does not mean that it is automatically compliant with it. Trump's resort could still find itself in hot water if it does not take adequate steps to ensure the security of its' customers' data.

The company, which claims to have hosted tens of thousands of guests, told The Guardian that the lack of registration was a "clerical oversight".

"We take the security of our employees and guests' personal data very seriously," a statement read, "and comply with all aspects of the Data Protection Act."

More than 140 technology leaders have signed an open letter criticising Donald Trump's candidacy for the US Presidency, saying the outspoken contender would be a "disaster for innovation".

Luminaries who put their names to the letter include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Katie Stanton, CMO of Color Genomics and the former VP of Global Media at Twitter, Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie, Facebook VP of product design Margaret Stewart, and Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp.

The letter includes inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, researchers and business leaders.

"We believe in an inclusive country that fosters opportunity, creativity and a level playing field. Donald Trump does not," the letter, started by Stanton, reads.

"He campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline.

"We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation. His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people, and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economyand that provide the foundation for innovation and growth."

The signatories criticised Trump's aggressive stance on the free movement of people, saying "progressive immigration policies help us attract and retain some of the brightest minds on earthscientists, entrepreneurs, and creators".

They said that Trump's proposal to "shut down" parts of the internet as a security strategy demonstrates "both poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works".

And they added that the candidate's own policies lack transparency: "Donald Trump articulates few policies beyond erratic and contradictory pronouncements. His reckless disregard for our legal and political institutions threatens to upend what attracts companies to start and scale in America."

The letter closes saying that the signatories want a candidate who embraces freedom of expression, openness to newcomers, equality of opportunity, public investments in research and infrastructure, and respect for the rule of law.

"We embrace an optimistic vision for a more inclusive country, where American innovation continues to fuel opportunity, prosperity and leadership."

This open letter is follows the refusal of other members of the technology community to endorse Trump and his controversial views.

In June, it embraced that Apple will reported not provide any funding or support to the Republican National Convention, citing Trump's comments about women, immigrants and minorities.

However, US entrepreneur and billionaire Peter Thiel is supporting Trump.

Trump Hotel Collection, the hotel business belonging to US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, has fallen victim to an attack on its credit card systems, the company has confirmed, blaming the attack on "cyber terrorists".

The hack first came to light when banking sources told security researcher Brian Krebs they had noticed "a pattern of fraud on customer credit cards that suggests hackers have breached credit card systems at some - if not all - of the Trump Hotel Collection properties".

Also known as Trump Hotels, the business owns several luxury hotels located primarily in the US, but also Canada, Brazil and the UK.

In a statement to IT Pro, Eric Trump, Donald Trump's son and one of the co-managers of Trump Hotels, said: "Like virtually every other company these days, we are routinely targeted by cyber terrorists whose only focus is to inflict harm on great American businesses. We are in the midst of a thorough investigation on this matter and are working with the US Secret Service and the FBI to help catch these criminals and prosecute [them] to the full extent of the law."

"We are committed to safeguarding all guests' personal information and will continue to do so vigilantly," he added.

The organisation was the subject of a credit card system breach last July, which was discovered after several banks traced back strings of fraudulent transactions to stays at Trump Hotel properties, pointing to it as the root of the breach.

But this is also the latest case in a long list of international hotel firms being targeted by criminals for the credit card information they hold.

Tod Beardsley, security research manager at security firm Rapid7, described the news as "eerily familiar".

"While it's possible that the real story behind the breach could be anything from a disgruntled insider, to a breach of the core IT systems used in Trump properties, or some unique method of obtaining credit card data from Trump customers, [it] sounds like many of the point-of-sale (POS) compromises that have recently hit major hotel and hospitality companies over the last 18 months," he said.

"I would be surprised if the techniques used by the attackers in this case were substantively different from those used against Starwood, Hyatt, and Hilton. We've seen that in the hotel industry, the POS systems are generally the weakest link in the IT chain, and technically savvy criminal organisations have clearly figured this out," he added.

Trump Hotels has told Krebs it is looking into these latest reports. IT Pro also approached the company for a response to the apparent breach, but had not received a reply at the time of publication.

Main image credit: Tony Webster on Flickr

This article was originally published on 05/04/2016 and has since been updated with additional information, most recently on 06/04/2016.

US presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for help from Bill Gates et al to shut down the internet in an attempt to combat the radicalisation of young people.

He explained the measures he thinks the government must take in an address to the public, where he also claimed the US should stop Muslims entering the country if authorities are to stop terrorist attacks.

"We're losing a lot of people because of the internet," Trump said. "We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people."

He explained that children are using the internet to watch videos about becoming terror masterminds and this openness is having a detrimental effect on them and the country as a whole.

However, Trump didn't reveal any further information about how exactly his government would "close up the internet," or censor parts of the web if his campaign is successful and he overthrows Barack Obama.

At his campaign rally on Second World War aircraft carrier the USS Yorktown in South Carolina, Trump expressed concerns that those already in power in the US were failing to combat terrorism, but explained his proposed solutions will have the desired effect.

Earlier in the week, Barack Obama called for technology companies to unite in order to stop terrorists gaining more power following the attacks in San Bernadino.

"I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice," he said.