Russian authorities and major internet providers are planning to disconnect the country from the internet as part of a planned experiment, Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting (RBK) reported last week.

The reason for the experiment is to gather insight and provide feedback and modifications to a proposed law introduced in the Russian Parliament in December 2018.

A first draft of the law mandated that Russian internet providers should ensure the independence of the Russian internet space (Runet) in the case of foreign aggression to disconnect the country from the rest of the internet.

In addition, Russian telecom firms would also have to install "technical means" to re-route all Russian internet traffic to exchange points approved or managed by Roskomnazor, Russia's telecom watchdog.

Apple and Google are facing criticism for hosting a Saudi Arabian smartphone app on their platforms which allows men to track women’s movements and “stop them leaving the country.”

According to Insider, the app, named Absher — which is available on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store — is “a government web service which allows men to specify when and how women can cross Saudi borders, and to get close to real-time SMS updates when they travel.”

Melbourne, Australia - Members of the UighurMuslim community in Australia are renewing calls for action from the government amid reports that a number of Australian permanent residents are effectively trapped in China's Xinjiang province.

The Guardian reported on Monday that at least 17 Australian residents are being held under house arrest, in prison or detained in so-called "re-education" centres in the far western region of Xinjiang, also referred to by some Uighurs as East Turkistan.

They are thought to have been detained while on trips to visit relatives in China and some have family members who are Australian citizens.

"As soon as they arrive, their passport is taken away because they're holding a Chinese passport, even though they have permanent residency," Nurgul Sawut, the Uighur-Australian activist who provided The Guardian with the details of the 17 affected, told Al Jazeera.

Russian authorities and major internet providers are planning to disconnect the country from the internet as part of a planned experiment, Russian news agency RosBiznesKonsalting (RBK) reported last week.

A first draft of the law mandated that Russian internet providers should ensure the independence of the Russian internet space (Runet) in the case of foreign aggression to disconnect the country from the rest of the internet.

Reddit, which censors dissidents in America, is now being funded by Tencent, a multi-billion dollar company which censors dissidents in China.

From NewsBusters, "Chinese Censorship Company Invests Millions in Reddit":

What happens when the front page of the internet is funded by the company that made the Great Firewall in China?

Reddit, the internet forum for communities, posts, and news, is currently fundraising to keep itself afloat, with a $300 million goal. Half of that goal has already been met, thanks to a massive investment of $150 million from Chinese censorship company Tencent. The company is in charge of blocking, blacklisting and preventing internet access to certain groups, sites, and information in China. Ironically, Tencent is responsible for the banning of Reddit in China.

World-acclaimed musician and song-writer Roger Waters has sent the following endorsement of the demonstrations that the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Australia has called in March to demand that the Australian government immediately act to secure the freedom of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The rally in Sydney will be addressed by respected journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger.

Roger Waters, 9th February 2019

Switzerland

Julian Assange is a national Australian treasure. He is a brilliant, brave, honest, humane, relevant, genuine, journalist and publisher of immense influence and significance on the world stage. He has shown himself to be an enormous power for good in a world that is sadly, with some notable exceptions, (Yes John Pilger, I mean you among others,) starved of his ilk.

Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online 'almost constantly', according to the latest Pew Research Center poll, increasing concerns, about what The Atlantic's Jean Twenge calls the most crucial question of our age... "have smartphones destroyed a generation?"

Microsoft has told the remaining users of Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) that it will cut off support years earlier than promised, saying it would end security updates for the browser in January 2020.

IE11 will replace IE10 on systems running Windows Server 2012.

"Starting in the spring of 2019, commercial customers running Windows Server 2012 and Windows Embedded 8 Standard can begin using IE11 in their test environments or pilot rings," wrote Suchithra Gopinath, a Microsoft program manager, in a 28 January post to a company blog.

"You will have until January 2020 to complete the transition from IE10 to IE11. After this, we will not release any security or non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content changes for IE10."

Enrique Tarrio, who is the Chairman of the Proud Boys fraternal organization, had his personal Chase bank account shut down abruptly earlier this week.

In a letter obtained exclusively by Big League Politics, the bank informs him that he must shut down all of his accounts by April 1st, 2019, without giving a reason.

This comes just days after Chase Bank’s payment processor, Chase Paymentech, de-platformed him on a website he runs that allows groups and charities to sell merchandise, and raise money for causes. The website, 1776.shop, is most known for selling the famous “Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong” shirts which Stone was spotted in during the late-night arrest at his home.

Tarrio has been facing months of backlash for his affiliation with the Proud Boys, first getting onto the radar in an article published on The Daily Beast, which asserts that people of color are joining white supremacist organizations. Tarrio is both Cuban, and black, and was profiled in that article.

Firefighters tackling a blaze at an Ocado warehouse had to doge independently moving robots to find the one that started the fire.

Around 300 firefighters and 20 engines tackled the blaze which broke out in Andover, Hampshire at 2.44am on Tuesday morning and spread overnight, damaging around 10% of the business's capacity.

The fire was contained before it escalated again on Wednesday - forcing firefighters to set up a 500m exclusion zone over fears that a three-tonne cylinder of toxic ammonia gas in the building might explode.

The 'customer fulfilment centre' has 1,110 battery-powered robots that sort and package groceries for delivery and the section in which the blaze broke out has 600, some of which continued to move on their metal grids as firefighters worked around them.

Cyber criminals are always looking for brand new ways of making money and causing destruction — or, even better, both at once.

The last 12 months have seen a boom in malicious cryptocurrency mining whereby cyber attackers secretly hijack the processing power of computers, servers and even IoT devices and use it to mine for cryptocurrency. While it might not be rapidly lucrative for the crooks involved, it's stealthy and can be sustained over a long period of time — and most users don't even know their machine's processor is being used to line someone else's pockets.

Three years after Apple refused to give the federal government access to the devices used by the San Bernadino terrorists who killed and injured dozens in a mass shooting event, the company has given the office of the Special Counsel complete access to Trump advisor Roger Stone’s iCloud account, reports Apple Insider.

According to the Washington Post, Apple objected to giving the federal government backdoor access to the shooters iPhones, claiming it would “set a dangerous precedent.”

“From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought.”

A scammer was found to be manually abusing YouTube’s automated copyright system in an effort to hold YouTube channels ransom.

By submitting multiple fake copyright “flags” on videos, the scammer was able to bring at least two YouTube accounts to the brink of automatic deactivation under YouTube’s “three strikes” policy, even getting past YouTube employees who double-checked the suspicious claim.

“We striked you. Our request is $150 PayPal or $75 [Bitcoin],” read one message received by ObbyRaidz, a small gaming channel with fewer than 8,000 subscribers. “Once we receive our payment we will cancel both strikes on your channel.”

Media outlets the world over are increasingly utilizing artificial intelligence in the race to break stories at a faster, cheaper rate than their competitors.

With several robo-journalism options available and firms edging for market share, the increasing capabilities of machines are encroaching further on the territory of human editors and reporters across all platforms.

What are the details?

Software-generated reports are heavy utilized in areas where quick figures are needed such as in financial journalism, sports statistics, and analyzing polling or other data. According to the New York Times, Bloomberg News uses automated technology in roughly a third of its content, racing against Reuters and even hedge funds to compete in delivering the latest business news.

Cyber-criminal groups are exploiting a Gmail feature to file for fraudulent unemployment benefits, file fake tax returns, and bypass trial periods for online services.

The trick is an old one and has been used in the past. It refers to Gmail's "dot accounts," a feature of Gmail addresses that ignores dot characters inside Gmail usernames, regardless of their placement.

For example, Google considers john.doe@gmail.com, jo.hn.doe@gmail.com, and johndoe@gmail.com as the same Gmail address.

Regular users have been using this feature for years to register free trial accounts at online services using the same email address, but spelled out in different ways.

On paper, it looks as if San Francisco shouldn’t have a homelessness problem. There are as many permanent housing beds as people who need them. The city spends hundreds of millions of dollars to help get people off the streets, and last year voters approved a measure to raise $300 million annually to tackle the issue by taxing local companies. Yet there are about 7,500 homeless in the city because of soaring rents and the difficulty of treating substance abuse, mental illness, and other health concerns.

Sales of a mobile phone with crypto-protection technology Kruiz-K, which is immune to hacking and wiretapping, have started in Russia, the press service of Russian state corporation Rostec told Sputnik on Sunday, specifying that the price of the device amounted to around 85,000 rubles ($1,298).

"The phone is already commercially available. Our concern Avtomatika is in charge of its serial production and deliveries. One can order it, and the terms of production will depend on the scope of the batch. The price of one device makes around 85,000 rubles. Individuals cannot purchase it in retail, while an entity can buy any amount, starting from one device… It is impossible to hack the phone and wiretap it," the press service said.

Rostec refused to reveal any details about the technologies that were used, but said that the operating system of the phone had been designed by Avtomatika. The real-time system was significantly stripped down for information security reasons.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido’s calls for Venezuelans to abandon Nicolas Maduro’s government are booming across the world outside, but the self-declared interim president is having a harder time delivering his message at home.

Watchdog groups in Venezuela and abroad say Guaido’s efforts to reach citizens via the internet have been hindered by the dominant provider — state-run CANTV — in a country where critical newspapers and broadcast media already have been muzzled.

Since Jan. 23, when Guaido proclaimed himself interim president and when protests against Maduro’s rule broke out, CANTV has blocked access to social media sites at least four times, according to the monitoring groups.

Those disruptions have coincided with politically significant events, including a rally attended by thousands of people last week and a Jan. 27 night speech that Guaido livestreamed on Periscope to call for a new round of protests and urge members of the military to defect.

Facebook has deleted hundreds of fake accounts, groups and pages which it claims are linked to Iran.

The head of Facebook’s cyber-security department, Tanil Glitscher, said in a letter earlier this week that the accounts were “engaging in false and covert activity on Facebook and Instagram,” which is owned by the social media giant. These accounts specifically targeted people around the world, especially in the Middle East and South Asia, Glitscher added.

The company added that the content of these accounts and pages was related to issues such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as the wars in Syria and Yemen. In some cases, the accounts’ content acted as “reorientation of the content of the Iranian government media”.

However, Facebook stressed that it had deleted the accounts because of their activities, rather than the content they were publishing.

A Federal Communications Commission lawyer faced a skeptical panel of judges today as the FCC defended its repeal of net neutrality rules and deregulation of the broadband industry.

FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson struggled to explain why broadband shouldn't be considered a telecommunications service, and struggled to explain the FCC's failure to protect public safety agencies from Internet providers blocking or slowing down content.

Oral arguments were held today in the case, which is being decided by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (Audio of the four-hour-plus oral arguments is available here.) Throttling of firefighters' data plans played a major role in today's oral arguments.

On the evening before National Security Advisor John Bolton reiterated that "all options [including, presumably, military intervention] are on the table" regarding the situation in Venezuela, Twitter announced that it had joined the US-backed coup by taking down 2,000 accounts that it said were engaged in a "state-backed influence campaign", according to RT.

In a blog post, Twitter said it removed 1,196 accounts located in Venezuela which it deemed to "appear to be engaged in a state-backed influence campaign targeting domestic audiences." The company also removed another 764 accounts, but said "we are unable to definitively tie the accounts located in Venezuela to information operations of a foreign government against another country."

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has been slammed for 'lying' after she defended the social media giant's controversial research app that was 'preying' on teenagers as young as 13 by paying them to supply data and have all their phone activity monitored.

In an interview Sandberg said the teens who took part in the 'research project' had 'consented' to share the information and therefore knew what they were getting into.

Facebook has come under fire from all sides for the latest in a series of privacy disasters, with pundits describing their actions as 'shameful' and comparing the firm to a 'criminal enterprise' in light of the latest revelations.

Two weeks after leaving her position as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. National Security Agency in 2014, Lori Stroud was in the Middle East working as a hacker for an Arab monarchy.

She had joined Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.

Stroud and her team, working from a converted mansion in Abu Dhabi known internally as “the Villa,” would use methods learnt from a decade in the U.S intelligence community to help the UAE hack into the phones and computers of its enemies.

A phishing campaign is underway that pretends to be from American Express and states that there is a security issue with your credit card. It then prompts you to open an attached HTML phishing form that will send the inputted information back to the scammers.

BleepingComputer first heard about this phishing scam from myonlinesecurity.co.uk, but when researching this further we have seen numerous variants being sent since October 2018. All of these variants utilize the same theme of there being a security review of your credit card that found issues that require you to send your information through an attached form and create a new online account.