Australian leader backs Zuckerberg’s grilling in Parliament

CANBERRA, Australia  — Australia’s prime minister said on Thursday he would welcome Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testifying to an Australian parliamentary committee on the social media giant’s sharing of data with Chinese phone maker Huawei.

Leaders of Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security have raised the prospect of the 34-year-old multi-billionaire being invited to explain Facebook’s relationships with Huawei. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull supported the call for Zuckerberg to fly more than 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) from Menlo Park in California to face lawmakers in Canberra.

“I would welcome Facebook coming and testifying before our parliamentary committees, yes,” Turnbull told reporters. “Of course, we’d love to see the boss.”


Huawei said Wednesday it has never collected or stored Facebook user data, after Facebook acknowledged it shared such data with Huawei and other manufacturers.

Huawei, a company flagged by US intelligence officials as a national security threat and barred on security grounds from involvement in Australia’s National Broadband Network, was the latest device maker at the center of a fresh wave of allegations over Facebook’s handling of private data.

Chinese firms Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL were among numerous handset makers that were given access to Facebook data in a “controlled” way approved by Facebook, according to a statement Tuesday from Francisco Varela,
Facebook’s vice president of mobile partnerships.

Facebook said it would end its data partnership with Huawei by the end of this week.

It’s the latest privacy gaffe for Facebook since allegations emerged in March that a Trump-affiliated political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly harvested data of Facebook users in an effort to influence elections.

The Australian committee, like a court, can summons witnesses to give evidence, although it is questionable whether a witness outside Australia could be compelled to attend. In practice, committees always invite rather than compel witnesses to attend hearings.

Facebook was asked by The Associated Press whether Zuckerberg would accept such an invitation.

Facebook replied with a statement on Thursday: “We will be providing the Australian government with more information about the device-integrated APIs,” referring to Application Programming Interfaces that enable servers to communicate directly.

The committee’s chairman Andrew Hastie and deputy chairman Anthony Byrne say Facebook owed answers to its 15 million Australian users.

“It is completely unacceptable that information from Facebook users has been slyly handed over to Huawei by Facebook,” Byrne told The Australian newspaper. “I want to know why Mr. Zuckerberg allowed this to happen. If need be, he will be invited to appear” before the committee, Byrne added.

Byrne was not immediately available for comment on Thursday, but his office confirmed that he had been accurately quoted.

Zuckerberg has been called to give evidence to US congressional committees and the European Parliament in recent months over user privacy breaches. /ee

source: technology.inquirer.net

Feds say they’ve accessed phone at center of Apple data case

NEW YORK—The US justice department said it has withdrawn a request to force Apple to reveal data from a cellphone linked to a New York drug case after someone provided federal investigators with the phone’s passcode.

Federal prosecutors said in a letter to US District Judge Margo Brodie that investigators were able to access the iPhone late Thursday night after using the passcode.

The government said it no longer needs Apple’s assistance to unlock the iPhone and is withdrawing its request for an order requiring Apple’s cooperation in the drug case.

“As we have said previously, these cases have never been about setting a court precedent; they are about law enforcement’s ability and need to access evidence on devices pursuant to lawful court orders and search warrants,” justice department spokesperson Emily Pierce said in a statement on Friday.

The justice department had sought to compel the Cupertino, California-based Apple to cooperate in the drug case, even though it had recently dropped a fight to compel Apple to help break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a December attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 people. In that case, a still-unidentified third-party came forward with a technique that managed to open the phone. That entity has not been named, and the justice department has not revealed the method used.

Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday night.

The tech giant had been fighting the justice department’s attempts and said in court papers last week the government’s request was extraordinary because there is likely minimal evidentiary value of any data on the phone and that Congress never authorized it to pursue such requests through the 1789 All Writs Act. It also said there is no proof Apple’s assistance was necessary and that the same technique the FBI was using to get information from the phone in California might work with the drug case phone.

But prosecutors had argued that the government needed Apple’s assistance to access the data, which they contended was “authorized to search by warrant.”

On Thursday, several law enforcement groups filed arguments in Brooklyn federal court saying they feared the public will stop aiding police if Apple is allowed to refuse to give up information from the phone in the drug case. The groups said they supported the government’s efforts to try to reverse a magistrate judge’s ruling earlier this year for Apple.

source: technology.inquirer.net