TECHNOLOGY

Forget Huawei, US spying on Denmark shows the real threat for European countries comes from Washington

Published

4 years ago

November 17, 2020

Revelations that America engaged in surveillance on Denmark should come as no surprise. It has consistently spied on its allies, and its efforts to vilify Huawei are simply an attempt to create a smokescreen.

Denmark’s public broadcaster DK has revealed, citing anonymous sources, that the US National Security Agency (NSA) cooperated with the country’s intelligence services in spying on the Danish ministries of finance and foreign affairs.

The purpose was to gather information on Denmark’s fighter jet acquisition program, with Washington aiming to secure Copenhagen’s procurement of Lockheed Martin F-35s at the expense of European defense firms.

The story, while covered in Denmark and the Netherlands, was largely ignored in the English-speaking international media. The espionage scandal comes at a time when Washington is aggressively pushing the idea of a “clean network”, demanding that European countries exclude the Chinese firm Huawei from their telecommunications networks amid allegations that it is an “espionage risk.”

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However, that isn’t what is happening here. The “clean network” isn’t really clean at all, and the threat to European countries lies far closer to home than Beijing. The US has a long, well-established history of utilizing its intelligence agreements to spy on European countries for commercial reasons, not least when it comes to the bidding of the ‘military-industrial complex.’ Yet, instead of being concerned about this, the public and media have lost themselves in hysteria about a single company, Huawei, whose alleged complicity in espionage has never been proven.

What is the military-industrial complex? The term refers to an oligarchy of American multinational aerospace and defense contractors which constitute the backbone of the US military, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, to name a few. These companies exert a disproportionate influence over American politics in order to uphold their enormous profit margins.

They employ a number of strategies to do so, which include the funding of think tanks that actively promote aggressive and military-led foreign policies, such as the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). But more alarmingly their representatives and lobbyists are immersed within the Washington DC system itself. Take for example Nikki Haley, who was until recently a member of Boeing’s executive board. What does she know about aerospace engineering? Nothing. What does she know about promoting war and neo-conservative policies? Plenty.

Yet this isn’t all. What this revelation in Denmark reminds us is that the military-industrial complex also coordinates with US intelligence to promote their interests, even undermining competitors within allied countries.

For example, in 1994 it is publicly documented that the US Echelon program undermined a deal between the European firm Airbus and Saudi Arabia in order to secure a $6 billion contract for Boeing. Likewise, it was revealed several years ago that the NSA had spied on Germany’s Chancellery for decades. What has happened in Denmark is not new, it’s part of a trend.

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Despite the US spying on European countries with a view to promoting military-industrial complex interests, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s backing for the “clean network” comes with claims that the scheme promotes privacy and data security by excluding “untrusted vendors.” But it’s obvious that such a network does not exist because the US is able to infiltrate it at will; it is a disingenuous façade.

The real reason the US seeks to exclude Huawei is not on legitimate security grounds, but to uphold its strategic monopoly over the global internet and network surveillance. Whether Huawei spies or not – and nothing has ever proved it does – it is nonetheless a company which is not under the political control of the US and its intelligence partners, which makes its networks harder to infiltrate and subvert.

The US hasn’t aggressively promoted its anti-Huawei campaign because it cares and acts in good faith. It has done so because there is an obvious set of interests which the rise of the Chinese company challenges, and Huawei’s growing influence also brushes against the military-industrial complex as well as America’s various internet surveillance efforts, such as Prism.

Thus, the message should be this: forget China, the US is the biggest, most advanced and most unrivaled advocate of global surveillance in the world, much of it publicly documented and verified. Not only does America frequently spy on countries it claims to be its allies, but it also seeks to undermine their commercial interests to ensure the global monopoly and profit margins of the military-industrial complex are sustained.

Therefore, what is described as “the clean network” is little more than hypocrisy from Pompeo, a packaged lie designed to sustain a status quo which favors Washington, and which a Chinese telecommunications firm poses a threat to.

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TECHNOLOGY

How much YouTube pays for 1 million views, according to creators

Published

2 years ago

May 6, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

YouTube creators earn money from Google-placed ads on their videos.

A number of factors determine how much money they make, including video views.

Creators said how much YouTube pays for 1 million views ranged from $3,400 to $30,000.

While many factors — content niche and country, among them — determine how much money a YouTuber earns on any particular video, the number of views it gets is perhaps the most significant.

When a YouTube video hits 1 million views, there’s almost a guaranteed big payday for its creator. In some cases, creators can make five-figures from a single video if it accrues that many views.

Three creators explained how much money YouTube had paid them. YouTube pays $3,400 to $30,000 for 1 million views, these creators said.

When tech creator Shelby Church spoke with Insider, she had earned $30,000 from a video about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). At the time, the video had accrued 1.8 million views.

Her RPM rate — or earnings per 1,000 views — are relatively high, she said, because of her content niche. Business, personal finance, and technology channels tend to earn more per view.

“YouTubers don’t always make a ton of money, and it really depends on what kind of videos you’re making,” she said.

Influencers can earn 55% of a video’s ad revenue if they are part of YouTube’s Partner Program, or YPP. To qualify for the program, they must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on their long-form videos.

They can also make money from shorts, YouTube’s short-form video offering. In order to qualify, creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers. YouTube pools ad revenue from shorts and pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing. Creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.

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TECHNOLOGY

Tesla employees shared sensitive images recorded by cars – Reuters

Published

2 years ago

April 8, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Some pictures were turned into memes and distributed through internal chats, former workers told the agency

Tesla workers shared “highly invasive” images and videos recorded by customers’ electric cars, making fun of them on internal chat groups, several former employees of Elon Musk’s company have told Reuters.

The electric-car manufacturer obtains consent from its clients to collect data from vehicles in order to improve its self-driving technology. However, the company assures owners that the whole system is “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy,” the agency pointed out in its report on Thursday.

According to nine former workers who talked to the agency, groups of employees shared private footage of customers in Tesla’s internal one-on-one chats between 2019 and 2022.

One of the clips in question captured a man approaching his electric car while he was completely naked, one of the sources said.

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Others featured crashes and road-rage incidents. One particular video of a Tesla hitting a child on a bike in a residential area spread around the company’s office in San Mateo, California “like wildfire,” an ex-employee claimed.

“I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected… We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” another former worker told the agency.

Seven former employees also told Reuters that the software they used at work allowed them to see the location where the photo or video was made, despite Tesla assuring its customers that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.”

The agency noted that it could not obtain any of the pictures or clips described by its sources, who said they were all deleted. Some former employees also told the journalists that they had only seen private data being shared for legitimate purposes, such as seeking assistance for colleagues. Tesla did not respond when approached for comment on the issue by Reuters.

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TECHNOLOGY

Nordic nation’s military bans use of TikTok – media

Published

2 years ago

March 27, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Sweden’s Defense Ministry has reportedly barred employees from using the Chinese-owned app on their work phones

Sweden’s military has reportedly cracked down on TikTok, decreeing that staff members are no longer allowed to use the Chinese-owned video-sharing application on their devices at work because of security concerns.

The Swedish Defense Ministry on Monday issued its decision, which was viewed by Agence-France Presse, banning the use of TikTok. Security concerns were raised based on “the reporting that has emerged through open sources regarding how the app handles user information and the actions of the owner company, ByteDance,” the ministry said.

The move follows similar restrictions imposed by other EU countries in recent weeks. For example, France banned government employees from downloading “recreational applications,” including TikTok, on their work phones. Norway barred use of the app on devices that can access its parliament’s computer network, while the UK and Belgium banned it on all government phones. Denmark’s Defense Ministry and Latvia’s Foreign Ministry imposed their TikTok bans earlier this month.

China responds to TikTok allegations

“Using mobile phones and tablets can in itself be a security risk, so therefore we don’t want TikTok on our work equipment,” Swedish Defense Ministry press secretary Guna Graufeldt told AFP.

The US, Canada and New Zealand previously banned their federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, citing fears of ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Members of Congress may try to ban the app from the US market altogether after testimony at a congressional hearing last week by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew failed to ease their security concerns. “They’ve actually united Republicans and Democrats out of the concern of allowing the CCP to control the most dominant media platform in America,” US Representative Mike Gallagher said on Sunday in an ABC News interview.

Chinese officials have denied claims that TikTok is used to collect the personal data of its American users. “The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters last week. She added that Washington has attacked TikTok without providing any evidence that it threatens US security.

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