SCOTUS tears down Sacklers’ immunity, blowing up opioid settlement

[Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  DLH]

SCOTUS tears down Sacklers’ immunity, blowing up opioid settlement

Majority of justices ruled on meaning of legal code; dissenters called it “ruinous”
By Beth Mole

Jun 27 2024

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/06/opioid-settlement-toppled-as-scotus-rejects-sacklers-immunity-in-5-4-ruling/

In a 5-4 ruling, the US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an opioid settlement plan worth billions over the deal’s stipulation that the billionaire Sackler family would get lifetime immunity from further opioid-related litigation.While the ruling may offer long-sought schadenfreude over the deeply despised Sackler family, it is a heavy blow to the over 100,000 people affected by opioid epidemic who could have seen compensation from the deal. With the high court’s ruling, the settlement talks will have to begin again, with the outcome and possible payouts to plaintiffs uncertain.

Between 1999 and 2019, as nearly 250,000 Americans died from prescription opioid overdoses, members of the Sackler family siphoned approximately $11 billion from the pharmaceutical company they ran, Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, a highly addictive and falsely marketed pain medication. In 2007, amid the nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction and overdoses, Purdue affiliates pleaded guilty in federal court to falsely branding OxyContin as less addictive and less abusive than other pain medications. Out of fear of future litigation, the Sacklers began a “milking program,” the high court noted, draining Purdue of roughly 75 percent of its assets.

An “appropriate” deal

In 2019, Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, leading to negotiations for a massive consolidated settlement plan that took years. As part of the resulting deal, the Sacklers—who did not file for bankruptcy and had detached themselves from the company—agreed to return up to $6 billion to Purdue, but only in exchange for immunity. The bankruptcy court approved the controversial condition, while a district court later overturned it and a yet higher court reinstated it.In today’s majority opinion from the Supreme Court, Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito, Barrett, and Jackson found that the lower courts that approved the Sackers’ immunity condition had erred in interpreting Chapter 11 bankruptcy code. “No provision of the code authorizes that kind of relief,” they court ruled. The explanation boiled down to a single sentence in a catchall provision. While the code speaks solely about responsibilities of a debtors—which in this case is Purdue, not the Sacklers—the catchall provision allows “for any other appropriate provision” not otherwise outlined.

The erring lower courts, the high court wrote, had interpreted the word “appropriate” far too broadly. Based on the context, any additional “appropriate” arrangements in a settlement that was not explicitly outlined would apply only to the debtor (in this case, Purdue) not to nondebtors (the Sacklers). The provision cannot be read, the justices wrote, “to endow a bankruptcy court with the ‘radically different’ power to discharge the debts of a nondebtor.”

“Ruinous” ruling

Justices Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Roberts disagreed. In a minority opinion penned by Kavanaugh and joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, the justices blasted the ruling, calling it “wrong on the law and devastating for more than 100,000 opioid victims and their families.”

“The text of the Bankruptcy Code does not come close to requiring such a ruinous result,” Kavanaugh wrote, noting that such deals granting immunity to “nondebtors” is a longstanding practice used to secure just settlements. Neither legal structure, context, nor history necessitate today’s ruling, Kavanaugh continued. “Nor does hostility to the Sacklers—no matter how deep: ‘Nothing is more antithetical to the purpose of bankruptcy than destroying estate value to punish someone,” he wrote, citing a legal essay on Chapter 11 for mass torts.

The opioid victims and others will “suffer greatly in the wake of today’s unfortunate and destabilizing decision,” the dissenting justices wrote. “Only Congress can fix the chaos that will now ensue. The Court’s decision will lead to too much harm for too many people for Congress to sit by idly without at least carefully studying the issue.”

The Biggest Lie Trump–Biden 2024 Rematch Voters Are Telling Themselves

The Biggest Lie Trump–Biden 2024 Rematch Voters Are Telling Themselves

The system will not inevitably “hold.”
By Dahlia Lithwick and Norman Ornstein

Jun 11 2024

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/biggest-lie-trump-biden-2024-voters.html

Most would-be dictators run for office downplaying or sugarcoating their intentions, trying to lure voters with a vanilla appeal. But once elected, the autocratic elements take over, either immediately or gradually: The destruction of free elections, undermining the press, co-opting the judiciary, turning the military into instruments of the dictatorship, installing puppets in the bureaucracy, making sure the legislature reinforces rather than challenges lawless or unconstitutional actions, using violence and threats of violence to cow critics and adversaries, rewarding allies with government contracts, and ensuring that the dictator and family can secrete billions from government resources and bribes. This was the game plan for Putin, Sisi, Orbán, and many others. It’s hardly unfamiliar.

Donald Trump is rather different in one respect. He has not softened his spoken intentions to get elected. While Trump is a congenital liar—witness his recent claim that he, not Joe Biden, got $35 insulin for diabetics—when it comes to how he would act if elected again to the presidency, he has been brutally honest, as have his closest advisers and campaign allies. His presidency would feature retribution against his enemies, weaponizing and politicizing the Justice Department to arrest and detain them whether there were valid charges or not. He has pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 violent insurrectionist rioters, who could constitute a personal vigilante army for President Donald Trump, presumably alongside the official one.

He has openly said he would be a dictator on Day One, reimplementing a Muslim ban, purging the bureaucracy of professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, invoking the Insurrection Act to quash protests and take on opponents while replacing military leaders who would resist turning the military into a presidential militia with pliant generals. He would begin immediately to put the 12 million undocumented people in America into detention camps before moving to deport them all. His Republican convention policy director, Russell Vought, has laid out many of these plans as have his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, among others. Free elections would be a thing of the past, with more radical partisan judges turning a blind eye to attempts to protect elections and voting rights. He has openly flirted with the idea that he would ignore the 22^nd Amendment and stay beyond his term of office.

The battle plan of his allies in the Heritage Foundation, working closely with his campaign via Project 2025, includes many of the aims above, and more; it would also tighten the screws on abortion after Dobbs, move against contraception, reinstate criminal sanctions against gay sex while overturning the right to same-sex marriage, among other things. His top foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, has reiterated what Trump has said about his isolationist-in-the-extreme foreign policy—jettison NATO, abandon support for Ukraine and give Putin a green light to go after Poland and other NATO countries, and reorient American alliances to create one of strongmen dictators including Kim Jong-un. Shockingly, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson violated sacred norms and endangered security by bypassing qualified lawmakers and appointing to the House Intelligence Committee two dangerous and manifestly unqualified members—one insurrectionist sympathizer, Rep. Scott Perry, who has sued the FBI, and one extremist demoted by the military for drunkenness, pill pushing, and other offenses, Rep. Ronny Jackson—simply because Donald Trump demanded it. They will have access to America’s most critical secrets and will likely share them with Trump if his status as a convicted felon denies him access to top secret information during the campaign. This is part of a broader pattern in which GOP lawmakers do what Trump wants, no matter how extreme or reckless.

In general, the mainstream media have shrugged at these overt plans and troubling actions, and most voters either have not focused on them or have dismissed them as exaggerations or impossibilities. After all, our constitutional system has endured for almost 250 years, and the web of checks and balances is strong. There is evidence to support that optimism. We have just seen a historic moment in the rule of law: A unanimous jury of his peers found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying financial documents to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. This was huge news for about three days, or maybe a thousandth of a news cycle as measured in Hunter Biden units. For a good two days, however, proponents of democracy and the justice system took to the airwaves with a message that was equal parts yogurt, mayonnaise, and vanilla: The criminal justice system works! The system held!

But conviction notwithstanding, there is reason to be alarmed—deeply alarmed. This one felony conviction was hardly a vindication of the American justice system. The system “held” only insofar as it was capable of somewhat muzzling the ongoing threats leveled by the defendant against the presiding judge and his family, the jurors and the witnesses, and the team of prosecutors who brought the case. The system held only insofar as efforts to bully and terrorize and bribe witnesses who have helped Donald Trump commit crimes with impunity for decades didn’t quite manage to silence all of those witnesses.

And, depressingly, the system only “held” insofar as it doesn’t collapse upon appeal, say if a someday–Supreme Court, summoned by Speaker Mike Johnson, decides, for no reason law would ever permit or condone, to step in and somehow scupper the whole conviction while giving Trump free rein to act with impunity. This is not fanciful; the current Supreme Court has justices who are partisan actors and likely a majority to give a great deal of leeway to Trump—and he would possibly be able to fill even more seats with loyalists like Judge Aileen Cannon, the jurist presiding comically in his favor in his classified documents theft case, willing to bend the justice system to fit his aims. Below the Supreme Court level, Trump would stack the judicial deck with more extremists like Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and loyalists like Cannon.

To be sure: The conviction was a huge win. Respect to Alvin Bragg and his team and Justice Juan Merchan and the jurors and the witnesses who almost made convicting a former president seem normal. But the normal? That’s also the problem.

Americans have a normalcy bias. It leads them to believe anyone who tells them that everything is awesome and that a system is “holding”—even as that system is hanging together by way of dental floss. Lawyers have an almost terrifying normalcy bias. It leads them to assume that so long as they are winning good cases it means the justice system is a pathway to winning the larger political debate. And many journalists have a normalcy bias so acute they wouldn’t know how to cover an authoritarian takeover if it meant that one of the two presidential candidates threatened jail for his political opponents—even as he continues to refer to these journalists as “the enemy of the people.” It also means that they tend to cover “Trump convicted on 34 felony counts” in terms of “how much would this story make us deviate from covering a normal election?” It turns out that we’re normalizing the abnormal, covering the election as a horse race between democracy and illiberalism without mentioning illiberalism or considering the stakes and the consequences, and repeatedly applying a false equivalence to Trump and Biden.

[snip]

COVID Is Surging Right Now. Here’s What Alarms Doctors The Most

[Note:  This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis.  DLH]

COVID Is Surging Right Now. Here’s What Alarms Doctors The Most

Infectious disease experts share what’s different about this latest wave and what to know about the new variants.
By Julia Ries

Jun 25 2024

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/covid-summer-2024-surge-symptoms_l_6679820de4b0d2f6354efe63

We don’t typically associate hot weather with viral illnesses, but COVID has thwarted that in recent years. This summer seems to be no exception: Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that COVID test positivity rates and emergency room visits are steadily rising, especially along both coasts.

The culprit: the FLiRT variants. This family of variants, which evolved from omicron, took off in the spring. Now, they account for over 50% of infections. 

According to Dr. Robert H. Hopkins, Jr., the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, this year’s summer wave got an early start ― and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. “I suspect it’s going to increase,” Hopkins told HuffPost. “It seems like we’re seeing more and more states showing increased levels of activity.” 

Here’s what to know about the summer COVID spike:

What’s up with the new FLiRT variants?

The FLiRT variants are offshoots of JN.1, which was the dominant variant in the U.S. this past winter. 

This family of variants appears to be very contagious, thanks to mutations in the spike protein that may improve the virus’s ability to bind to human cells. “When we look at their molecular profile, some of those mutations potentially could allow the [virus] to escape from previous immunity,” Hopkins explained.

According to Dr. Nikhil Bhayani, an assistant professor in the department of internal medicine at the Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, one variant in particular is gaining steam right now: KP.3. It’s currently responsible for roughly 25% of cases. 

Two other variants in the FLiRT family, KP.2 and KP.1.1, make up 22.5% and 7.5% of infections, respectively. Research from Japan found that KP.2, the dominant variant this past spring, was more transmissible than its predecessors and potentially better at outsmarting our vaccines. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like the illness will be any different with the FLiRT variants, according to Hopkins. He suspects they’ll trigger the typical COVID symptoms: Fever, cough, congestion, sore throat, body aches and, though less common these days, loss of taste and smell. 

The increase in cases also doesn’t appear to be causing an uptick in hospitalizations. “There’s no evidence they’re more severe than what we’ve been dealing with,” Hopkins said. 

What concerns experts about this wave of infections?

We’ve seen summertime increases in COVID infections every year during the pandemic, according to Hopkins, so this isn’t too out of the ordinary. What does alarm him, however, is how early we’re seeing the summer wave kick off this year. 

According to Aubree Gordon, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Michigan Center for Infectious Disease Threats & Pandemic Preparedness in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, variants gain traction when they evolve to evade the immunity we achieved through past infections and vaccinations. 

The current wave is “probably predominately [caused] by those changes in the virus that are probably resulting in it being able to better get around preexisting immunity,” Gordon told HuffPost. 

It doesn’t help that it’s likely been a while since many people were last vaccinated. In May, the CDC revealed that only 22% of adults had received an updated COVID shot since it was released in September 2023. 

This dip in immunity, combined with the FLiRT variants’ advantageous mutations, could be fueling the spread. Recent gatherings marking the start of summertime, including Memorial Day Weekend and Father’s Day, may be contributing, too, according to Hopkins. It’s known, after all, that social gatherings are a huge source of disease transmission.

Is now a good time to get a booster shot?

It’s expected that all main vaccine manufacturers will have an updated shot available in the fall that, most likely, will target the KP.2 strain. If you’re wondering whether you should get another jab now or hold off until the new booster’s here, know this: There’s really no wrong time to get a booster shot, Bhayani said. 

While the updated shot will likely better target circulating strains, the currently available vaccines will likely still provide good protection against getting sick, and more important, winding up in a hospital or dying, research suggests.

The timing of your next dose depends on your overall health and when you got your previous booster or were last infected. In general, health experts recommend spacing doses out by at least four months. 

If you were infected or got vaccinated in the past few months, it might make the most sense to hold off until the new shot’s out later this year, Gordon said. “I’d recommend they delay vaccination just because they’re not going to benefit from it too much at this point,” she said.

That said, Hopkins recommends that people 65 and older who didn’t receive the latest vaccine to go out and get another shot now. The same goes for people who are immunocompromised and haven’t had a shot in the past two months.

“Why take a chance with this current surge if we’ve got something that is going to reduce your severity of illness?” Hopkins said. 

Here’s what to do if you get COVID this summer.

If you contract COVID, it’s a good idea to first test yourself at home with an antigen test. If your test is negative, Hopkins recommended testing yourself again in 24 hours because it can take a few days for the virus to become detectable in your sinuses. 

If you’re concerned about your symptoms, reach out to your primary care physician or visit an urgent care to get a PCR test ― these are more sensitive and catch a higher percentage of cases. 

Older adults, people who are immunocompromised and those with chronic illnesses face a higher risk of severe disease. Hopkins advised anyone in these groups to contact a health care provider as soon as they feel sick. There are effective oral antivirals ― Paxlovid and molnupiravir ― that can shorten the duration of your illness and reduce the severity of it. But here’s the kicker: They work best when given within five days after symptoms appear. 

As for otherwise healthy individuals who test positive, the same tried-and-true measures still work well. Acetaminophen and anti-inflammatories, like ibuprofen and naproxen, can reduce a fever, nasal sprays alleviate congestion, drinking fluids prevents dehydration and getting plenty of rest will aid your overall recovery, Hopkins said.

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AI Decodes Sperm Whale Language, Revealing a Complex System of Communication

AI Decodes Sperm Whale Language, Revealing a Complex System of Communication
By Rachel Gordon

Jun 11 2024

AI Decodes Sperm Whale Language, Revealing a Complex System of Communication

Researchers from MIT’s CSAIL and Project CETI use machine learning to decode the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet,” revealing complex communication patterns, deepening our understanding of animal language systems.

This research, which analyzed thousands of codas from Caribbean sperm whales, reveals a sophisticated, structured communication system, challenging the notion that complex communication is unique to humans. This work not only advances our understanding of marine biology but also contributes to broader conservation efforts and parallels studies of alien communication.

Whales in Myth and Science

The allure of whales has stoked human consciousness for millennia, casting these ocean giants as enigmatic residents of the deep seas. From the biblical Leviathan to Herman Melville’s formidable Moby Dick, whales have been central to mythologies and folklore. And while cetology, or whale science, has improved our knowledge of these marine mammals in the past century in particular, studying whales has remained a formidable a challenge.

Now, thanks to machine learning, we’re a little closer to understanding these gentle giants. Researchers from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) recently used algorithms to decode the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet,” revealing sophisticated structures in sperm whale communication akin to human phonetics and communication systems in other animal species.

Discovering Sperm Whale Communication

In a new open-access study published recently in the journal Nature Communications, the research shows that sperm whale codas, or short bursts of clicks that they use to communicate, vary significantly in structure depending on the conversational context, revealing a communication system far more intricate than previously understood.

Nine thousand codas, collected from Eastern Caribbean sperm whale families observed by the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, proved an instrumental starting point in uncovering the creatures’ complex communication system. Alongside the data gold mine, the team used a mix of algorithms for pattern recognition and classification, as well as on-body recording equipment. It turned out that sperm whale communications were indeed not random or simplistic, but rather structured in a complex, combinatorial manner.

Insights From Acoustic Tagging

The researchers identified something of a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet,” where various elements that researchers call “rhythm,” “tempo,” “rubato,” and “ornamentation” interplay to form a vast array of distinguishable codas. For example, the whales would systematically modulate certain aspects of their codas based on the conversational context, such as smoothly varying the duration of the calls — rubato — or adding extra ornamental clicks. But even more remarkably, they found that the basic building blocks of these codas could be combined in a combinatorial fashion, allowing the whales to construct a vast repertoire of distinct vocalizations.

The experiments were conducted using acoustic bio-logging tags (specifically something called “D-tags”) deployed on whales from the Eastern Caribbean clan. These tags captured the intricate details of the whales’ vocal patterns. By developing new visualization and data analysis techniques, the CSAIL researchers found that individual sperm whales could emit various coda patterns in long exchanges, not just repeats of the same coda. These patterns, they say, are nuanced, and include fine-grained variations that other whales also produce and recognize.

The Significance of Whale Communication

“We are venturing into the unknown, to decipher the mysteries of sperm whale communication without any pre-existing ground truth data,” says Daniela Rus, CSAIL director and professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) at MIT. “Using machine learning is important for identifying the features of their communications and predicting what they say next.

“Our findings indicate the presence of structured information content and also challenge the prevailing belief among many linguists that complex communication is unique to humans. This is a step toward showing that other species have levels of communication complexity that have not been identified so far, deeply connected to behavior. Our next steps aim to decipher the meaning behind these communications and explore the societal-level correlations between what is being said and group actions.”

Whaling Around

Sperm whales have the largest brains among all known animals. This is accompanied by very complex social behaviors between families and cultural groups, necessitating strong communication for coordination, especially in pressurized environments like deep sea hunting.

Whales owe much to Roger Payne, former Project CETI advisor, whale biologist, conservationist, and MacArthur Fellow who was a major figure in elucidating their musical careers. In the noted 1971 Science article “Songs of Humpback Whales,” Payne documented how whales can sing. His work later catalyzed the “Save the Whales” movement, a successful and timely conservation initiative.

“Roger’s research highlights the impact science can have on society. His finding that whales sing led to the marine mammal protection act and helped save several whale species from extinction. This interdisciplinary research now brings us one step closer to knowing what sperm whales are saying,” says David Gruber, lead and founder of Project CETI and distinguished professor of biology at the City University of New York.

Today, CETI’s upcoming research aims to discern whether elements like rhythm, tempo, ornamentation, and rubato carry specific communicative intents, potentially providing insights into the “duality of patterning” — a linguistic phenomenon where simple elements combine to convey complex meanings previously thought unique to human language.

Aliens Among Us

“One of the intriguing aspects of our research is that it parallels the hypothetical scenario of contacting alien species. It’s about understanding a species with a completely different environment and communication protocols, where their interactions are distinctly different from human norms,” says Pratyusha Sharma, an MIT PhD student in EECS, CSAIL affiliate, and the study’s lead author. “We’re exploring how to interpret the basic units of meaning in their communication. This isn’t just about teaching animals a subset of human language, but decoding a naturally evolved communication system within their unique biological and environmental constraints. Essentially, our work could lay the groundwork for deciphering how an ‘alien civilization’ might communicate, providing insights into creating algorithms or systems to understand entirely unfamiliar forms of communication.”

[snip]

Climate and health benefits of wind and solar dwarf all subsidies

[Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  DLH]

Climate and health benefits of wind and solar dwarf all subsidies

By displacing fossil fuels, wind and solar saved the US $250 billion over 4 years.
By John Timmer

May 29 2024

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

When used to generate power or move vehicles, fossil fuels kill people. Particulates and ozone resulting from fossil fuel burning cause direct health impacts, while climate change will act indirectly. Regardless of the immediacy, premature deaths and illness prior to death are felt through lost productivity and the cost of treatments.

Typically, you see the financial impacts quantified when the EPA issues new regulations, as the health benefits of limiting pollution typically dwarf the costs of meeting new standards. But some researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have now done similar calculations—but focusing on the impact of renewable energy. Wind and solar, by displacing fossil fuel use, are acting as a form of pollution control and so should produce similar economic benefits.

Do they ever. The researchers find that, in the US, wind and solar have health and climate benefits of over $100 for every Megawatt-hour produced, for a total of a quarter-trillion dollars in just the last four years. This dwarfs the cost of the electricity they generate and the total of the subsidies they received.

Avoiding damages

The new work, done by Dev Millstein, Eric O’Shaughnessy, and Ryan Wiser, was inspired in part by recent work done on estimating what’s called the social cost of carbon. The social cost of carbon is a way to attach a dollar value to every ton of carbon emissions that represent its share of the total damage that will result from global climate impacts. The US government currently uses a value of about $50/tonne, but recent research places it at $185/tonne. Similarly, there has been additional research into the health impacts of SO₂ and nitrogen oxides emitted during the burning of fossil fuels, which produce particulate and ozone pollution.

So, the researchers decided to create new estimates of the benefits of renewable power, taking these updated estimates into account. They also chose to do so in a way that will make it easier to keep their estimates up to date, by focusing on regional-level changes in US electricity generating, rather than waiting for data on individual power plant production, which tends to take a while to gather. (So, the work sacrifices some resolution in order to make data available sooner.)

The basics of the analysis are pretty simple. They started by dividing the 48 contiguous states into 11 regions, as defined by the US Energy Information Agency (you can see a map of them here). Then, they determined whether wind or solar were contributing at least 3 percent of the electricity to each region. One region, centered around Tennessee, was under 3 percent for both wind and solar, so wasn’t included; a few of the others fell below 3 percent on wind or solar, so only a single power source was considered there.

From there, the analysis involved finding out how much renewable power was generated within that region. In the absence of wind and solar, that demand would likely have been met using fossil fuels (given the pace of nuclear and hydroelectric construction, this is a very reasonable assumption). A regression analysis was used to match renewable production to alterations in fossil fuel generation, and the fuel that would have been used to meet the demand in the absence of renewables (either coal or natural gas) was assumed to match the existing mix in that region.

Since we have estimates of the climate and health damages caused by both coal and natural gas, it’s easy to convert these changes into dollar values. And those values can be viewed as co-benefits to switching to renewables. They don’t accrue to anyone involved in operating the plants but instead are enjoyed by society at large in terms of reduced environmental degradation and lower health expenses.

Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

[Note:  This item comes from friend Steve Goldstein.  DLH]

Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

Exclusive: Investigation reveals how intelligence agencies tried to derail war crimes prosecution, with Netanyahu ‘obsessed’ with intercepts
By Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Yuval Abraham in Jerusalem and Meron Rapoport in Tel Aviv

May 28 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/spying-hacking-intimidation-israel-war-icc-exposed

When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.”

Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC’s work, but he noted a clause in the court’s foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal offence. If the conduct continued, he added, “my office will not hesitate to act”.

The prosecutor did not say who had attempted to intervene in the administration of justice, or how exactly they had done so.

Now, an investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines +972 and Local Call can reveal how Israel has run an almost decade-long secret “war” against the court. The country deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries.

Israeli intelligence captured the communications of numerous ICC officials, including Khan and his predecessor as prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, intercepting phone calls, messages, emails and documents.

The surveillance was ongoing in recent months, providing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with advance knowledge of the prosecutor’s intentions. A recent intercepted communication suggested that Khan wanted to issue arrest warrants against Israelis but was under “tremendous pressure from the United States”, according to a source familiar with its contents.

Bensouda, who as chief prosecutor opened the ICC’s investigation in 2021, paving the way for last week’s announcement, was also spied on and allegedly threatened.

Netanyahu has taken a close interest in the intelligence operations against the ICC, and was described by one intelligence source as being “obsessed” with intercepts about the case. Overseen by his national security advisers, the efforts involved the domestic spy agency, the Shin Bet, as well as the military’s intelligence directorate, Aman, and cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200. Intelligence gleaned from intercepts was, sources said, disseminated to government ministries of justice, foreign affairs and strategic affairs.

A covert operation against Bensouda, revealed on Tuesday by the Guardian, was run personally by Netanyahu’s close ally Yossi Cohen, who was at the time the director of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad. At one stage, the spy chief even enlisted the help of the then president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila.

Details of Israel’s nine-year campaign to thwart the ICC’s inquiry have been uncovered by the Guardian, an Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Local Call, a Hebrew-language outlet.

The joint investigation draws on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli intelligence officers and government officials, senior ICC figures, diplomats and lawyers familiar with the ICC case and Israel’s efforts to undermine it.

Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for the ICC said it was aware of “proactive intelligence-gathering activities being undertaken by a number of national agencies hostile towards the court”. They said the ICC was continually implementing countermeasures against such activity, and that “none of the recent attacks against it by national intelligence agencies” had penetrated the court’s core evidence holdings, which had remained secure.

A spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister’s office said: “The questions forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel.” A military spokesperson added: “The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] did not and does not conduct surveillance or other intelligence operations against the ICC.”

Since it was established in 2002, the ICC has served as a permanent court of last resort for the prosecution of individuals accused of some of the world’s worst atrocities. It has charged the former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, the late Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and most recently, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Khan’s decision to seek warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leaders implicated in the 7 October attack, marks the first time an ICC prosecutor has sought arrest warrants against the leader of a close western ally.

The allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that Khan has levelled against Netanyahu and Gallant all relate to Israel’s eight-month war in Gaza, which according to the territory’s health authority has killed more than 35,000 people.

But the ICC case has been a decade in the making, inching forward amid rising alarm among Israeli officials at the possibility of arrest warrants, which would prevent those accused from travelling to any of the court’s 124 member states for fear of arrest.

It is this spectre of prosecutions in The Hague that one former Israeli intelligence official said had led the “entire military and political establishment” to regard the counteroffensive against the ICC “as a war that had to be waged, and one that Israel needed to be defended against. It was described in military terms.”

That “war” commenced in January 2015, when it was confirmed that Palestine would join the court after it was recognised as a state by the UN general assembly. Its accession was condemned by Israeli officials as a form of “diplomatic terrorism”.

One former defence official familiar with Israel’s counter-ICC effort said joining the court had been “perceived as the crossing of a red line” and “perhaps the most aggressive” diplomatic move taken by the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. “To be recognised as a state in the UN is nice,” they added. “But the ICC is a mechanism with teeth.”

A hand-delivered threat

For Fatou Bensouda, a respected Gambian lawyer who was elected the ICC’s chief prosecutor in 2012, the accession of Palestine to the court brought with it a momentous decision. Under the Rome statute, the treaty that established the court, the ICC can exercise its jurisdiction only over crimes within member states or by nationals of those states.

Israel, like the US, Russia and China, is not a member. After Palestine’s acceptance as an ICC member, any alleged war crimes – committed by those of any nationality – in occupied Palestinian territories now fell under Bensouda’s jurisdiction.

On 16 January 2015, within weeks of Palestine joining, Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into what in the legalese of the court was called “the situation in Palestine”. The following month, two men who had managed to obtain the prosecutor’s private address turned up at her home in The Hague.

Sources familiar with the incident said the men declined to identify themselves when they arrived, but said they wanted to hand-deliver a letter to Bensouda on behalf of an unknown German woman who wanted to thank her. The envelope contained hundreds of dollars in cash and a note with an Israeli phone number.

Sources with knowledge of an ICC review into the incident said that while it was not possible to identify the men, or fully establish their motives, it was concluded that Israel was likely to be signalling to the prosecutor that it knew where she lived. The ICC reported the incident to Dutch authorities and put in place additional security, installing CCTV cameras at her home.

The ICC’s preliminary inquiry in the Palestinian territories was one of several such fact-finding exercises the court was undertaking at the time, as a precursor to a possible full investigation. Bensouda’s caseload also included nine full investigations, including into events in DRC, Kenya and the Darfur region of Sudan.

Officials in the prosecutor’s office believed the court was vulnerable to espionage activity and introduced countersurveillance measures to protect their confidential inquiries.

In Israel, the prime minister’s national security council (NSC) had mobilised a response involving its intelligence agencies. Netanyahu and some of the generals and spy chiefs who authorised the operation had a personal stake in its outcome.

Unlike the international court of justice (ICJ), a UN body that deals with the legal responsibility of nation states, the ICC is a criminal court that prosecutes individuals, targeting those deemed most responsible for atrocities.

Multiple Israeli sources said the leadership of the IDF wanted military intelligence to join the effort, which was being led by other spy agencies, to ensure senior officers could be protected from charges. “We were told that senior officers are afraid to accept positions in the West Bank because they are afraid of being prosecuted in The Hague,” one source recalled.

Two intelligence officials involved in procuring intercepts about the ICC said the prime minister’s office took a keen interest in their work. Netanyahu’s office, one said, would send “areas of interests” and “instructions” in relation to the monitoring of court officials. Another described the prime minister as “obsessed” with intercepts shedding light on the activities of the ICC.

Hacked emails and monitored calls

Five sources familiar with Israel’s intelligence activities said it routinely spied on the phone calls made by Bensouda and her staff with Palestinians. Blocked by Israel from accessing Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the ICC was forced to conduct much of its research by telephone, which made it more susceptible to surveillance.

Thanks to their comprehensive access to Palestinian telecoms infrastructure, the sources said, intelligence operatives could capture the calls without installing spyware on the ICC official’s devices.

“If Fatou Bensouda spoke to any person in the West Bank or Gaza, then that phone call would enter [intercept] systems,” one source said. Another said there was no hesitation internally over spying on the prosecutor, adding: “With Bensouda, she’s black and African, so who cares?”

The surveillance system did not capture calls between ICC officials and anyone outside Palestine. However, multiple sources said the system required the active selection of the overseas phone numbers of ICC officials whose calls Israeli intelligence agencies decided to listen to.

According to one Israeli source, a large whiteboard in an Israeli intelligence department contained the names of about 60 people under surveillance – half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials and ICC personnel.

In The Hague, Bensouda and her senior staff were alerted by security advisers and via diplomatic channels that Israel was monitoring their work. A former senior ICC official recalled: “We were made aware they were trying to get information on where we were with the preliminary examination.”

Officials also became aware of specific threats against a prominent Palestinian NGO, Al-Haq, which was one of several Palestinian human rights groups that frequently submitted information to the ICC inquiry, often in lengthy documents detailing incidents it wanted the prosecutor to consider. The Palestinian Authority submitted similar dossiers.

[snip]

The New Propaganda War

[Note:  This item comes from friend Shannon McElyea.  DLH]

The New Propaganda War

Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.
By Anne Applebaum

May 6 2024

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/

On June 4, 1989, the Polish Communist Party held partially free elections, setting in motion a series of events that ultimately removed the Communists from power. Not long afterward, street protests calling for free speech, due process, accountability, and democracy brought about the end of the Communist regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Within a few years, the Soviet Union itself would no longer exist.

Also on June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the military to remove thousands of students from Tiananmen Square. The students were calling for free speech, due process, accountability, and democracy. Soldiers arrested and killed demonstrators in Beijing and around the country. Later, they systematically tracked down the leaders of the protest movement and forced them to confess and recant. Some spent years in jail. Others managed to elude their pursuers and flee the country forever.

In the aftermath of these events, the Chinese concluded that the physical elimination of dissenters was insufficient. To prevent the democratic wave then sweeping across Central Europe from reaching East Asia, the Chinese Communist Party eventually set out to eliminate not just the people but the ideas that had motivated the protests. In the years to come, this would require policing what the Chinese people could see online.

Nobody believed that this would work. In 2000, President Bill Clinton told an audience at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that it was impossible. “In the knowledge economy,” he said, “economic innovation and political empowerment, whether anyone likes it or not, will inevitably go hand in hand.” The transcript records the audience reactions:

“Now, there’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet.” (Chuckles.) “Good luck!” (Laughter.) “That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” (Laughter.)

While we were still rhapsodizing about the many ways in which the internet could spread democracy, the Chinese were designing what’s become known as the Great Firewall of China. That method of internet management—which is in effect conversation management—contains many different elements, beginning with an elaborate system of blocks and filters that prevent internet users from seeing particular words and phrases. Among them, famously, are Tiananmen, 1989, and June 4, but there are many more. In 2000, a directive called “Measures for Managing Internet Information Services” prohibited an extraordinarily wide range of content, including anything that “endangers national security, divulges state secrets, subverts the government, undermines national unification,” and “is detrimental to the honor and interests of the state”—anything, in other words, that the authorities didn’t like.

The Chinese regime also combined online tracking methods with other tools of repression, including security cameras, police inspections, and arrests. In Xinjiang province, where China’s Uyghur Muslim population is concentrated, the state has forced people to install “nanny apps” that can scan phones for forbidden phrases and pick up unusual behavior: Anyone who downloads a virtual private network, anyone who stays offline altogether, and anyone whose home uses too much electricity (which could be evidence of a secret houseguest) can arouse suspicion. Voice-recognition technology and even DNA swabs are used to monitor where Uyghurs walk, drive, and shop. With every new breakthrough, with every AI advance, China has gotten closer to its holy grail: a system that can eliminate not just the words democracy and Tiananmen from the internet, but the thinking that leads people to become democracy activists or attend public protests in real life.If people are naturally drawn to human rights, democracy, and freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned.

But along the way, the Chinese regime discovered a deeper problem: Surveillance, regardless of sophistication, provides no guarantees. During the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese government imposed controls more severethan most of its citizens had ever experienced. Millions of people were locked into their homes. Untold numbers entered government quarantine camps. Yet the lockdown also produced the angriest and most energetic Chinese protests in many years. Young people who had never attended a demonstration and had no memory of Tiananmen gathered in the streets of Beijing and Shanghai in the autumn of 2022 to talk about freedom. In Xinjiang, where lockdowns were the longest and harshest, and where repression is most complete, people came out in public and sang the Chinese national anthem, emphasizing one line: “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves!” Clips of their performance circulated widely, presumably because the spyware and filters didn’t identify the national anthem as dissent.

Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. The strength of these demonstrations, and the broader anger they reflected, was enough to spook the Chinese Communist Party into lifting the quarantine and allowing the virus to spread. The deaths that resulted were preferable to public anger and protest.

Like the demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin in Russia that began in 2011, the 2014 street protests in Venezuela, and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the 2022 protests in China help explain something else: why autocratic regimes have slowly turned their repressive mechanisms outward, into the democratic world. If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. That requires more than surveillance, more than close observation of the population, more than a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan: a narrative that damages both the idea of democracy everywhere in the world and the tools to deliver it.

On February 24, 2022, as Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, fantastical tales of biological warfare began surging across the internet. Russian officials solemnly declared that secret U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine had been conducting experiments with bat viruses and claimed that U.S. officials had confessed to manipulating “dangerous pathogens.” The story was unfounded, not to say ridiculous, and was repeatedly debunked.

Nevertheless, an American Twitter account with links to the QAnon conspiracy network—@WarClandestine—began tweeting about the nonexistent biolabs, racking up thousands of retweets and views. The hashtag #biolab started trending on Twitter and reached more than 9 million views. Even after the account—later revealed to belong to a veteran of the Army National Guard—was suspended, people continued to post screenshots. A version of the storyappeared on the Infowars website created by Alex Jones, best known for promoting conspiracy theories about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and harassing families of the victims. Tucker Carlson, then still hosting a show on Fox News, played clips of a Russian general and a Chinese spokesperson repeating the biolab fantasy and demanded that the Biden administration “stop lying and [tell] us what’s going on here.”

Chinese state media also leaned hard into the story. A foreign-ministry spokesperson declared that the U.S. controlled 26 biolabs in Ukraine: “Russia has found during its military operations that the U.S. uses these facilities to conduct bio-military plans.” Xinhua, a Chinese state news agency, ran multiple headlines: “U.S.-Led Biolabs Pose Potential Threats to People of Ukraine and Beyond,” “Russia Urges U.S. to Explain Purpose of Biological Labs in Ukraine,” and so on. U.S. diplomats publicly refuted these fabrications. Nevertheless, the Chinese continued to spread them. So did the scores of Asian, African, and Latin American media outlets that have content-sharing agreements with Chinese state media. So did Telesur, the Venezuelan network; Press TV, the Iranian network; and Russia Today, in Spanish and Arabic, as well as on many Russia Today–linked websites around the world.

This joint propaganda effort worked. Globally, it helped undermine the U.S.-led effort to create solidarity with Ukraine and enforce sanctions against Russia. Inside the U.S., it helped undermine the Biden administration’s effort to consolidate American public opinion in support of providing aid to Ukraine. According to one poll, a quarter of Americans believed the biolabs conspiracy theory to be true. After the invasion, Russia and China—with, again, help from Venezuela, Iran, and far-right Europeans and Americans—successfully created an international echo chamber. Anyone inside this echo chamber heard the biolab conspiracy theory many times, from different sources, each one repeating and building on the others to create the impression of veracity. They also heard false descriptions of Ukrainians as Nazis, along with claims that Ukraine is a puppet state run by the CIA, and that NATO started the war.

Outside this echo chamber, few even know it exists. At a dinner in Munich in February 2023, I found myself seated across from a European diplomat who had just returned from Africa. He had met with some students there and had been shocked to discover how little they knew about the war in Ukraine, and how much of what they did know was wrong. They had repeated the Russian claims that the Ukrainians are Nazis, blamed NATO for the invasion, and generally used the same kind of language that can be heard every night on the Russian evening news. The diplomat was mystified. He grasped for explanations: Maybe the legacy of colonialism explained the spread of these conspiracy theories, or Western neglect of the global South, or the long shadow of the Cold War.

But the story of how Africans—as well as Latin Americans, Asians, and indeed many Europeans and Americans—have come to spout Russian propaganda about Ukraine is not primarily a story of European colonial history, Western policy, or the Cold War. Rather, it involves China’s systematic efforts to buy or influence both popular and elite audiences around the world; carefully curated Russian propaganda campaigns, some open, some clandestine, some amplified by the American and European far right; and other autocracies using their own networks to promote the same language.

To be fair to the European diplomat, the convergence of what had been disparate authoritarian influence projects is still new. Russian information-laundering and Chinese propaganda have long had different goals. Chinese propagandists mostly stayed out of the democratic world’s politics, except to promote Chinese achievements, Chinese economic success, and Chinese narratives about Tibet or Hong Kong. Their efforts in Africa and Latin America tended to feature dull, unwatchable announcements of investments and state visits. Russian efforts were more aggressive—sometimes in conjunction with the far right or the far left in the democratic world—and aimed to distort debates and elections in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and elsewhere. Still, they often seemed unfocused, as if computer hackers were throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see which crazy story might stick. Venezuela and Iran were fringe players, not real sources of influence.

Slowly, though, these autocracies have come together, not around particular stories, but around a set of ideas, or rather in opposition to a set of ideas. Transparency, for example. And rule of law. And democracy. They have heard language about those ideas—which originate in the democratic world—coming from their own dissidents, and have concluded that they are dangerous to their regimes. Their own rhetoric makes this clear. In 2013, as Chinese President Xi Jinping was beginning his rise to power, an internal Chinese memo, known enigmatically as Document No. 9—or, more formally, as the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere—listed “seven perils” faced by the Chinese Communist Party. “Western constitutional democracy” led the list, followed by “universal human rights,” “media independence,” “judicial independence,” and “civic participation.” The document concluded that “Western forces hostile to China,” together with dissidents inside the country, “are still constantly infiltrating the ideological sphere,” and instructed party leaders to push back against these ideas wherever they found them, especially online, inside China and around the world.

[snip]

Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years

Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years

The network of fast chargers promised by the Biden administration has had a painfully slow rollout
By Shannon Osaka

Mar 29 2024

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/ev-charging-stations-slow-rollout/

President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.

But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars.

“I think a lot of people who are watching this are getting concerned about the timeline,” said Alexander Laska, deputy director for transportation and innovation at the center-left think tank Third Way.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, included $7.5 billion for EV charging. Of that, $5 billion was allocated to individual states in so-called “formula funding” to build a network of fast chargers along major highways in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program.

But after two years, that program has only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 spots where drivers can charge their vehicles,according to a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. (The funding should be enough to build up to 20,000 charging spots or around 5,000 stations, according to analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy.)Stations are open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and under construction in four other states.

Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations; 17 states have not yet issued proposals.

Last month, Republican members of the House of Representatives sent a letterto the Biden administration with a list of questions about the slow rollout of EV chargers.

“We have significant concerns that under your efforts American taxpayer dollars are being woefully mismanaged,” wrote Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.). “The problems with these programs continue to grow — delays in the delivery of chargers, concerns from States about labor contracting requirements and minimum operating standards for chargers,” the letter continued.

Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, said that some of the delays are to be expected. “State transportation agencies are the recipients of the money,” he said. “Nearly all of them had no experience deploying electric vehicle charging stations before this law was enacted.”

Nigro says that the process — states have to submit plans to the Biden administration for approval, solicit bids on the work, and then award funds — has taken much of the first two years since the funding was approved. “I expect it to go much faster in 2024,” he added.

“We are building a national EV charging network from scratch, and we want to get it right,” a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration said in an email. “After developing program guidance and partnering with states to guide implementation plans, we are hitting our stride as states move quickly to bring NEVI stations online.”

A White House spokesperson said in an email that the nation’s public charging network has grown substantially since Biden entered office, and that the administration expects the nation to reach the goal of 500,000 charging stations by 2026.

“More Americans are buying EVs every day — with EV sales rising faster than traditional gas-powered cars — as the President’s Investing in America agenda makes EVs more affordable, helps Americans save money when driving, and makes EV charging accessible and convenient,” the spokesperson added, noting that the pace of charger installations is increasing.

Part of the slow rollout is that the new chargers are expected to be held to much higher standards than previous generations of fast chargers. The United States currently has close to 10,000 “fast” charging stations in the country, of which over 2,000 are Tesla Superchargers, according to the Department of Energy. Tesla Superchargers — some of which have been opened to drivers of other vehicles — are the most reliable fast-charging systems in the country.

But many non-Tesla fast chargers have a reputation for poor performance and sketchy reliability. EV advocates have criticized Electrify America, the company created by Volkswagen after the company’s “Dieselgate” emissions scandal, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers that don’t work well. The company has said they are working to improve reliability. The data analytics company J.D. Power has estimated that only 80 percent of all charging attempts in the country are successful.

Biden administration guidance requires the new publicly funded chargers to be operational 97 percent of the time, provide 150kW of power at each charger, and be no more than one mile from the interstate, among many other requirements.

EV policy experts say those requirements are critical to building a good nationwide charging program — but also slow down the build-out of the chargers. “This funding comes with dozens of rules and requirements,” Laska said. “That is the nature of what we’re trying to accomplish.”

States have also faced challenges getting permitting approval and electricity out to stations that may be in fairly remote areas. Nigro points out that each charging spot will require the same maximum power as around 20 homes — a huge lift for local utilities not used to installing chargers.

[snip]

Long thread on drones

[Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  DLH]

Long thread on drones

Jun 18 2024

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1802987414652125417.html

Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, drones have slowly taken the front pages. Initially, it was the Bayraktar TB2, which brought a drone directly to the front line for the first time in a large-scale combat operation.

Analysts across the entire spectrum, from professional and academic to open-source intelligence, have observed the rise of small commercial surveillance drones for reconnaissance and, increasingly, for more kinetic operations.

For the first time in history, we have seen the successful use of naval drones in the role of direct strike assets.

On the other side, the Russians have strained our belief in modern air defense systems by deploying hundreds of fixed-wing kamikaze drones to saturate the airspace and deplete valuable and scarce missile supplies.

[snip]

Surgeon general calls for social media warning labels

Surgeon general calls for social media warning labels

Vivek H. Murthy’s call to action comes as regulators scrutinize links between social media use and children’s mental health, amid scientific debate.
By Cristiano Lima-Strong

Jun 17 2024

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/17/surgeon-general-social-media-warning-labels/

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy called Monday for placing tobacco-style warning labels on social media to alert users that the platforms can harm children’s mental health, escalating his warnings about the effects of online services such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Writing in a New York Times opinion essay, Murthy urged Congress to enact legislation requiring that social media platforms include a surgeon general’s warning to “regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.”

He cited evidence that adolescents who spend significant time on social mediaare at greater risk of experiencing anxiety and depression and that many young people say the platforms have worsened their body image. Murthy said warning labels, like those on tobacco and alcohol products, have been shown to change people’s behaviors.

Murthy, who has grown increasingly vocal on the issue, is part of a multiagency task force set up by the Biden administration to develop recommendations for how social media companies can better protect children.

“What we need … is something clear that people can see regularly when they use social media that tells them, frankly, what we now know as a public health and medical establishment,” Murthy said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The surgeon general’s call to action comes as regulators and legislators increasingly scrutinize links between social media use and children’s mental health, ushering in a wave of proposals to expand protections for children on the internet. Lawmakers have likened tech’s impact on youths to that of Big Tobaccoand urged swift action to counteract what they call a driving force in the youth mental health crisis.

Yet despite the bipartisan outcry, there is still significant debate within the scientific community about the extent to which social media use may be causing mental health issues among children and teens. Researchers and public officials have pushed to increase federal funding to study the topic, and they have criticized tech companies for not making more internal data on the matter available to the public.

But Murthy and other public officials argue there is enough evidence to suggest social media can be unsafe, regardless of gaps in research.

“One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information,” he wrote Monday.

More than a dozen states have passed laws aimed at expanding guardrails around children’s use of social media, with some banning young children from accessing the sites altogether and requiring parent approval for teens to use them. Others have been modeled after landmark regulations in Britain requiring that tech companies consider the “best interests of the child first” when developing products.

State laws have been challenged by tech industry groups, which argue that they are unconstitutional and violate users’ free-speech rights. Several have since been halted by the courts.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are trying to advance a package of bills to require social platforms to vet whether their products pose harms to children and expand existing federal protections governing children’s online data. But the bills have yet to pass either chamber of Congress, and lawmakers face dwindling time to act ahead of the 2024 elections.

It’s not immediately clear whether the proposal will gain traction in Congress. One key lawmaker, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), said Monday that she will work to weave a warning label into bills under consideration on Capitol Hill. But spokespeople for Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) argued that one proposal, the Kids Online Safety Act, already includes a warning by requiring companies to disclose when products may pose a harm to children.

While Murthy would need an act of Congress to implement the labels, his remarks could galvanize attempts by government officials efforts to warn the public about social media’s risks. In January, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) cited Murthy’s comments on the issue in designating social media a public health hazard.

Murthy last May released a public health advisory saying that while more research was “needed to fully understand the impact of social media,” there are “ample indicators” that it can pose a “profound risk of harm” to children and teens.

Although congressional action has languished in Washington, the European Union, Britain and other governments have stepped up oversight of children’s online safety, including with the passage of the E.U.’s watershed Digital Services Act. The rules set new limits on companies targeting ads and recommending harmful content to children, in addition to broader regulations on how they police their platforms.

Murthy said his warning label proposal could serve as a model for other countries.

“The measures we take in the United States I think could be certainly ones that other countries look to as they’re thinking through their strategy for addressing social media youth mental health,” he told The Post.

Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of the tech trade association NetChoice, said Monday in an emailed statement that Murthy’s proposal “oversimplifies this issue” by not recognizing that “every child is different and struggles with their own challenges.”

“Parents and guardians are the most appropriately situated to handle these unique needs of their children — not the government or tech companies,” said Szabo, whose group counts Meta, Google and Amazon as members. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

NetChoice is leading lawsuits aimed at halting several children’s online safety laws at the state level.

Shoshana Weissmann, digital director and fellow at the R Street Institute think tank, called Murthy’s proposal “concerning” and argued that U.S. surgeons general have previously spoken out prematurelyabout the dangers of new technology, including video games, before the science was fully developed.

“That does not in itself mean that the surgeon general is wrong, just that the office has regularly raised alarms that ended up being incorrect,” Weissman said in an emailed statement.

In his essay,Murthy said the warning labels should be just one part of a broader set of stepped-up rules to track and limit social media’s effect on consumers — all of which would require the help of Congress.

Murthy said that congressional action is also needed to prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and that there should be restrictions on features such as push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which he said contribute to excessive use.

In addition, social media companies should have to share data on health effects with independent researchers and the public and allow independent safety audits of their products, he wrote.

Some children’s online safety advocates argued that more significant privacy and consumer protection rules are needed to grapple with social media’s impact on children.

“Warning labels are illusory safeguard without serious reforms,” Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy advocacy group, said in a social media post Monday.

Murthy cited a 2019 study that found the risk of depression and anxiety doubled among adolescents who spent more than three hours a day on social media. He said statistics show daily social media use among adolescents averaging 4.8 hours.

[snip]