Senators Demand Answers From Amazon on Echo's Snooping Habits (original,update to follow)

A Portland woman recently told a local news outlet that her Amazon Echo device had gone rogue, sending a recording of a private conversation to a random person in her contact list. On Thursday, two senators tasked with investigating consumer privacy sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding answers.

In the letter, Republican senator Jeff Flake and Democratic senator Chris Coons, who serve respectively as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, ask Bezos to explain how exactly the Amazon Echo device listens to and stores users' voices. The senators also seek answers about what the company is doing to protect users from having that sensitive information misused. Amazon didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment.

The letter, which was reviewed by WIRED, comes in the midst of what Flake calls a "post-Facebook" world, referring to the data privacy scandal in which Facebook says the data of as many as 87 million Americans may have been misappropriated by a political consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica. "Congress is feeling that we need to be ahead of the curve here," Flake told WIRED. "Companies are establishing procedures and protocols, and we need to know what they are to make sure that privacy is protected."

The letter specifically cites the Portland story, in which an Echo mistook part of a background conversation for the word "Alexa." That caused the device to wake up. Once it started listening, the Echo misheard later parts of the conversation as a series of voice commands instructing it to send a message to one of the woman's contacts. The mishap in Portland wasn't caused by a glitch, the lawmakers write, but is instead an example of the Echo working "precisely how it was designed." The letter demands "prompt and meaningful action" to prevent it from happening again.

"This incident makes it clear we don't fully understand the privacy risks we’re taking," Coons says. "Amazon owes it to the American people to be clearer about what’s happening with this technology."

https:// www.wired.com/story/senators-flake-coons-demand-answers-amazon-echo-privacy/

Senators Demand Answers From Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos About Alexa Mishap (updated to include senators letter to bezos)

Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Chris Coons (D-DE) have sent Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos a number of privacy-related questions about Amazon’s Echo voice-controlled speaker, reflecting the growing concern about how the device records and retains users’ conversations, according to Wired. The senators, who serve as chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, specifically referenced in their letter a widely reported incident last month in which a Portland couple had their conversation recorded by the Alexa voice-recognition software used in the Echo. The device then sent the recording as an attachment to one of their contacts without them requesting it. Amazon confirmed that the event occurred, and explained that it was caused by a series of unlikely triggers. In their letter to Bezos, the senators demanded action that would prevent the same thing from happening again.

The letter contained almost 30 questions, including about some of the nitty-gritty of Alexa’s data management like when Alexa sends data to Amazon’s servers, how often it does so, how long that captured data is stored, and what period of time after someone says “Alexa” (which cues the technology to perk up) does an Echo record a conversation. The senators also asked whether consumers can delete recordings.

All voice-recognition devices—whether those from Apple, Amazon, Google, or startups—must listen continuously in order to know when its trigger is hit. (On smartphones, a user may opt to use a different trigger.) While Amazon and Google have characterized their respective systems’ privacy components relatively thoroughly, with Apple erring on the side of sending relatively little voice data off of devices, Amazon’s particulars are less well known.

http:// fortune.com/2018/06/14/senators-demand-answers-from-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-about-alexa-mishap/

Senator's Letter Here:

https:// www.flake.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/ef175bd4-d6b4-46eb-9014-bb8942420a63/06.12.18-flake-coons-amazon-letter.pdf

>>1762360

Wondering more if he had an epiphany of some kind, like he was recorded because he has one. People like him don't get involved unless it's self serving imo.

Russia: ‘We won’t let’ U.S.-born Putin critic ‘sleep peacefully’

U.S.-born hedge fund manager Bill Browder won’t be able to “sleep peacefully,” a top Russian official said while promising to escalate efforts to arrest the prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. "We won’t let [Browder] sleep peacefully," Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said Friday, according to TASS, a state-run media outlet.

Browder has led an international campaign to impose sanctions on Russian human rights violators. The effort culminated in U.S. legislation named after Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney for Browder who died in government custody after accusing Russian officials of cooperating with mafia in a $230 million tax fraud scheme. Russia countered that Browder and Magnitsky are the criminals; efforts by Putin allies to reverse the sanctions helped fuel the controversy over Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. “I think Russia and Russian citizens will make more powerful moves soon,” Chaika said.

Browder was detained in Spain at Russia’s request in May, but then released after Interpol told Spanish officials “not to honor” his arrest warrant. He has been lobbying internationally for Western powers to crack down on the Russian oligarchs who are allied with Putin and have major assets outside of Russia. “If you go after Putin’s money via the biggest oligarchs, as the U.S. has just started to do, that will stop him,” Browder told Reuters in an interview published Friday. “That is a checkmate situation.”

The Browder-Magnitsky case is a significant part of the recent tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Putin’s government banned adoptions to the U.S. following the 2012 passage of the Magnitksy Act. It even surfaced in the controversy over Russian interference in the 2016 elections: Donald Trump Jr. agreed to meet with a Russian lawyer purporting to have negative information about Hillary Clinton, but his interlocutor “turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers,” according to the New York Times. “It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Trump Jr. said after confirming the meeting, which he added produced no meaningful information. Trump, Jr., accepted the meeting request after being told that “the Crown prosecutor of Russia” wanted to give the campaign information on Clinton. Russia doesn’t have a “crown prosecutor,” which led to some speculation that it was a reference instead to Prosecutor-General Chaika.

Putin, for his part, maintains that Browder and Magnitsky are the true criminals. “Underneath are the criminal activities of an entire gang led by one particular man, I believe Browder is his name, who lived in the Russian Federation for ten years as a tourist and conducted activities, which were on the verge of being illegal, by buying Russian company stock without any right to do so, not being a Russian resident, and by moving tens and hundreds of millions of dollars out of the country and hence avoiding any taxes not only here but in the United States as well,” Putin said at the Valdai Discussion Club in 2017. The case also surfaced in congressional oversight of the FBI investigation into Russian election interference. Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, who commissioned the private investigation that produced the infamous “Steele dossier” about Trump, also had a history investigating Putin’s allegations about Browder in a separate case. “I was extremely sympathetic for what happened to Sergei Magnitsky … It was only later from this other case that I began to be curious and skeptical about William Browder's activities and history in Russia,” Simpson told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August of 2017. “[H]e tends to omit things that aren't helpful to him.”

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/russia-we-wont-let-u-s-born-putin-critic-sleep-peacefully

Peter Strzok denies throwing 'cocktail party' for judge on surveillance court

Senior FBI official Peter Strzok says he didn't arrange a cocktail party with a federal judge who serves on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, despite telling his mistress in a text message that he would. Strzok suggested a "cocktail party" with U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in a July 25, 2016, message to FBI attorney Lisa Page. Days later, on July 31, Strzok opened the FBI's probe of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Strzok told the Justice Department inspector general's office that his messages regarding the judge dealt with no particular case and that the social gathering didn't happen, according to a report released Thursday on the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Contreras mysteriously recused himself from former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's case in December after he accepted Flynn's guilty plea in regard to lying to the FBI, warning him to cooperate for a lighter sentence. Strzok was removed last year from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe after the discovery of messages he sent to Page denouncing Trump. His link to Contreras was first reported in March, after lawmakers obtained messages referencing the possible "cocktail party." "Rudy is on the FISC! Did you know that?” Page texted Strzok. "We talked about it before and after. I need to get together with him," Strzok responded, discussing "being circumspect in talking to him in terms of not placing him into a situation where he’d have to recuse himself.” "[H]e's super thoughtful and rigorous about ethics and conflicts. M suggested a social setting with others would probably be better than a one on one meeting. I'm sorry, I'm just going to have to invite you to that cocktail party," Strzok wrote to Page.

In additional messages, Strzok said he spoke with Contreras before the judge took a seat on the FISC on May 19, 2016. "[T]hey needed people and they especially needed minorities, and then he said he'd gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at," Strzok wrote. Although Strzok texted Page that he had seen the judge at a recent graduation party, Strzok told the inspector general's office "it had been a while since he had seen" Contreras. "All of this discussion is a consideration of doing the right, appropriate, ethical thing. It is the polar opposite of what is being suggested by some," Strzok told the inspector general's office. "At no time did I ever with Judge Contreras think of or in actuality reach out for the purpose of discussing any case or trying to get any decision, provide any information, or otherwise influence him with regard to any investigative matter," Strzok said.

It's unclear if the inspector general's office interviewed the judge, who offered no public rationale for his recusal from the Flynn case. Because FISC surveillance orders are classified by default, it's unclear what role if any Contreras had in issuing or signing renewals of FISC orders authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign officials, including adviser Carter Page and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Strzok opened the FBI's Russia probe after Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russians had Clinton's emails.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/fbi-agent-peter-strzok-denies-throwing-cocktail-party-for-judge-surveillance-court

Rep. Andy Biggs: The 'deep state' has existed for a long time

Throughout Donald Trump's presidency, there has been chatter among many in his base that an all-powerful shadow government exists and that it has been trying relentlessly to undermine the president and throttle his agenda.

It's commonly known as the "deep state."

Following the release of the Justice Department's inspector general report on Thursday, text conversations between former FBI investigator Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page revealed some of the inner workings of these mainstay government employees plotting and scheming against Trump. Both Strzok and Page thought they had the power to stop Trump from ever becoming president. "[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote to Strzok via text message in August 2016, with whom she was having an extramarital affair. “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied. Obviously, they failed in this effort. But it brings up the greater question about the deep state, and just how powerful it really is.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., believes the deep state has actually existed for a long time, but everyone has a different definition of what it is, and we've seen different levels of it operating. "One aspect of the deep state is the bureaucracy, the bureaucrats there, the lifers [career employees]," Biggs said in a Washington Examiner editorial board meeting on Friday. "They have a political agenda perhaps. And in most administrations they get to come down, they get to do the top level [work], maybe next level. But the whole monstrosity remains there."He explained that former President George W. Bush couldn't get anything done because of "something going on," which he likened to the deep state. "I think what we're seeing here at the highest levels in the FBI and DOJ — which really is bothersome to me — is this idea of corruption for political purposes," Biggs said.

Biggs cited the case of former Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who was indicted and convicted of corruption after federal agents found $90,000 in his freezer."That's the kind of corruption where you say, 'Yeah, there are gonna be losers who get bought off and bribed, or succumb to bribes,'" Biggs said. "But this other thing is this idea of they're doing this for political control, political outcome. And in a constitutional republic, that's the most dangerous game."

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rep-andy-biggs-the-deep-state-has-existed-for-a-long-time

Theranos founder, COO indicted in wire fraud schemes

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and a top executive at the company were indicted by a federal grand jury on wire fraud charges, the Justice Department announced Friday. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani are charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Federal prosecutors say Holmes and Balwani engaged in two separate schemes to defraud investors, as well as doctors and patients.

Both she and Balwani, who has served as the company’s chief operating officer and president, appeared in federal court in California on Friday. “This indictment alleges a corporate conspiracy to defraud financial investors,” FBI Special Agent in Charge John Bennett said in a statement. “This conspiracy misled doctors and patients about the reliability of the medical tests that endangered health and lives.” The indictment unsealed Friday says Holmes and Balwani used ads and solicitations to push doctors and patients to use Theranos’ services, even though the pair knew the company couldn’t consistently produce “accurate and reliable results for certain blood tests.”Prosecutors argue the “tests performed on Theranos technology, in addition, were likely to contain inaccurate and unreliable results.”

Holmes and Balwani also allegedly used a variety of means, including direct communications, statements to the media, and financial statements, to defraud potential investors. The two claimed Theranos developed a “revolutionary and proprietary” analyzer that could perform different clinical tests using small blood samples taken from a patient’s finger and said the technology could yield results that were better and faster than those produced by conventional methods, according to the Justice Department.

But the indictment states Holmes and Balwani were aware their claims about the analyzer were false. Federal prosecutors said the two Theranos executives allegedly "knew that the analyzer, in truth, had accuracy and reliability problems, performed a limited number of tests, was slower than some competing devices, and, in some respects, could not compete with existing, more conventional machines." “The conduct alleged in these charges erodes public trust in the safety and effectiveness of medical products, including diagnostics,” Catherine Hermsen, acting director of the Office of Criminal Investigations at the FDA, said in a statement. Holmes and Balwani face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count.

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/theranos-founder-coo-indicted-in-wire-fraud-schemes

>>1762709

She's a COO (Chief Operating Officer), Not sure what your point is here…