Google Hides News, Tricked by Fake Claims

Dubious copyright complaints citing 1998 law led the search giant to make unfavorable articles vanish

A Google search, at one time, could locate a news article on a man accused of attempted child rape, another on someone charged with fraud and still others on Ukrainian politicians facing corruption allegations. Googling certain keywords in March would find an article detailing the movements of two coronavirus-infected British tourists in Vietnam and warning others who visited the same places to take precautions. Then the stories vanished. Google stopped listing them in searches after it received formal requests that it scrub links to the pieces, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.

The Journal identified hundreds of instances in which individuals or companies, often using apparently fake identities, caused the Alphabet Inc. unit to remove links to unfavorable articles and blog posts that alleged wrongdoing by convicted criminals, foreign officials and businesspeople in the U.S. and abroad. Google took them down in response to copyright complaints, many of which appear to be bogus, the Journal found in an analysis of information from the more than four billion links sent to Google for removal since 2011. Google’s system was set up to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. The 1998 law gives tech firms immunity from claims in copyright cases as long they quickly take down copyrighted material once alerted.

Takedown requests to Google are often from media companies legitimately requesting that pirated copies of a movie or album be removed from search results. Publishers and news outlets, including the Journal, have also asked Google to scrub allegedly infringing material from Google Search. Yet some requests, the Journal found, appear to be from people manipulating the system in ways it didn’t intend, resulting in Google’s taking down lawful content. When a Colorado man, Dak Steiert, faced state-court charges of running a fake law firm in 2018, he sent Google a series of copyright claims against blogs and a law-firm website that discussed his case, claiming they had copied the posts from Mr. Steiert’s own website. That wasn’t true, the Journal determined, but Google erased the pages from its search engine anyway.

Last year, Mr. Steiert, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, pleaded guilty in Colorado state court to one count of false advertising in his business. The Colorado Supreme Court closed his practice. The articles remained invisible in Google searches until the Journal flagged the cases to Google, which then reinstated the links. When Google erases links to an article in its search engine, it is often the equivalent of wiping the piece from the internet, even though the item may still exist on a little-trafficked website. Searchers won’t see a trace. “If people can manipulate the gatekeepers to make important and lawful information disappear,” said Daphne Keller, a former Google lawyer and now a program director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, “that’s a big deal.”

Google has automated much of the process of reviewing takedown requests, relying on techniques that don’t require human review, to enable removals at a large scale, said company spokeswoman Lara Levin. After the Journal shared its findings with Google, the company conducted a review and restored more than 52,000 links it determined it had improperly removed, she said. Google said its review identified more than 100 new abusive submitters, declining to discuss individual cases. Google “aims to strike a balance between making it easy and efficient for rightsholders to report infringing content while also protecting free expression on the web,” Ms. Levin said, adding that “there are bad actors who attempt to abuse the system” and that Google works to fight such abuse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-dmca-copyright-claims-takedown-online-reputation-11589557001?mod=hp_lead_pos10

DOJ: Pakistani Doctor on H-1B Visa Wanted to Attack U.S. for ISIS

A Pakistani doctor, admitted to the United States through the H-1B visa program, wanted to attack Americans for the Islamic State (ISIS), federal agents say in a criminal complaint. Muhammad Masood, a 28-year-old Pakistani national, first arrived in the U.S. in February 2018 after he was able to secure an H-1B visa — the visa program whereby more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. every year and are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Masood worked as an H-1B visa holder “research coordinator” at a medical clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. According to a criminal complaint by federal agents with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Masood repeatedly stated his wanting to commit terrorism on Americans for ISIS while in the U.S. on his H-1B visa.

“[Masood] indicated … because he was currently in the United States, ‘sometimes I want to attack [the] enemy when I am behind enemy [lines] itself’ because ‘not many people [can] even reach here to attack,'” the criminal complaint states. “Discussing his travel to [commit jihad for ISIS], [Masood] noted that he will lose the chance to conduct an attack in the United States: ‘I wonder if I will miss the opportunity of attacking the enemy when I was in the middle of it.'” In another message through a messaging app, Masood said he had intended to attack Americans in the U.S. while on his H-1B visa but decided to make travel plans to fight for ISIS in Syria instead, according to federal agents.

“You know [brother] … there is so much I wanted to do here … [lone wolf] stuff you know… but I realized [I] should be on the ground helping brothers, sisters, kids inshAllah,” Masood allegedly wrote in a message. On February 21, federal agents said Masood bought a plane ticket from Chicago, Illinois, to Amman, Jordan, where he then planned to travel to Syria. After Masood was forced to cancel his trip to Jordan due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis, he bought a plane ticket from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Los Angeles, California. On March 19, Masood was taken into custody by federal agents after arriving at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to board his flight. Masood has been charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIS.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/15/doj-pakistani-doctor-on-h-1b-visa-wanted-to-attack-u-s-for-isis/

FDA probes accuracy issue with Abbott’s rapid virus test

Federal health officials are warning about potential accuracy problems with a rapid test for COVID-19 made by Abbott Laboratories

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials are alerting doctors to a potential accuracy problem with a rapid test for COVID-19 used at thousands of hospitals, clinics and testing sites across the U.S., including the White House. The Food and Drug Administration said late Thursday it is investigating preliminary data suggesting Abbott Laboratories’ 15-minute test can miss COVID-19 cases, falsely clearing patients of infection. The test is used daily at the White House to test President Donald Trump and key members of his staff, including the coronavirus task force. The warning came one day after researchers at New York University reported results suggesting Abbott’s test can miss up to half the infections caught by a rival test made by Cepheid. The research has not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal and was based on about 100 patients.

The researchers found that Abbott’s test, run on the company’s portable ID NOW system, missed one-third of the infections caught by Cepheid’s test when swabs were stored in liquid used to transport laboratory samples. When the samples were kept dry the test missed 48% of the cases flagged by Cepheid’s test. The researchers called the test’s performance “unacceptable,” due to the risk of falsely clearing patients who could spread the infection to others. They acknowledged shortcomings of the study, including the time needed to transport patient samples to the device for processing. Abbott rejected the findings, saying the researchers used the test “in ways that it was not designed to be used.” “ID NOW is intended to be used near the patient with a direct swab test method,” the company said in a statement. The company pointed to other independent study results that found the test accurately detected 90% or more infections.

Last month Abbott changed the instructions for its test to explicitly warn against putting patient samples in transport chemicals. The update came after researchers at the Cleveland Clinic reported a 15% false negative rate for samples stored in the chemicals. “This test can still be used and can correctly identify many positive cases in minutes,” said Dr. Tim Stenzel, FDA’s diagnostics director. The FDA first cleared Abbott’s test in late March under emergency powers used to quickly accelerate the review of tests and treatments during a public health crisis. The agency has authorized more than 90 tests, effectively flooding the market with testing options amid persistent problems ramping up testing levels. For weeks, Trump has promoted Abbott’s test as a “game changer.” On Monday, the company’s ID NOW system and test cartridges were displayed prominently at a Rose Garden press conference meant to highlight the nation’s progress on testing. “These tests are highly sophisticated — very quick, very good,” Trump told reporters. The administration has shipped more than 235,000 of the tests to state public health laboratories. And Abbott has separately said it has distributed 1.8 million tests to health care facilities in all 50 states. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.

https://www.breitbart.com/news/fda-probes-accuracy-issue-with-abbotts-rapid-virus-test/

>>9196283

This H-1B visa, offers significant tax advantages to employers who use them, which tend reduce the bottom line. Feds pay these corps essential to hire these people from everywhere. Education really isn't the issue, as usual follow the money.