Slashdot reader reader Danngggg has been keeping us up-to-date about the case of Marty Gottesfeld, the Anonymous hacktivist initially prosecuted by the same U.S. attorney who prosecuted Aaron Swartz into suicide: Anonymous hacktivist Marty Gottesfeld was first covered by Slashdot in 2016, when he was rescued by at sea by a Disney cruise liner and then arrested by the FBI.... He's been practicing journalism from inside the Bureau of Prisons, most recently highlighting sexual abuse....

Marty's home for the last three years [has been] the "Communications Management Unit" at FCI Terre Haute, in Terre Haute, Indiana. The CMU was created in 9/11 era to hold terrorists.... In August prison officials told him that he was being recommended to "step down" out of the CMU. But this week he was transferred to the other CMU in Marion, Illinois.

They are keeping him in indefinite solitary confinement without cause or explanation; Sunday marked the beginning of month five.

One of these two CMUs is likely where the U.S. will place Assange if extradited.

Moving halfway across America, from Colorado to New York, Austin and Valerie McNulty had a bad experience after hiring a moving company that subcontracted the work to another moving company.

But they'd also included an Apple AirTag in one of their boxes, Newsweek reports: A moving guy reportedly told Austin that he "just picked up the stuff" and would take another day or two. Due to the AirTag, the couple knew the moving guy was not in Colorado but was just less than five hours away in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As for the family's possessions, which were supposed to be inventoried and in a safe location, GPS tracking showed that neither action allegedly occurred. "It turns out [the items] just stayed overnight in a sketchy part of New Jersey," Austin told Newsweek.

According to Austin, that same driver who allegedly lied about his whereabouts told Austin in a phone call that he went to see "his lady" and that was part of the delay....

"I think we would have been waiting a lot longer for our home goods to arrive [if we didn't have the AirTag]," Valerie said.... "I would say that AirTags are fairly inexpensive and it's an easy way to hold the third parties accountable."
"When we brought up the fact that we knew his exact location he hung up on us," Valerie McNulty said in a Facebook post (which has been shared more than 4,600 times) — although the driver did eventually call back a few minutes later and the items were delivered the next day.

ABC News reports that the driver "was put on probation" according to his moving company — which also added that it "plans to use AirTags for tracking their drivers in the future."

Valerie McNulty argued to ABC News that "I was never tracking the driver, that was never my intention. I was tracking my belongings." Yet the Washington Post notes the story "comes amid a robust debate about the small plastic-and-metal disks, which launched last spring: Are they creepy or helpful? The trackers have been found on expensive cars, presumably so they could be stolen. But they can also be attached to commonly lost valuables, like keys, to make finding them easier."

Apple Insider reports a Pennsylvania state legislator is even proposing legislation making it a crime to track someone else's location or belongings without their consent, adding that if passed in Pennsylvania the law would "create a precedent for other states to follow suit if passed."

ZDNet quotes a remark from the Director of Cyber-Security at the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the BBC, calling Apple's AirTags "a perfect tool for stalking." But ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk adds "That's the problem with technology, isn't it? For every potential good use, there are at least several pain-inducing, criminal-pleasing, world-ending uses. Too often, the bad outweighs the good, especially in the public eyes and ears. Here, though, is a tale of a woman who's glad she used an AirTag for her own surveillance purposes....

This whole tale makes me wonder, though, what we've come to and where we're going.... If our default is that we can trust no one and fear everyone, how can we ever really get along?

America's Department of Defense "wants to clean up space...at least the increasingly polluted region in low Earth orbit, where thousands of bits of debris, spent rocket stages and dead satellites whiz uncontrollably," writes the Washington Post.

They're reporting that America's Space Force has now launched a program to give companies seed money to develop space-cleaning technology to eventually demo in space (starting with awards of $250,000 that rise as high as $1.5 million). The name of the program: Orbital Prime. The issue also has gotten the attention of the White House. Its Office of Science and Technology Policy recently held a meeting asking for input from space industry leaders about what to do about the problem. Speaker after speaker said that governments around the world need to fund these efforts to help create a market for companies to operate. They also said that it had become an imperative for the governments largely responsible for the problem in the first place. "If the U.S. Navy had had a derelict ship sitting in sovereign waters, creating a safety hazard, the U.S. Navy would go out and grab that ship," said Doug Loverro, a former top Pentagon and NASA space official. "And I'm not sure why we don't see the same responsibility for government for their derelict ships and their derelict bodies that are in space today."

Or as James Lowenthal, a professor of astronomy at Smith College in Michigan, put it: "Just as we rely on the government to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, we have to rely on the government to protect the resource and the global commons of low Earth orbit."

Europe and Britain have also begun to work toward cleaning up debris — a move that's long overdue, space industry experts say. ClearSpace, a Swiss company, has a contract with the European Space Agency to remove a large piece of debris — a symbol that the issue is finally being addressed. It proposes using a spacecraft with large arms that would grapple the debris like a Venus' flytrap. "This is why we're here. Because we think change is possible," said Luc Piguet, ClearSpace's co-founder and CEO. "And we think we can build a space industry that operates with a different model, where maintenance is just a normal part of it."
"This debris and associated congestion threaten the longer sustainability of the space domain," said Space Force's vice chief of space operations, in a video advertising the seed-money program, adding that America's Department of Defense tracks 40,000 objects in orbit the size of a fist or larger, with at least 10 times as many smaller objects the Pentagon can't reliably track.

The nation of Chile "is in the midst of governmental changes," writes the Free Software Foundation, "and with these changes comes the opportunity for the people of Chile to make their voices heard for long-term benefits to their digital rights and freedoms.

"Chilean activists have submitted three constitutional proposals relating to free software and user freedom, but they need signatures in order to have these proposals submitted to the constitutional debate."

FSF community member Felix Freeman writes: Chile is living a historic moment. For the first time, it is drafting a constitution with constituents elected democratically, on a participatory basis, and with the participation of native peoples. 154 people are in charge of drafting the new fundamental charter of the country, and they have arranged a mechanism of popular participation based on the collection of support: 15,000 signatures are required to submit citizen proposals to the constitutional debate directly.

The opportunity to achieve substantive and long-term change for digital rights and freedom of software and other intellectual works is unique in Chile's history, and may not be repeated in our lifetime. This is why four communities historically related to the use and dissemination of free software in Chile got together to draft three of these proposals, which are:

- Access to knowledge
- Technological and digital sovereignty
- Internet privacy

These constitutional proposals explain principles of the nation, the rights of citizens, and the duties of the state concerning them. The inclusion of the constitutional articles will allow and promote the creation of laws that defend our freedoms and rights effectively. They are not the end of the road for intellectual freedoms and digital rights, but only the beginning....

People of any nationality can support us by spreading the word all over the Internet.

[A Spanish-language version is available HERE.]

Last week America's Internal Revenue Service announced a live-video-feed verification of taxpayer's faces would be required by this summer access online tax service. But now the Washington Post reports that "complaints of confusing instructions and long wait times to complete the sign-up have caused an unknown number to abandon the process in frustration."

"The $86 million ID.me contract with the IRS also has alarmed researchers and privacy advocates who say they worry about how Americans' facial images and personal data will be safeguarded in the years to come." There is no federal law regulating how the data can be used or shared. While the IRS couldn't say what percentage of taxpayers use the agency's website, internal data show it is one of the federal government's most-viewed websites, with more than 1.9 billion visits last year. The partnership with ID.me has drawn anger from some members of Congress, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who tweeted that he was "very disturbed" by the plan and would push the IRS for "greater transparency." Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) called it "a very, very bad idea by the IRS" that would "further weaken Americans' privacy." The Senate Finance Committee is working to schedule briefings with the IRS and ID.me on the issue, a committee aide said.... "No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition as a condition of accessing essential government services," Wyden said in a separate statement. "I'm continuing to seek more information about ID.me and other identity verification systems being used by federal agencies."

A Treasury official said Friday that the department was "looking into" alternatives to ID.me, saying Treasury and the IRS always are interested in improving "taxpayers experience...."

About 70 million Americans who have filed for unemployment insurance, pandemic assistance grants, child tax credit payments or other services already have been scanned by the McLean, Va.-based company, which says its client list includes 540 companies; 30 states, including California, Florida, New York and Texas; and 10 federal agencies, including Social Security, Labor and Veterans Affairs.... Equifax, the credit-reporting company that previously confirmed taxpayers' data for the IRS, had its $7 million contract suspended in 2017 after hackers exposed the personal information of 148 million people...

[ID.me] says 9 of 10 applicants can verify their identity through a self-service face scan in five minutes or less. Anyone who hits a snag is funneled into the backup video-chat verification process...But some who have tried to verify their identities through ID.me for other purposes have reported agonizing delays: cryptic glitches in Colorado, website errors in Arizona, five-hour waits in North Carolina, days-long waits in California and weeks-long benefit delays in New York. The security blogger Brian Krebs wrote last week that he faced a three-hour wait trying to confirm his IRS account, three months before the tax-filing deadline.... The company said it intends to expand its workforce beyond the 966 agents who now handle video-chat verification for the entire country. It has also opened hundreds of in-person identity-verification centers — replicating, in essence, what government offices have done for decades.
The article also points out that advertising is also a key part of ID.me's operation, with people signing up through their web site asked if they want to subscribe to "offers and discounts" — though the company stresses people do have to opt in. And in addition, the article adds, "If a person is using ID.me to confirm their identity with a government agency, the company will not use that verification information for 'marketing or promotional purposes,' the company's privacy policy says."

But a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center complained to the Post that "We haven't even gone the step of putting regulations in place and deciding if facial recognition should even be used like this. We're just skipping right to the use of a technology that has clearly been shown to be dangerous and has issues with accuracy, disproportionate impact, privacy and civil liberties."

A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department also told Bloomberg News "that any taxpayer who does not want to use ID.me can opt against filing his or her taxes online." "We believe in the importance of protecting the privacy of taxpayers, while also ensuring criminals are not able to gain access to taxpayer accounts," LaManna added, arguing that it's been "impossible" for the IRS to develop its own cutting-edge identification program because of "the lack of funding for IRS modernization."

On Monday, famed singer-songwriter Neil Young had his music removed from Spotify as a protest against the platform's distribution of Joe Rogan, who's been widely criticized for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on his Spotify-exclusive podcast. Now, Neil's fans are taking their frustrations out on Spotify. Ars Technica reports: Though the loss of Young's music likely represents a small percentage of overall streams on Spotify, Young pointed out that "Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world." For Young and his fans, the hit was palpable, and his fans are apparently taking their frustrations out on Spotify. The hashtag #SpotifyDeleted trended on Twitter yesterday, and fans seem to have inundated customer support with so many messages that Spotify has had to take it offline at times. "We're currently getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond," a large red banner has read on the support page. Options to message the company, which have previously included live chat with a customer support agent or a chat bot, are now limited to an email address link.

"When I left Spotify, I felt better," Young wrote on his website today. "I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others." The artist, who has long criticized audio quality on streaming services, and on Spotify in particular, closed with one last dig. "As an unexpected bonus, I sound better everywhere else," he wrote.

Qubit Finance took to Twitter last night to beg hackers to return more than $80 million in stolen cryptocurrency this week. ZDNet reports: On Thursday, the DeFi platform said their protocol was exploited by a hacker who eventually stole 206,809 binance coins from Qubit's QBridge protocol, worth more than $80 million according to PeckShield. An hour after the first message, the company explained that they were tracking the exploiter and monitoring the stolen cryptocurrency. They noted that they contacted the hacker and offered them the maximum bug bounty in exchange for a return of the funds, something a number of other hacked DeFi platforms have tried to middling success. They shared multiple messages on Twitter that they purportedly sent to the hacker offering a bug bounty of $250,000 and begging for a return of the stolen funds.

"We propose you negotiate directly with us before taking any further action. The exploit and loss of funds have a profound effect on thousands of real people. If the maximum bounty offer is not what you are looking for, we are open to have a conversation. Let's figure out a situation," the Qubit Finance Team wrote. The company later explained in a blog post that their Qubit protocol "was subject to an exploit to our QBridge deposit function." [...] Blockchain security company CertiK released a detailed explanation of how the attack occurred and has been tracking the stolen funds as the hackers move them to different accounts. "For the non-technical readers, essentially what the attacker did is take advantage of a logical error in Qubit Finance's code that allowed them to input malicious data and withdraw tokens on Binance Smart Chain when none were deposited on Ethereum," CertiK explained.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Los Angeles Times: Waymo, the driverless car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The immediate issue: whether the company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, can hide from the public safety-related information by designating it as a trade secret. The topics Waymo wants to keep hidden include how it plans to handle driverless car emergencies, what it would do if a robot taxi started driving itself where it wasn't supposed to go, and what constraints there are on the car's ability to traverse San Francisco's tunnels, tight curves and steep hills. Waymo also wants to keep secret descriptions of crashes involving its driverless cars.

That's among the information the DMV requires to determine whether to issue permits to deploy robot vehicles on public roads. The permit was issued last year. Waymo is focusing on San Francisco, where, for the time being, its robotaxis operate under the supervision of trained human drivers. The wider issue: how to handle the explosion in trade secret claims in an age of artificial intelligence, robot technology, the internet of things and pervasive data collection. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court on Jan. 21, contends that Waymo would lose out against other driverless car companies if full permit information were shared with the public. "Every autonomous vehicle company has an obligation to demonstrate the safety of its technology, which is why we've transparently and consistently shared data on our safety readiness with the public," Waymo spokesperson Nicholas Smith said via email when asked about the suit. "We will continue to work with the CA DMV to determine what is appropriate for us to share publicly and hope to find a resolution soon."

Where the DMV stands on the issue remains unclear. The agency has yet to file a response to the suit and told The Times it won't discuss ongoing legal matters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Apple is stifling competition through its mobile app store, attorneys general for 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia said on Thursday, as they appealed against a ruling that let the iPhone maker continue some restrictive practices. While dozens of state attorneys general have filed recent antitrust lawsuits against other big tech companies, including Facebook owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google, none had so far taken aim at Apple. Thursday's remarks, led by the state of Utah and joined by Colorado, Indiana, Texas and others, came in a lawsuit in an appeals court against app store fees and payment tools between "Fortnite" video game maker Epic Games and Apple. "Apple's conduct has harmed and is harming mobile app-developers and millions of citizens," the states said. "Meanwhile, Apple continues to monopolize app distribution and in-app payment solutions for iPhones, stifle competition, and amass supracompetitive profits within the almost trillion-dollar-a-year smartphone industry." [...] The states said in their filing that the lower court erred by failing to adequately balance the pros and cons of Apple's rules and also by deciding that a key antitrust law did not apply to non-negotiable contracts Apple makes developers sign. "Paradoxically, firms with enough market power to unilaterally impose contracts would be protected from antitrust scrutiny -- precisely the firms whose activities give the most cause for antitrust concern," they said.

Apple appears to be testing a feature that will let you use Face ID to unlock the phone even when wearing a mask. From a report: The first developer beta for iOS 15.4 has a screen that asks if you want to be able to use Face ID while wearing a mask, at the cost of reduced security, according to photos from Brandon Butch on Twitter and MacRumors. According to pictures of the screen, Apple says that "iPhone can recognize the unique features around the eye area to authenticate" but warns that Face ID is going to be more accurate if you have it set to not work with a mask.

One of the two administrators of the DeepDotWeb portal was sentenced this week to 97 months in prison for receiving money from illegal dark web marketplaces to promote their sites. From a report: Tal Prihar, 37, was detained in May 2019 in France and subsequently extradited to the US. He was charged with running DeepDotWeb, a website on the public internet that advertised and reviewed dark web marketplaces that sold illegal content such as drugs, firearms, and forged documents. US authorities said that Prihar, together with his partner, ran a kickback scheme where they provided links to the marketplaces in exchange for a commission.

Twitter revealed on Tuesday that governments' requests for content to be removed from the platform hit a record high in the first six months of 2021. The Hill reports: Governments made 43,387 legal demands for content to be pulled down from 196,878 accounts between January and the end of June. Twitter's latest transparency report showed that 95 percent of the requests came from Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea. The platform "withheld" access to content or required accounts to take down posts in response to 54 percent of the demands. Twitter's transparency report also showed that government requests to preserve account information fell four percent compared to the previous reporting period, the last six months of 2020. The United States accounted for 57 percent of preservation requests.

This new political breed accepts paychecks in Bitcoin. The mayors also want to use buzzy new tech like NFTs to raise money for public projects. From a report: The ballooning popularity of Bitcoin and other digital currencies has given rise to a strange new political breed: the crypto mayor. Eric Adams, New York's new mayor, accepted his first paycheck in Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency, Ether. Francis Suarez, Miami's mayor, headlines crypto conferences. Now even mayors of smaller towns are trying to incorporate crypto into municipal government, courting start-ups and experimenting with buzzy new technologies like nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, to raise money for public projects. Their growing ranks reflect the increasing mainstream acceptance of digital currencies, which are highly volatile and have fallen in value in recent days. The mayors' embrace of crypto is also a recognition that its underlying blockchain technology -- essentially a distributed ledger system -- may create new revenue streams for cities and reshape some basic functions of local government.

"Mayors rationally want to attract high-income citizens who pay their taxes and impose few costs on the municipality," said Joseph Grundfest, a business professor at Stanford. "Crypto geeks fit this bill perfectly." But as with many ambitious crypto projects, it's unclear whether these local initiatives will ultimately amount to much. So far, most are either largely symbolic or largely theoretical. And the mayors' aims are partly political: Crypto boosterism has a useful bipartisan appeal, garnering popularity among both antigovernment conservatives and socially liberal tech moguls. "You can do these things because you want to be associated with dudes with AR-15s, or you want to be associated with Meta," said Finn Brunton, a technology studies professor at the University of California, Davis, who wrote a 2019 book about the history of crypto. "A lot of it is hype and hot air."

Identity verification company ID.me uses a type of powerful facial recognition that searches for individuals within mass databases of photos, CEO Blake Hall explained in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday. From a report: The post follows a news release from the company last week stating directly that: "Our 1:1 face match is comparable to taking a selfie to unlock a smartphone. ID.me does not use 1:many facial recognition, which is more complex and problematic." Hall's post on Wednesday confirms that ID.me does indeed use 1:many technology. Privacy advocates say that both versions of facial recognition pose a threat to consumers. In addition to numerous studies demonstrating the technology is less effective on non-White skin tones, amassing biometric data can prove a huge security risk.

"Governments and companies are amassing these databases of your personal biometric information, which unlike databases, of credit cards, cannot be replaced," explained Caitlin Seeley-George, campaign director at nonprofit Fight for the Future. "And these are databases that are highly targeted by hackers and information that can absolutely be used in ways that are harmful to people." In the Wednesday LinkedIn post Hall said that 1:many verification is used "once during enrollment" and "is not tied to identity verification. It does not block legitimate users from verifying their identity, nor is it used for any other purpose other than to prevent identity theft," he writes.

Intel won a historic victory in its court fight over a record 1.06 billion-euro ($1.2 billion) competition fine, in a landmark ruling that upends one of the European Union's most important antitrust cases. From a report: The EU General Court ruled on Wednesday that regulators made key errors in a landmark 2009 decision over allegedly illegal rebates that the U.S. chip giant gave to PC makers to squeeze out rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). While the surprise ruling can be appealed one more time, it's a stinging defeat for the European Commission, which hasn't lost a big antitrust case in court for more than 20 years. The Luxembourg-based EU court said the commission provided an "incomplete" analysis when it fined Intel, criticizing it for failing to provide sufficient evidence to back up its findings of anti-competitive risks.

FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), Google's controversial project for replacing cookies for interest-based advertising by instead grouping users into groups of users with comparable interests, is dead. In its place, Google today announced a new proposal: Topics. From a report: The idea here is that your browser will learn about your interests as you move around the web. It'll keep data for the last three weeks of your browsing history and as of now, Google is restricting the number of topics to 300, with plans to extend this over time. Google notes that these topics will not include any sensitive categories like gender or race. To figure out your interests, Google categorizes the sites you visit based on one of these 300 topics. For sites that it hasn't categorized before, a lightweight machine learning algorithm in the browser will take over and provide an estimated topic based on the name of the domain.

When you hit upon a site that supports the Topics API for ad purposes, the browser will share three topics you are interested in -- one for each of the three last weeks -- selected randomly from your top five topics of each week. The site can then share this with its advertising partners to decide which ads to show you. Ideally, this would make for a more private method of deciding which ad to show you -- and Google notes that it also provides users with far greater control and transparency than what's currently the standard. Users will be able to review and remove topics from their lists -- and turn off the entire Topics API, too.

Washington DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana announced the latest lawsuit against Big Tech Monday, alleging that Google deceived users by collecting their location data even when they believed that kind of tracking was disabled. TechCrunch reports: "Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access," DC Attorney General Karl Racine said. "The truth is that contrary to Google's representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data." Racine described Google's privacy practices as "bold misrepresentations" that undermine consumer privacy. His office began investigating how Google handles user location data after reporting from the Associated Press in 2018 found that many Google apps across iOS and Android recorded location data even when users have chosen privacy options that explicitly say they won't. The AP coordinated with computer science researchers at Princeton to verify its findings.

The lawsuit argues that Google created a location tracking system that's impossible for users to opt out of and that it misled users about how privacy settings could protect their data within apps and at the device level on Android. It also accuses Google of relying on deceptive dark pattern design to force users into making choices counter to their own interests. Racine's office is pursuing an injunction against Google as well as seeking to force the company to pay out profits that it made from user data collected by misleading consumers about their privacy.

How exactly could Russia be deterred from invading Ukraine? The U.S. government is now "threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace," according to Stars and Stripes (an editorially-independent newspaper for the American military). The newspaper cites administration officials as its source: The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials. Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei. The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning 30% last year, according to analysts.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule. "This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government," technology analyst Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm in Shanghai, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm's supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology.... But the effort could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That's because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

"It's like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade," said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. "Other countries will say, 'Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We'd better find alternatives.'"
The newspaper also spoke to Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at a global political risk research and consulting firm called Eurasia Group. His opinion "this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country."

And in more ways than one: Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia's military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence. If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a "devastating effect," Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it "complies with all applicable laws and regulations" and that it has a "rigorous export control system in place ... to ensure export control restrictions are followed."Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules.
The article also explores a scenario where businesses in China step in to supply Russia (citing estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics that China already builds 70% of the computers and smartphones that Russia imports).

"If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods."

Remember that MIT professor accused of hiding the work he did for the Chinese government? (He was arrested for not disclosing it on federal grant applications, with a U.S. attorney announcing "It is not illegal to collaborate with foreign researchers. It is illegal to lie about it.")

All charges have been dropped. Mass Live reports: Chen, 56, was arrested a year ago for failing to disclose millions of dollars in contracts, appointments and awards from the Chinese government when he applied for a grant from the Department of Energy. Among other charges, he was accused of wire fraud and making a false statement on a tax return, according to prosecutors. He pleaded not guilty to the full slate of charges. On Thursday, U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said the federal government would drop its case against Chen. After assessing new evidence, Rollins said in a statement her office found it could not meet the burden of proof in a trial. "As prosecutors, we have an obligation in every matter we pursue to continually examine the facts while being open to receiving and uncovering new information," Rollins said. "Today's dismissal is a result of that process and is in the interests of justice...." Prosecutors had claimed Chen used the U.S. government's money to benefit the Chinese government, while failing to disclose any relationship with Chinese leaders. Colleagues protested Chen's arrest, saying grant disclosure violations had been treated as a serious crime, such as espionage or intellectual property theft, the New York Times reported. Recently, Department of Energy officials said they would awarded a grant to him even if he had disclosed his ties to China.
MIT Technology Review adds: From the start, Chen had maintained his innocence, while MIT had indicated that he was working to establish a research collaboration on behalf of the institution and that the funding in question was actually for the university rather than Chen personally. MIT also paid for his defense....

"The government finally acknowledged what we said all along: Professor Gang Chen is an innocent man," Robert Fisher, Chen's defense attorney, said in a statement. "Our defense was never based on any legal technicalities. Gang did not commit any of the offenses he was charged with. Full stop. He was never in a talent program. He was never an overseas scientist for Beijing. He disclosed everything that he was supposed to disclose and never lied to the government or anyone else."

For his part, Chen said, "While I am relieved that my ordeal is over, I am mindful that this terribly misguided China Initiative continues to bring unwarranted fear to the academic community, and other scientists still face charges."

"I will have more to share soon," the scientist added.

As the price of bitcoin drops to $35,149, "The entire country of El Salvador is riding the cryptocurrency wave," reports The Street, "even in its choppiest waters." The first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, the Central American nation just "bought the dip" once again and acquired 410 bitcoin (roughly $14.8 million USD), its president tweeted Friday....

Bitcoin, which nearly topped $70,000 in November, has now lost more than 40% of its value... El Salvador had previously "bought the dip" when, last September, its worth fell by more than 10%... "150 new coins!" Bukele wrote on Twitter. He said that, at the time, the country had a total of 700 bitcoin.
The Street also shares an interesting detail on how the bitcoin is purchased: It is not clear what type of funds, be they state or private, were used to secure the bitcoin for El Salvador, but the country's 40-year-old President Nayib Bukele is said to buy the country's bitcoin using his phone. The nation's embassy did not immediately respond to TheStreet's request for clarification.