Antitrust investigators with the House Judiciary Committee are looking into Google’s plans to add Domain Name System over Transport Layer Security (DNS over TLS) to its Chrome browser, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, in the latest escalation of scrutiny over the company’s business practices. The Department of Justice has also heard complaints, a source told the paper.

DNS translates a domain name (such as Gizmodo.com) into an IP address. It’s essentially an internet phonebook. While encryption tech like HTTPS is already in place across much of the web, DNS is currently largely unencrypted by default, meaning it’s possible for service providers to ascertain which web sites a user is visiting and thus monetize traffic records.

Google has reportedly been integrating TLS, an additional layer of encryption, into DNS in Chrome—which the Journal notes could protect users against spoofing attacks or unauthorized snooping into their web traffic, but could also prevent the many “service providers who don’t support the new standard from observing user behavior in gathering data.” Opponents have also raised concerns that as Google controls 64 percent of the worldwide browser market and operates its own DNS system, Google Public DNS, the company could flip a switch transferring Chrome users away from service provider-operated DNS. That, the critics say, could allow Google to gain an unfair advantage over user behavior data invaluable for advertising purposes.

In a Sept. 13 letter to the company, investigators with the House committee asked Google for more information on why it is promoting DNS over TLS and whether any of the data collected or processed will be used for profit, the Journal wrote.

“Because the majority of world-wide internet traffic…runs through the Chrome browser or the Android operating system, Google could become the overwhelmingly predominant DNS lookup provider,” a coalition of service providers wrote in a letter to lawmakers this month, per the Journal. “Google would acquire greater control over user data across networks and devices around the world. This could inhibit competitors and possibly foreclose competition in advertising and other industries.”

“Right now, each internet service provider has insight into the traffic of their users, and that’s going to shift,” chief security officer Andy Ellis of Akamai, which does not support the new standard, told the Journal.

Google is planning on starting tests with the new protocol involving one percent of its user base, a less “aggressive strategy” than Mozilla’s Firefox, which the Journal wrote plans to switch users “to the new standard automatically, even if the change involves switching their DNS service providers.” Google denied that it has any plans to become “the centralized DNS provider,” while Mozilla has characterized the issue as griping by service providers who fear it will make it harder to track users for ad purposes,

[…]

Source: House Antitrust Investigators Now Scrutinizing Google’s Plans to Add DNS Encryption to Chrome

There are many problems and advantages with DNS over TLS – basically you make the browser the resolver instead of the (many) DNS providers. This means that you cannot add a private, secret, DNS provider or ISP and not let Google (or Mozilla) know. Countries where censorship exists only have to call these guys up for information on where their websurfing netizens are going. On the other hand, ISPs now have no idea where they are heading.

This happened when SSL/TLS was enforced and suddenly none of the other website statistics providers had any idea how the traffic on the site got there, with the result that almost all of them have died out. There is no real choice but Google Analytics any more for referral traffic, because such a large amount is referred from Google.

Facebook this week finally put into writing what users—especially politically powerful users—have known for years: its community “standards” do not, in fact, apply across the whole community. Speech from politicians is officially exempt from the platform’s fact checking and decency standards, the company has clarified, with a few exceptions.

Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg, himself a former member of the UK Parliament, outlined the policy in a speech and company blog post Tuesday.

Facebook has had a “newsworthiness exemption” to its content guidelines since 2016. That policy was formalized in late October of that year amid a contentious and chaotic US political season and three weeks before the presidential election that would land Donald Trump the White House.

Facebook at the time was uncertain how to handle posts from the Trump campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources told the paper that Facebook employees were sharply divided over the candidate’s rhetoric about Muslim immigrants and his stated desire for a Muslim travel ban, which several felt were in violation of the service’s hate speech standards. Eventually, the sources said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in directly and said it would be inappropriate to intervene. Months later, Facebook finally issued its policy.

“We’re going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest—even if they might otherwise violate our standards,” Facebook wrote at the time.

Clegg’s update says that Facebook by default “will treat speech from politicians as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard.” Nor will it be subject to fact-checking, as the company does not believe that it is appropriate for it to “referee political debates” or prevent a polician’s speech from both reaching its intended audience and “being subject to public debate and scrutiny.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/facebook-confirms-its-standards-dont-apply-to-politicians/

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said today that content by politicians would stay up on the video-sharing website even if it violates the company’s standards, echoing a position staked out by Facebook this week.

“When you have a political officer that is making information that is really important for their constituents to see, or for other global leaders to see, that is content that we would leave up because we think it’s important for other people to see,” Wojcicki told an audience at The Atlantic Festival this morning.

Wojcicki said the news media is likely to cover controversial content regardless of whether it’s taken down, giving context to understand it. YouTube is owned by Google.

A YouTube spokesperson later told POLITICO that politicians are not treated differently than other users and must abide by its community guidelines. The company grants exemptions to some political speech if the company considers it to be educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic in nature.Morning Tech

Social media firms have seen their policies for reviewing and removing content come under fire in recent years, particularly when such content endorses hate-filled views or incites real-world violence. The issue is even more prickly when it involves world leaders like President Donald Trump, who has used bullying or violent language in social media posts.

YouTube CEO: Politicians can break our content rules

But what constitutes a politician? Anyone in or running for office? What about public servants? County sherrifs? And who decides which of these groups are exempt? That’s the problem with exceptions, you get to make more and more exceptions until almost everyone is an exception.

Google recommends that anyone using its translation technology add a disclaimer that translated text may not be accurate.

The US government’s Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) nonetheless has been relying on online translation services offered by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to read refugees’ non-English social media posts and judge whether or not they should be allowed into the Land of the Free™.

According to a report from ProPublica, USCIS uses these tools to help evaluate whether refugees should be allowed into the US. In so doing, agency personnel are putting their trust in an untrustworthy algorithm to make entry decisions that may have profound consequences for the health and welfare of those seeking admission to the country.

“The translation of these social media posts can mean life or death for refugees seeking to reunite with their family members,” said Betsy Fisher, director of strategy for the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP),” in an email to The Register. “It is dangerous to rely on inadequate technology to inform these unreasonable procedures ostensibly used to vet refugees.”

IRAP obtained a USCIS manual through a public records request and shared it with ProPublica. The manual advises USCIS personnel to use free online translation tools and provides a walkthrough for using Google Translate.

Scanning social media posts for content that would disqualify entry into the US follows from a 2017 executive order and memorandum. The impact of social media scrutiny was made clear recently when Ismail Ajjawi, a resident of Lebanon admitted to Harvard’s class of 2023, was denied entry into America by US Customs and Border Protection because of anti-US posts apparently made by friends.

After ten days of pressure from student petitioners and advocacy groups, CBP determined Ajjawi met its requirements for US entry after all.

To demonstrate the inaccuracy of Google Translate, ProPublica asked Mustafa Menai, who teaches Urdu at the University of Pennsylvania, to translate a Twitter post written in Urdu. By Menai’s estimation, an accurate English translation would be, “I have been spanked a lot and have also gathered a lot of love (from my parents).”

Google Translate’s rendering of the post is, “The beating is too big and the love is too windy.”

Source: US immigration uses Google Translate to scan people’s social media for bad posts – Er, don’t do that, says everyone else • The Register