Category: z-Exclude

“Two weeks we fought with Facebook to restore the suspended page of RT Arabic, with 17 million subscribers,” Manna said on her Telegram channel. “We tried to get an explanation of what triggered the shutdown, because we never got any strikes or comments.” After several awkward non-explanations, Facebook’s customer service “simply wished us luck, closed our case, and turned over the URL to another user,” Manna wrote. “Internet democracy in all its glory!” Facebook blocked the page on March 15, without any explanation or advance warning. Attempts to access the page resulted in the message, “this content isn’t available right now.”

The Biden administration has sanctioned a Slovakian man who U.S. officials said attempted to facilitate an arms deal that would have given Russia access to weapons and munitions from North Korea in exchange for aircraft, food and other material.

The Treasury Department announced new sanctions targeting Ashot Mkrtychev, the man accused of trying to arrange the secret deal. Officials said the episode is the latest sign that Russia is searching for ways to replenish its military capabilities as it continues to suffer losses amid heavy fighting in Ukraine.

“We know that between the end of 2022 and early 2023, that [Mkrtychev] worked with North Korean officials to attempt to obtain, as I said, over two dozen kinds of weapons and ammunitions for Russia” in exchange for aircraft, raw materials and commodities, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on a call. He said any such arrangement would violate multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The Treasury Department said Mkrtychev “confirmed Russia’s readiness to receive military equipment from the DPRK with senior Russian officials,” using North Korea’s official diplomatic name. The department said Mkrtychev worked with a Russian official to locate commercial aircraft that could be delivered to North Korea. Thursday’s sanctions mean all of Mkrtychev’s property and interests in the U.S. or in the possession of U.S. persons are blocked.

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the security services routinely torment domestic reporters who dare to expose the truth and now it has extended to the foreign press, arresting Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index ranks the country 155th of 180 nations, declaring that “the government has taken complete control of news and information by…

Brigadier General Henrik Lyhne said Denmark’s military is facing what he referred to as its worst staffing issue in decades – a factor which he said will complicate efforts to meet Copenhagen’s NATO obligations. He added that low wages and below-par personnel housing have contributed to an exodus from the armed forces. This, in turn, has led to problems in Denmark supplying troops to the US-led military bloc’s eastern flank in Latvia.

“This is an emergency call,” Lynhe said in an interview broadcast on Monday. “The situation is extremely critical, especially because we lack soldiers like never before. I have been in the armed forces for 40 years, and it has never looked so bad.” 

Office of the Spokesperson
The United States continues to put human rights at the center of our foreign policy.  The Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative  – launched at the first Summit for Democracy as part of the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal – is a multilateral effort intended to counter state and non-state actors’ misuse of goods and technology that violate human rights.  During the Year of Action following the first Summit, the United States led an effort to establish a voluntary, nonbinding written code of conduct outlining political commitments by Subscribing States to apply export control tools to prevent the proliferation of goods, software, and technologies that enable serious human rights abuses.  Written with the input of partner countries, the Code of Conduct complements existing multilateral commitments and will contribute to regional and international security and stability.
In addition to the United States, the governments that have endorsed the voluntary Code of Conduct are: Albania, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Kosovo, Latvia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.   The Code of Conduct is open for all Summit for Democracy participants to join.
The Code of Conduct calls for Subscribing States to:

Take human rights into account when reviewing potential exports of dual-use goods, software, or technologies that could be misused for the purposes of serious violations or abuses of human rights.
Consult with the private sector, academia, and civil society representatives on human rights concerns and effective implementation of export control measures.
Share information with each other on emerging threats and risks associated with the trade of goods, software, and technologies that pose human rights concerns.
Share best practices in developing and implementing export controls of dual-use goods and technologies that could be misused, reexported, or transferred in a manner that could result in serious violations or abuses of human rights.
Encourage their respective private sectors to conduct due diligence in line with national law and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights or other complementing international instruments, while enabling non-subscribing states to do the same.
Aim to improve the capacity of States that have not subscribed to the Code of Conduct to do the same in accordance with national programs and procedures.

We will build on the initial endorsements of the ECHRI Code of Conduct by States at the Summit for Democracy and seek additional endorsements from other States.  We will convene a meeting later this year with Subscribing States to begin discussions on implementing the commitments in the Code of Conduct.  We will also continue discussions with relevant stakeholders including in the private sector, civil society, academia, and the technical community.
Find the text of the full code of conduct .

New rules and obligations under the California Consumer Privacy Act have reached the finish line. The California Privacy Protection Agency announced its first California Privacy Rights Act rulemaking package was approved by the California Office of Administrative Law following a review.
The finalized rules contain no substantive changes to the final draft submitted by the CPPA to the OAL in February. The first rulemaking package addresses regulations concerning data processing agreements, consumer opt-out mechanisms, mandatory recognition of opt-out preference signals, dark patterns and consumer request handling.
“I’m incredibly impressed with the team and thankful for the Board’s thoughtful guidance,” CPPA Executive Director Ashkan Soltani said in a statement. “With the regulations in place, we can now redouble our efforts to promote public awareness of consumers’ rights and businesses’ responsibilities under the law to better ensure that these privacy rights are secured.”
In its press release, the agency indicated the regulations “provide clarity and specificity to implement” changes to the CCPA regulations necessitated by the CPRA. It added the final rules “place the consumer in a position where they can knowingly and freely negotiate with a business over the business’s use of the consumer’s personal information.”
More CPPA insights into the final regulations will come to light at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2023 in Washington, D.C., 5 April, as Soltani joins California Supervising Deputy Attorney General Stacey Schesser, CIPP/US, for a discussion on CCPA enforcement.
The finalization is a culmination of a rulemaking process the CPPA commenced 8 July 2022, after originally scheduling its completion for 1 July 2022. The agency formally announced an extended delay to its process 23 Feb. 2022, citing insufficient staff and resources would slow its work.
The CPPA Board had its first-ever meeting 14 June 2021, while Soltani was appointed executive director 4 Oct. 2021. The agency added relevant personnel on a rolling basis — and lost a board member — while executing its rulemaking procedure.
“This is a major accomplishment, and a significant step forward for Californians’ consumer privacy. I’m deeply grateful to the Agency Board and staff for their tireless work on the regulations, and to the public for their robust engagement in the rulemaking process,” CPPA Board Chair Jennifer Urban said in a statement.
Industry stakeholders criticized the agency’s drawn-out rulemaking procedure despite the short-staffing acknowledgements. Concerns stemmed from the lack of time for companies to sufficiently implement final regulations ahead of CPRA enforcement becoming effective 1 July.
The agency partially addressed the enforcement concerns with a rule allowing the CPPA to “consider all facts it determines to be relevant, including the amount of time between the effective date of the statutory or regulatory requirement(s) and the possible or alleged violation(s) of those requirements, and good faith efforts to comply with those requirements.”
Upon submission of the first rulemaking package to the OAL, the CPPA announced preliminary activities on its next rulemaking package. The second set of CPRA rules will address cybersecurity audits, risk assessments and automated decision-making.

A March 3, 2023 DOJ memorandum on the Pilot Program notes that “when entering into criminal resolutions, companies will be required to implement compliance-related criteria in their compensation and bonus system and to report to the [DOJ’s Criminal] Division about such implementation during the term of such resolutions.” Under the compliance enhancement component, the company must annually report its implementation of criteria such as:

a prohibition on bonuses for employees who do not satisfy compliance performance requirements;
disciplinary measures for employees who violate applicable law and others who both:
a. had supervisory authority over the employee(s) or business area engaged in the misconduct; and
b. knew of, or were willfully blind to, the misconduct; and
incentives for employees who demonstrate full commitment to compliance processes.

The U.S. state of Iowa is no stranger to privacy bills. Since its first attempt in 2020, the state’s legislature has repeatedly proposed and considered comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation. But 2023 is the year privacy took root in Iowa. On 28 March 28, Iowa became the sixth state to pass a comprehensive privacy law, joining Connecticut, Utah, Virginia, Colorado and California. The law will go into effect on 1 Jan. 2025, giving organizations 21 months to comply with the new requirements from this state with over 3 million residents. Though the new law includes many familiar elements from other state laws, organizations should note a handful of differences as they expand their U.S. compliance efforts. 

There has been no shortage of news this month, so it is understandable that a major presidential proposal garnered relatively little attention at the time.  On March 2, the President proposed a sweeping pandemic anti-fraud initiative that is designed to give key oversight bodies additional tools to investigate and prosecute those who defraud the pandemic relief programs that collectively injected trillions into the then-teetering economy to support struggling families, workers, and businesses.

When these relief programs were initiated three major oversight bodies were created to combat pandemic relief-related fraud, a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic; a new Office of Inspector General, the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery (or “SIGPR”); and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (or “PRAC”), a consortium of existing Offices of Inspectors General whose agencies took part in pandemic relief programs. To complement the work of these bodies, the Department of Justice created COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force Teams, a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force, and a “Chief Pandemic Prosecutor” was named.

Congress on Wednesday took the first step in what is expected to be a lengthy effort to overhaul U.S. export control laws in order to expedite technology cooperation needed to implement a central pillar of the AUKUS trilateral agreement with Australia and the U.K.

The House passed a bill 393-4 directing the State Department and Pentagon to submit information on defense export licenses necessary to collaborate with the U.S. allies on hypersonic weapons, quantum technologies and quantum technologies. These technologies form what is known as pillar two of the AUKUS agreement, which all three countries view as critical to filling capability gaps before Australia receives U.S. and U.K. nuclear-powered submarines over the next two decades under pillar one.

Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Armed Services seapower subcommittee, told Defense News that he pushed throughout the past year to “get a circuit-breaker type of mechanism” that would expedite technology sharing arrangements with Australia and the U.K. to alleviate private sector concerns about potential violations of the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations regime, or ITAR.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified…

In a letter Wednesday, GOP House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio raised concerns that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media — created by trade association World Federation of Advertisers and backed by the World Economic Forum — was violating US antitrust laws. The group’s more than 100 members include advertisers such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Unilever Plc, alongside tech companies such as Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok.

The United States has offered Slovakia 12 new military helicopters as compensation for the MiG-29 fighter jets the European country is giving to Ukraine, Slovakia’s defense minister said Wednesday.

Under the offer, Slovakia would pay $340 million for the Bell AH-1Z attack choppers in a deal worth about $1 billion that also includes 500 AGM-114 Hellfire II missiles and training, Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said.

U.S. foreign military financing would cover the other $660 million, he said. The European Union also would send Slovakia 200 million euros ($213 million) in additional compensation, Nad said.

The Slovak government still needs to accept the offer.

The cost-of-living squeeze has shown signs of easing for the first time in the past financial year – this as the start of the new school year sparked a spending boom. This was according to Bankwest’s Spend Trends report for February, which tracked WA customer credit and debit activity. Bankwest’s monthly Spend Trends analysis showed a 3% rise in the…

A federal court in the District of Columbia unsealed two indictments yesterday charging multiple defendants with violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) for their roles in separate schemes to procure and export U.S. technology to Iran between 2005 and 2013. In connection with this announcement, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated three of the defendants and four entities for their involvement in the procurement of equipment that supports Iran’s ballistic missile and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and weapons programs.

The landing comes as the United States and Philippines strengthen military relations as China becomes more aggressive in the South China Sea.