16 November 22
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The hunger strike of Egypt’s Alaa Abd El Fattah overshadows Sisi’s attempt to whitewash his regime’s human rights record at COP27.
Every year, the expectations for what all of this can accomplish dip lower and lower, while cynicism about the traffic jam of private jets headed to the summit reaches new heights.
So far, however, this year’s summit, known as COP27, has been anything but routine. That is less because of its content than its location. It is taking place under the most repressive regime in the history of the modern Egyptian state, headed by Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who seized power in a military coup in 2013 and has held on to it through sham elections ever since. Sisi’s regime is known for its barbarity under the best of circumstances but, like every dictatorship, Egypt’s rulers are on particularly high alert because of the Iranian uprising — fearing that, like the Arab Spring in 2011 which leapt across borders toppling regimes, this moment of spiraling living costs could prove equally volatile.
All of this has created a highly unusual and tense context for the summit, with several extraordinary elements.
For one thing, the most prominent figure at the summit is not even there: Alaa Abd El Fattah, Egypt’s highest-profile political prisoner, whose first name became synonymous with the 2011 pro-democracy revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that ended the three-decade rule of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Alaa’s words have been quoted in several speeches from the floor; his sister Sanaa Seif attended the summit’s first week and was surrounded by a press gaggle everywhere she went; and young delegates have been seen wearing #FreeAlaa T-shirts. On November 10, many delegates wore white, the color worn by Egypt’s prison inmates, and raised banners that said, “No climate justice without human rights. We have not yet been defeated” — an invocation of Alaa Abd El Fattah’s book, published earlier this year, “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.” This has prompted the regime to respond with highly orchestrated, heavy-handed counter-demonstrations of its own.
The intense focus on Alaa’s case is taking place because the writer and technologist, behind bars for most of the past decade, chose to intensify his hunger strike to include a water strike, timed with the first day of the summit. In doing so, he was attempting to force the regime to choose between two options: free him and let him emigrate to the U.K. (he is a dual citizen), or let him die in the middle of the highest profile international event to take place in Egypt under Sisi’s rule. (It is worth recalling that the uprising that is still raging in Iran was sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.)
Sisi appears to have tried a third option: On November 10, Alaa’s sister Mona Seif posted on Twitter that “we have just been informed by the prison officers ‘Medical intervention was taken with @alaa with the knowledge of judicial entities.’” This was interpreted to mean some kind of forced feeding, which is (yet another) violation of his rights, as Human Rights Watch has said. On Monday, November 14, Alaa’s mother finally received, outside the prison gates, a handwritten note from Alaa confirming that he is alive, has received medical attention, and has just started drinking water. The letter was dated two days earlier.
All the while, Egypt’s public prosecutor’s office has sent out a barrage of contradictory claims, absurdly boasting of Alaa’s good health, and stating that his family has been permitted to visit him as recently as November 7. In fact, since he intensified his hunger strike, Egyptian authorities have steadily refused to allow anyone to see Alaa and assess the state of his health for themselves: not his family, not his lawyer, not the British consulate. The regime continues to ignore and deny his status and rights as a British national.
The cloud of deflection and misinformation surrounding Alaa’s status points to the other way that this climate summit is different from the dozens that have come before: It is nearly impossible to get reliable information about the host country, about what is happening in the jails, in the streets, or with its many polluting extraction projects.
That’s because Egypt is a police state with an estimated 60,000 political prisoners behind bars and a media system tightly controlled by the regime. Because Egyptian civil society faces such extreme repression, most of the regime’s critics are not able to get into Sharm el-Sheikh, and many Egyptians who are there have been vetted by the regime. The critics who do manage to speak out are in extreme danger, and rights groups warn of a severe crackdown once the international attention recedes.
The Sisi regime is watching closely: The official COP27 mobile app, downloaded on thousands of phones, is being described by security experts as a “cyber weapon” with extraordinary surveillance capabilities; Sharm el-Sheikh’s 800 taxis were outfitted with video and audio surveillance, and people’s phones in major cities have been searched at random. There have been so many incidents of Egyptian security spying on delegates inside the summit, including by filming and photographing their electronic devices, that the German government reportedly lodged an official complaint. “We expect all participants in the U.N. climate conference to be able to work and negotiate under safe conditions,” Germany’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “This is not just true for the German but for all delegations, as well as representatives of civil society and the media.”
These tight controls mean that the summit is effectively taking place inside an informational bubble, one that the Sisi regime, with help from public relations company Hill+Knowlton, is attempting to paint green.
In an attempt to pierce that bubble, we teamed up a group of trusted journalists, lawyers, activists and scholars on the ground in Egypt to try to gather information that the regime has been trying to suppress.
Using personal and professional networks, this team has been collecting many testimonies and stories, about everything from Egypt’s new fossil fuel projects to arrests and surveillance of locals, to the continued human rights crisis in the regime’s jails. Most sources needed to be anonymous to avoid arrest, but we have been able to check claims for accuracy. Here is some of what we have found so far.
National Crackdowns
Since assuming office, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his regime have severely limited space for dissent. State repression increases markedly every year around the anniversary of the 2011 January 25 Revolution, but we have received reports that ahead of and during COP27, crackdowns have intensified across the country and in some areas amount to a full lockdown. From random police searches in major cities to arrests and the closure of schools and transportation, Egypt’s citizens are experiencing one of the harshest crackdowns in recent memory.
The following testimonial shared with us represents one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of stops that are occurring daily in the country:
A few days ago I was heading home after sending a msg to a friend that I’ll be joining a meeting in 15 mins. I hopped on an Uber scooter, and right after that a policeman in civilian clothing stopped us, he immediately took my phone and ID card. There were 4 men of different ages being picked up from the same spot. When I asked what the problem was, he asked me if I had ever joined a protest. They then took us into a police patrol vehicle, but wouldn’t tell us where they were taking us. The car moved around the neighborhood, going to different checkpoints, and at each checkpoint a new person would join us. After this tour ended, they drove us to an ad hoc national security checkpoint in downtown in the entrance of a random residential building. They kept us there, we were around 14 men of different ages. … Not knowing why we were there or how long we would stay, we were left without any info about when we would be going home or whether they would take us to a police station. I had deactivated my Facebook account for a while now because of these police stops that happens regularly. I was worried they could see what I had shared or worse see what my FB friends are sharing and go after them. After three and a half hours they called my name, gave me my phone and ID card back but told me that I should delete my posts on my Facebook. After I arrived home safely, I found that they managed to reactivate my Facebook account.
These kinds of accounts are difficult if not impossible to report on because, after a decade of repression, journalists fear reprisal. An Egyptian journalist shared with us:
I’ve been hearing imaginary doorbell ringing at the dead of night, thinking policemen in uniformed clothing are outside my apartment. I’ve considered leaving Cairo for the week even because of the reports of random and targeted arrests of people just like me, all because of the security frenzy brought by COP27 and an anonymous call for protests at the end of the week that I’m not even planning to join.
These fears are well-founded. In the past two weeks a number of Egyptian journalists have been detained, including Manal Agrama, Mohamed Mostafa Moussa, Amr Shnin, Mahmoud Saad Diab, and Ahmed Fayez. Fayez was reportedly detained for reporting in Arabic that Alaa had been subjected to a forced medical intervention.
We have also received reports from activists who fear continued crackdowns after international attention leaves Egypt:
I’m afraid that after the climate conference they will come for the rest of us. A few [activists] haven’t left Egypt and aren’t imprisoned, it won’t be about how active we are now or if we are of any importance, it’s simply that we are the only ones left to detain.
Even activists who have managed to leave are fearful of surveillance and repression abroad. An Egyptian living in Berlin shared:
In order for us Egyptians to protest in Berlin, we have to use tricks to hide our identity, fearing the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin which follows activists and reports them. We fear being arrested among arriving back to Egypt. Sometimes it feels like in order to participate in any political action concerning Egypt we just say goodbye to going back home. We left Egypt but the fear continues.
At COP27, international and domestic advocates have repeatedly raised the point that there can be no climate justice without an open civic space and respect for basic human rights. Since the beginning of the summit, we have heard from prisoner’s rights advocacy organizations about the atrocities of Egypt’s carceral institutions. Two new prisons, the Badr Prison Complex and Wadi Al-Natroun, have been touted by the regime as symbols of Egypt’s humane system, but the few reports that have made it out of these prisons tell the opposite story.
The #TillTheLastPrisoner campaign documented “at least 47 deaths in detention since the beginning of the year. These deaths speak to deteriorating conditions in places of detention despite calls for reform and progress.” One of these deaths occurred a few days before the COP27 opening. According to the campaign, “Alaa AlSalmi (47 years) died in detention in Badr 3 prison today. AlSalmi was serving a life sentence in case 610/2014 upon his arrest in 2014.” He was the second prisoner to die in less than a month inside the new Badr 3 prison facility. It is reported that he died after an extended hunger strike protesting the lack of basic rights including family visitation.
Environmental Coverups
Before international delegates arrived to Sharm el-Sheikh, Human Rights Watch warned that “the most sensitive environmental issues are those that point out the government’s failure to protect people’s rights against damage caused by corporate interests, including issues relating to water security, industrial pollution, and environmental harm from real estate, tourism development, and agribusiness.” These hot-button issues for the state have not been widely discussed at COP27. However, environmental and human rights researchers have shared cases with us where Egypt’s military and security forces have displaced communities and wreaked environmental havoc.
In Sinai, where COP27 is being held, security forces have for the past decade destroyed the communities and environments. According to Mohannad Sabry, a journalist, researcher, and author of “Sinai: Egypt’s Linchpin, Gaza’s Lifeline, and Israel’s Nightmare”:
Egypt’s decade long war on terror in North Sinai has bulldozed tens of thousands of green acres, hundreds of thousands of productive trees, comprising a local agricultural wealth built over decades by the local Bedouin community. This destruction of the agricultural wealth continues to this day across the region of North Sinai. Egypt’s war on terror has displaced close to 120,000 people from their villages and towns in North Sinai, the entire historic city of Rafah has been demolished, and as COP27 takes place in Sharm El-Sheikh, the military authorities evacuated dozens of families who returned to their destroyed homes in the villages of North Sinai in an attempt to rebuild their lives.
Underlining the intersections of militarism and climate justice, they add, “The impact of Egypt’s last decade of war on terror in North Sinai on women and children remains a blacked out catastrophe. The lives, well-being and education of thousands of children, and the health and safety of thousands of women, is currently in ruin after mass waves of forced evacuation and displacement without any containment plans by the state authorities. The environmental impact of a decade of military operations across the region, and the destruction of thousands of acres of green spaces, will extend for years if not decades to come, unless immediate plans of damage assessment and containment are launched.”
On Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, a researcher reports:
Since El-Sisi came to power he took special interest in the lakes in Northern Egypt. He considered the lakes a source of revenue and a resource of various elements and fish farming for export. Numerous projects were undertaken: deepening and trenching, enormous fish farming facilities. These projects were executed without any consideration of environmental servicing of the lakes. The Egyptian military’s full control over fishing and fisheries in North Sinai’s lakes and Mediterranean shores does not only strip the local communities of pursuing a source of living, but also hinders all kinds of environmental research, study, work and preservation efforts. This crisis has been evolving for over a decade and will continue into the future, with multiplying impacts extending into the future.
These testimonials provide a brief snapshot of the realities being covered up in a country where research and journalism are heavily criminalized, and where even posting about these topics can land a person in prison under the same charges as Alaa: spreading false news.
At the end of its first week, and with one more to go, the clearest messages to emerge from this extraordinary summit is that political rights and climate progress are inextricably linked. A future in which safety from the worst climate impacts is possible requires groups and individuals who are free enough to imagine that future and fight for it. Those who are most impacted must be empowered to lead the way. That can only happen if basic freedoms — to speak, to dissent, to protest, to strike — are defended, in Egypt and around the world.
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. (photo: Valeria Mongelli/Bloomberg)
ALSO SEE: Ukraine Reacts as Initial Findings Suggest It
Fired the Missile That Hit Poland
Two people were killed when a Russian-made missile struck a grain drying farm, sparking tensions across Europe.
But he said it is still Russia’s fault.
“This is not Ukraine’s fault,” Jens Stoltenberg, head of NATO, told reporters several times on Wednesday from NATO headquarters in Brussels. “Russia bears ultimately responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda echoed that, saying: “Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory.”
“There is nothing, absolutely nothing to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland,” he said.
The accident, which killed two people and is still under investigation in Poland, set off a chain reaction among European NATO countries close to the battlefield in Ukraine, with the alliance putting many bases across the region on alert in case leaders decided to trigger Article V, which allows for military protection to any alliance member, which Poland is.
The direct hit in Europe also sparked a wave of diplomatic responses, with a slew of warnings to Russia, even before the investigation was complete.
Poland summoned the Russian ambassador, though the meeting lasted just four minutes, according to the Polish government.
“He [Sergei Andreyev] was received, but without any exchange of courtesy, without shaking hands, by Minister Zbigniew Rau and the delegation accompanying him,” Lukasz Jasina, a spokesman for Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters. “Our diplomatic note was read to the ambassador, which is similar to the communique we published. The ambassador accepted the position and left.”
Stoltenberg reiterated that while there was “no indication” that Russia was planning any attack on NATO allies, the inherent danger of war meant that NATO countries would beef up their defense strategies close to Ukraine, which includes providing more air defense to Ukraine to avoid additional accidents. Germany immediately offered to send its own military planes to patrol the Polish borders, if Poland requests such assistance.
NATO once again backed away from Ukraine’s request to close air space over the country.
“Only Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine and massive missile strikes. Only Russia is behind the rapidly growing risks for the border countries,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted as NATO representatives met behind closed doors. “No need to look for excuses and postpone key decisions. Time for Europe to ‘close the sky over Ukraine’.”
The NATO chief said he did not know where the missile that the Ukraine defense system tried to intercept struck, but underscored that Tuesday was one of Russia’s most aggressive days in the war as they focused on knocking out key infrastructure systems in Ukraine.
Russia was quick to seize on NATO’s announcement Wednesday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lashed out at Western leaders for what he called a “hysterical” and “frenzied” reaction to the missile incident. Meanwhile, he lauded U.S. President Joe Biden for what he described as a “measured response.”
Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, went so far as to demand that Poland apologize to Russia.
“Don’t the Polish agencies that allowed themselves anti-Russian attacks and called Ambassador Andreyev at midnight want to apologize?” she wrote on Telegram.
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Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
The former president has thrown his garish red hat in the ring to once again become the current president
Donald Trump announced from Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday that he is running for president in 2024. “America’s comeback starts right now,” the former president said shortly after taking the stage — and exactly a week after several of his hand-picked, high-profile midterm candidates were trounced by their Democratic opponents.
Trump continued to portray the United States as an embarrassing wasteland rife with suffering under President Biden, throwing in a totally unfounded claim that China meddled in the 2020 election, before saying explicitly that he’s making another run at the White House. “I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said.
Trump filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2024. The filing comes minutes before the former president is scheduled to formally announce his campaign to return to the White House.
Trump’s speech was noticeably low-energy, and featured several absurd delusions of reality, including that his handling of the Covid-19 “saved lived,” and that he also “saved” the economy during the pandemic. He made clear that if elected again he will do what he can to expedite the climate crisis, implying he’s going to clear the way to extract the “liquid gold under our feet.” He also painted a grim future for voting rights. “I will immediately demand voter ID, same-day voting, and only paper ballots,” he promised. Trump spent Monday railing on Truth Social about how nonexistent voter fraud is the reason many of his preferred candidates fared so poorly in the midterms.
The announcement comes days after Republicans — particularly election-denying Republicans elevated by Trump — drastically underperformed in the midterm elections. Trump has tried to claim on Truth Social that the results were a “success,” but in reality the GOP fared so poorly that the former president’s team reportedly advised him to delay his 2024 announcement. He did not, and the 2024 edition of the Trump Train now leaves the station as the party is undergoing a full-fledged identity crisis, mulling potential overhauls of its leadership, from the Republican National Committee to both chambers of Congress.
The overhaul could also extend to the figure who sits atop the party. It’s currently Trump, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has long been bandied about as a potential replacement, and has amassed a war chest of cash to support a 2024 run of his own. He might also wind up having the necessary political backing. There have been signs since last Tuesday that some Republicans are cooling on Trump, with even loyal backers like Sen. Lindsey Graham has declined to say whether they’ll support his next White House run. Meanwhile, right-wing media has been distancing itself to varying degrees, with the New York Post running covers lampooning Trump and praising DeSantis as “DeFuture.”
Trump has not taken kindly to the idea of a challenger. He called DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” during a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, and has repeated the dig as he’s gone on the offensive against his former ally since the midterms. In a preview of what to expect should DeSantis enter the race, Trump also warned that he’s ready to reveal damaging information about his potential opponent, telling The Wall Street Journal last week that he knows “more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife.”
DeSantis has mostly stayed quiet, but when pressed to respond on Tuesday said the results in Florida — where he and other Republicans romped, in contrast with the rest of the nation — speak for themselves. “I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night,” he said. “It was the greatest Republican victory in the history of the state of Florida.”
Trump may be announcing at an inopportune time for the GOP, but it’s long been a foregone conclusion that he would mount another run at the White House. His team has been mulling when to make it official since the summer, but it’s been clear the garish red hat in the ring by the end of the year. Axios reported earlier this month that he was circling the week after the midterms, but it later became clear he was considering doing it on the eve of Election Day, with Rolling Stone reporting he’d told Sean Hannity of the plan to steal the spotlight. He didn’t, only announcing a “very big announcement” would be coming on Nov. 15.
Trump’s aggrieved conspiracy theorizing will now loom even larger over the American political discourse, as will what he could have in store for the nation should he reclaim the presidency. Reports of his plans have been terrifying. Axios has noted that he is aiming to reimpose his “Schedule F” executive order, which would essentially allow him to gut the government of tens of thousands of federal employees and restock it with MAGA loyalists. He’d likely move to clamp down on climate action, immigration, and anything resembling decency toward the marginalized, as well, while taking a more proactive approach to vanquishing his perceived enemies. Rolling Stone reported last week that earlier this year Trump asked advisers how he might be able to use the Justice Department to jail journalists.
Trump’s 2024 run also carries legal implications for Trump himself. He is currently at the center of multiple investigations, and could soon face criminal charges. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said Trump declaring his candidacy will not affect any of the Justice Department’s probes, but the announcement does add another layer of political consideration as the DOJ continues to investigate his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as well as his flight to Florida with highly sensitive classified material. Trump is well aware of all of this. Rolling Stone reported in July that he’s been telling his team he needs to be president again to protect himself from legal consequences.
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A US Border Patrol agent checks the passports of immigrants after they crossed the border with Mexico on May 18, 2022, in Yuma, Arizona. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Asylum restrictions imposed at beginning of Covid pandemic are ‘arbitrary and capricious’, US district judge says
The US district judge, Emmet Sullivan, ruled in Washington that enforcement must end immediately for families and single adults, calling the ban “arbitrary and capricious”. The administration has not applied it to children traveling alone.
Within hours, the justice department asked the judge to let the order take effect on 21 December, giving it five weeks to prepare. Plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union did not oppose the delay.
“This transition period is critical to ensuring that [the Department of Homeland Security] can continue to carry out its mission to secure the nation’s borders and to conduct its border operations in an orderly fashion,” government attorneys wrote.
Sullivan, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, wrote in a 49-page ruling that authorities failed to consider the impact on migrants and possible alternatives. The ruling appears to conflict with another in May by a federal judge in Louisiana that kept the asylum restrictions.
If Sullivan’s ruling stands, it would upend border enforcement. Migrants have been expelled from the US more than 2.4m times since the rule took effect in March 2020, denying migrants rights to seek asylum under US and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of Covid. The practice was authorized under Title 42 of a broader 1944 law covering public health.
Before the judge in Louisiana kept the ban in place in May, US officials said they were planning for as many as 18,000 migrants a day under the most challenging scenario, a staggering number. In May, migrants were stopped an average of 7,800 times a day, the highest of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Immigration advocacy groups have pressed hard to end Title 42, but more moderate Democrats, including senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, wanted it to stay when the administration tried to lift it in May.
The ban has been unevenly enforced by nationality, falling largely on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – in addition to Mexicans – because Mexico allows them to be returned from the US. Last month, Mexico began accepting Venezuelans who are expelled from the United States under Title 42, causing a sharp drop in Venezuelans seeking asylum at the US border.
Nationalities less likely to be subject to Title 42 have become a growing presence at the border, confident they will be released in the US to pursue their immigration cases. In October, Cubans were the second-largest nationality at the border after Mexicans, followed by Venezuelans and Nicaraguans.
The homeland security department said it would use the next five weeks to “prepare for an orderly transition to new policies at the border”.
“We continue to work with countries throughout the western hemisphere to take enforcement actions against the smuggling networks that entice migrants to take the dangerous and often deadly journey to our land borders and to address the root causes of irregular migration that are challenging our hemisphere as a whole,” the department said.
An ACLU attorney, Lee Gelernt, said Sullivan’s decision renders the Louisiana ruling moot.
“This is an enormous victory for desperate asylum seekers who have been barred from even getting a hearing because of the misuse of public laws,” Gelernt said. “This ruling hopefully puts an end to this horrendous period in US history in which we abandoned our solemn commitment to provide refuge to those facing persecution.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel for the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, distinguished Sullivan’s ruling from the one by the US district judge Robert Summerhays in Louisiana, an appointee of Donald Trump, which applied only to how the Biden administration tried to end Title 42. Sullivan found the entire rule invalid.
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"Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking." (photo: Getty Images)
Case is a historic win for consumers after an investigation found the tech company tracked users’ location even after they opted out
The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press story, which found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called “location history”.
The attorneys general called the settlement a historic win for consumers, and the largest multi-state settlement in US history dealing with privacy.
It comes at a time of mounting unease over privacy and surveillance by tech companies that has drawn growing outrage from politicians and scrutiny by regulators. The supreme court’s ruling in June ending the constitutional protections for abortion raised potential privacy concerns for women seeking the procedure or related information online.
“This $391.5m settlement is a historic win for consumers in an era of increasing reliance on technology,” said Connecticut attorney general William Tong in a statement. “Location data is among the most sensitive and valuable personal information Google collects, and there are so many reasons why a consumer may opt-out of tracking.”
Google, based in Mountain View, California, said it fixed the problems several years ago.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” said company spokesperson Jose Castaneda in a statement.
Location tracking can help tech companies sell digital ads to marketers looking to connect with consumers within their vicinity. It is another tool in a data-gathering toolkit that generates more than $200bn in annual ad revenue for Google, accounting for most of the profits pouring into the coffers of its corporate parent, Alphabet, which has a market value of $1.2tn.
In its 2018 story, the AP reported that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones stored users’ location data even if they had used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so. Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP’s request.
Storing such data carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects.
The AP reported that the privacy issue with location tracking affected about 2 billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.
The attorneys general who investigated Google said a key part of the company’s digital advertising business was location data, which they called the most sensitive and valuable personal data the company collects. Even a small amount of location data can reveal a person’s identity and routines, they said.
Google uses the location information to target consumers with ads by its customers, the state officials said.
The attorneys general said Google misled users about its location tracking practices since at least 2014, violating state consumer protection laws.
As part of the settlement, Google also agreed to make those practices more transparent to users. That includes showing them more information when they turn location account settings on and off and keeping a webpage that gives users information about the data Google collects.
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Catholic faithful participate in a procession to commemorate the 26th anniversary of the murder of the Rev. Ignacio EllacurÃa, five other Jesuit priests and two employees at Central American University in San Salvador. (photo: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)
The ruling ordered the release of Colonel Guillermo Benavides because of his age and because he completed a third of his sentence in October, according to his lawyer David Campos.
Benavides, 77, was originally sentenced to a 30-year prison term in 1992.
The following year, however, an amnesty law freed Benavides, but he was then forced to return to prison after the law was overturned in 2016.
Campos praised the court's evaluation of the case in comments to reporters outside the courthouse shortly after the ruling was issued.
In one of the ugliest episodes of El Salvador's dozen years of civil war between 1979 and 1992, a group of U.S.-trained Salvadoran soldiers stormed the Jesuit Central American University campus in 1989 and assassinated six priests, including rector Ignacio Ellacuria, plus the housekeeper and her daughter.
The Salvadoran government targeted the Jesuit priests due in large part to Ellacuria's outspoken opposition to military rule and the order's role in peace talks.
A spokesperson for the Central American University and its lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Central American country's civil war left around 75,000 Salvadorans dead and another 8,000 missing, according to official estimates.
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Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)
Why it matters: The decisions made in Sharm el-Sheikh could help determine whether the Paris warming limit of 1.5°C permanently fades into the distance, or if nations commit to sweeping actions to keep it alive.
Driving the news: The crucial second week of the summit comes as a new scientific report reveals the world is still headed in the wrong direction on fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
- Emissions are likely to reach an all-time high this year, with a 1% increase over last year, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international research effort.
Zoom in: “I can’t say that I see much optimism out of these numbers,” Glen Peters, a study coauthor and a researcher at CICERO in Oslo, told Axios.
- "There's not even a hint of a decrease at least in the last 10 years."
- Global fossil CO2 emissions are now more than 5% above 2015 levels when the Paris Agreement was struck, he said.
Taking into account historical emissions, the Global Carbon Budget analyzes how much more CO2 countries could emit before the Paris Agreement's temperature targets are exceeded.
Threat level: The findings are stark, concluding that at current emissions rates, the world has just nine years before exceeding the budget for the 1.5-degree warming target, and 30 years for the 2-degree target.
- To meet a midcentury net-zero goal, emissions would need to steadily decline annually by about the same margin as they did during the pandemic year of 2019, the study notes.
The intrigue: It is against this backdrop that diplomats must negotiate an offramp away from an increasingly dystopian future. Every single word will be contested by bleary-eyed ministers, and the talks are already running behind.
- “There has not been a huge amount of progress on the negotiations themselves,” Alex Scott of E3G, told Axios from Egypt. She said the leaders’ summit at COP27 showed support for accelerating climate action but lacked many new commitments.
State of play: Potential flash points around the summit text include whether and how the Paris targets are incorporated, particularly the 1.5°C goal.
- There's also the potential mention, as at COP26, of the need to cut fossil fuel use. Coal, the most carbon-intensive power source, may be singled out.
- The matter of climate damages also looms large, with the wild card of whether an agreement commits countries to establishing a new funding mechanism.
- Also, Scott said many countries are pushing for more details and greater funding to help developing nations adapt to the effects of climate change.
- "The adaptation finance point is really one to watch," she said.
Between the lines: An external factor that may shape the COP27 outcome is the G20 meeting currently underway in Bali, Indonesia. The leaders of China and India are present there, after skipping COP27.
- The interaction between the two confabs introduces more volatility to the COP27 dynamics, and could affect instructions given to government ministers for the final text, Scott said.
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