technology
Denmark to boost cooperation with Bangladesh in technology & energy: Danish team tells PM
The cooperation between Bangladesh and Denmark will be strengthened further in different sectors including technology and energy marking the 50 years of relations between the two countries.
Visiting Danish Crown Princess Mary Elizabeth and Danish Minister for Development and Cooperation Flemming Moller Mortensen paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the latter’s official residence Ganobhaban.
PM’s press secretary Ihsanul Karim briefed reporters after the meeting.
“A new phase of cooperation has started and Danish entrepreneurs are interested in investing in Bangladesh,” the Danish minister was quoted as saying.
Also read: Danish Crown Princess Mary to meet PM, visit Rohingya camps
Noting that he visited Bangladesh some 39 years ago, the minister said he now can see how the changes are taking place here. Bangladesh has become a role model (for development), he added.
He said Bangladesh under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina has earned high-level respect in the international community.
They appreciated Bangladesh for the education of Rohingya children in different camps.
The Crown Princess informed the PM that they would visit Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Hasina described Denmark as a development partner of Bangladesh.
About the Rohingya issue, she said Bangladesh developed Bhashanchar (island) for life and livelihood of the Rohingya people and many steps were taken for the labour welfare there.
Besides, climate and women empowerment issues came up for discussion in the meeting.
Hasina said Bangladesh is a climate vulnerable country and the government formed a climate trust fund and took some special programmes to address the issue.
About empowerment of women she said they are now working in every sector including games and sports in Bangladesh.
PMO senior secretary Md Tofazzal Hossain Miah and Ambassador to Bangladesh Winnie Estrup Petersen were present.
Also read: PM’s Ashrayan Project: Homeless Hanufa, thousands more to get own homes on Tuesday
Princess Mary Elizabeth arrived here on Monday morning on a three-day visit to Bangladesh.
She will also meet the Rohingyas in the refugee camps and host community in Cox's Bazar.
Mary Elizabeth, the wife of Danish crown prince Frederik, will go to Satkhira to meet the climate vulnerable people and visit the multipurpose cyclone shelter centres there.
Technology development is big challenge for post-LDC Bangladesh: Japanese Envoy
Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ito Naoki has said innovation and technology development will play a key role in coping with new challenges as Bangladesh graduates from LDC status soon.
He made remarks at a webinar jointly organized by the Embassy of Japan in Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Robot Olympiad recently.
Takahashi Tomotaka, CEO, ROBO GARAGE.Co. Ltd delivered a lecture at the webinar on “The Creation of a New Robot Era, said the embassy on Monday.
Read: Adopt modern technology in cargo handling: BGMEA president
Ambassador Naoki said Tkakahashi’s works inspire young students to realize new avenues in high-tech engineering and its practical application in Bangladesh.
In his lecture, Takahashi, the well-known Japanese robot creator, showed the video of a robot astronaut KIROBO in the mission on board the International Space Station.
The world’s best-selling humanoid, ROBI, and Guinness record holder Evolt were also introduced.
Students should acquire skill in technology to face future challenges: Dipu
Education Minister Dipu Moni on Wednesday urged the students to be skilled in technology to meet the challenges of the coming days. “Technology has both good and bad sides and we should be technology friendly and skilled following the demand of the future. We have to make our students acquainted with technology,” she said.
Read: Secondary school admissions: Lottery system for all classes, says Dipu Moni Dipu was talking to reporters after attending the oath-taking ceremony of the newly elected union parishad members. Mentioning that the academic activities have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, she said the government has a plan to recoup the losses caused by the pandemic in the education sector.
‘Our mission is to let our extraordinary users enjoy the beauty of technology,’ says Liu Feng
Liu Feng, Executive Marketing Director of OPPO Bangladesh, in an interview, shared different aspects of OPPO Bangladesh.
During the interview,Liu said quality along with innovation and exploration is at the heart of OPPO’s DNA, according to a press release issued on Sunday.
Liu Feng said, “Our mission is to let our extraordinary users enjoy the beauty of technology. We strive to be a sustainable company that contributes to a better world by leveraging life through technological amenities and innovations.”
Read Oppo Find N Review: What’s special about it?
OPPO’s core four values - Benfen, User-led, aiming perfection and Goal Oriented - always remind to accept future challenges and contribute to make a better world. “These values inspire us to long for uniqueness and strive for quality products,” he said
All OPPO employees, starting from research and development to supply chain and production process, think very seriously about the quality issues. This is the reason how OPPO maintains the quality, Liu Feng added.
About Series’ product positioning, Liu Feng said OPPO A series aims to make innovative technology more accessible, offering users a smartphone that keeps up with their active social lives and makes life more fun compared to other OPPO product series.
Read Oppo launches quiz contest on Shakib Al Hasan
The recently-launched OPPO A95 balances high performance with stylish design, empowering users to get more out of life and live each day in style, he added.
When asked about maintaining the quality of the smartphones, Liu Feng said, “We strive to deliver the best experience for our customers, no matter wherever they are in the world. We dedicated our heart and soul into developing smartphones. All of our smartphones have been tested for durability by putting it through a series of strict tests.”
“For instance, our newly launched A95 has been through Charging Safety Test that uses software to automatically stop charging when the battery reaches its temperature limit.”
Read Oppo Reno7 SE 5G Review: Can it rule the upper mid-range segment?
With this combined hardware-software solution, users are protected from potential danger caused by their battery overheating, he added.
Plenty of pitfalls await Zuckerberg’s ‘metaverse’ plan
When Mark Zuckerberg announced ambitious plans to build the “metaverse” — a virtual reality construct intended to supplant the internet, merge virtual life with real life and create endless new playgrounds for everyone — he promised that “you’re going to able to do almost anything you can imagine.”
That might not be such a great idea.
Zuckerberg, CEO of the company formerly known as Facebook, even renamed it Meta to underscore the significance of the effort. During his late October presentation, he effused about going to virtual concerts with your friends, fencing with holograms of Olympic athletes and — best of all — joining mixed-reality business meetings where some participants are physically present while others beam in from the metaverse as cartoony avatars.
But it’s just as easy to imagine dystopian downsides. Suppose the metaverse also enables a vastly larger, yet more personal version of the harassment and hate that Facebook has been slow to deal with on today’s internet? Or ends up with the same big tech companies that have tried to control the current internet serving as gatekeepers to its virtual-reality edition? Or evolves into a vast collection of virtual gated communities where every visitor is constantly monitored, analyzed and barraged with advertisements? Or foregoes any attempt to curtail user freedom, allowing scammers, human traffickers and cybergangs to commit crimes with impunity?
Picture an online troll campaign — but one in which the barrage of nasty words you might see on social media is instead a group of angry avatars yelling at you, with your only escape being to switch off the machine, said Amie Stepanovich, executive director of Silicon Flatirons at the University of Colorado.
“We approach that differently — having somebody scream at us than having somebody type at us,” she said. “There is a potential for that harm to be really ramped up.”
Read: Facebook to shut down face-recognition system, delete data
That’s one reason Meta might not be the best institution to lead us into the metaverse, said Philip Rosedale, founder of the virtual escape Second Life, which was an internet craze 15 years ago and still attracts hundreds of thousands of online inhabitants.
The danger is creating online public spaces that appeal only to a “polarized, homogenous group of people,” said Rosedale, describing Meta’s flagship VR product, Horizon, as filled with “presumptively male participants” and a bullying tone. In a safety tutorial, Meta has advised Horizon users to treat fellow avatars kindly and offers tips for blocking, muting or reporting those who don’t, but Rosedale said it’s going to take more than a “schoolyard monitor” approach to avoid a situation that rewards the loudest shouters.
“Nobody’s going to come to that party, thank goodness,” he said. “We’re not going to move the human creative engine into that sphere.”
A better goal, he said, would be to create systems that are welcoming and flexible enough to allow people who don’t know each other to get along as well as they might in a real place like New York’s Central Park. Part of that could rely on systems that help someone build a good reputation and network of trusted acquaintances they can carry across different worlds, he said. In the current web environment, such reputation systems have had a mixed record in curbing toxic behavior.
It’s not clear how long it will take Meta, or anyone else investing in the metaverse, to consider such issues. So far, tech giants from Microsoft and Apple to video game makers are still largely focused on debating the metaverse’s plumbing.
To make the metaverse work, some developers say they are going to have to form a set of industry standards similar to those that coalesced around HTML, the open “markup language” that’s been used to structure websites since the 1990s.
“You don’t think about that when you go to a website. You just click on the link,” said Richard Kerris, who leads the Omniverse platform for graphics chipmaker Nvidia. “We’re going to get to the same point in the metaverse where going from one world to another world and experiencing things, you won’t have to think about, ‘Do I have the right setup?’”
Nvidia’s vision for an open standard involves a structure for 3D worlds built by movie-making studio Pixar, which is also used by Apple. Among the basic questions being resolved are how physics will work in the metaverse — will virtual gravity cause someone’s glass to smash into pieces if they drop it? Will those rules change as you move from place to place?
Bigger disagreements will center on questions of privacy and identity, said Timoni West, vice president of augmented and virtual reality at Unity Technologies, which builds an engine for video game worlds.
“Being able to share some things but not share other things” is important when you’re showing off art in a virtual home but don’t want to share the details of your calendar, she said. “There’s a whole set of permission layers for digital spaces that the internet could avoid but you really need to have to make this whole thing work.”
Read: In the middle of a crisis, Facebook Inc. renames itself Meta
Some metaverse enthusiasts who’ve been working on the concept for years welcome the spotlight that could attract curious newcomers, but they also want to make sure Meta doesn’t ruin their vision for how this new internet gets built.
“The open metaverse is created and owned by all of us,” said Ryan Gill, founder and CEO of metaverse-focused startup Crucible. “The metaverse that Mark Zuckerberg and his company want is created by everybody but owned by them.”
Gill said Meta’s big splash is a reaction to ideas circulating in grassroots developer communities centered around “decentralized” technologies like blockchain and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that can help people establish and protect their online identity and credentials.
Central to this tech movement, nicknamed Web 3, for a third wave of internet innovation, is that what people create in these online communities belongs to them, a shift away from the Big Tech model of “accumulating energy and attention and optimizing it for buying behavior,” Gill said.
Evan Greer, an activist with Fight for the Future, said it’s easy to see Facebook’s Meta announcement as a cynical attempt to distance itself from all the scandals the company is facing. But she says Meta’s push is actually even scarier.
“This is Mark Zuckerberg revealing his end game, which is not just to dominate the internet of today but to control and define the internet that we leave to our children and our children’s children,” she said.
The company recently abandoned its use of facial recognition on its Facebook app, but metaverse gadgetry relies on new forms of tracking people’s gaits, body movements and expressions to animate their avatars with real-world emotions. And with both Facebook and Microsoft pitching metaverse apps as important work tools, there’s a potential for even more invasive workplace monitoring and exhaustion.
Activists are calling for the U.S. to pass a national digital privacy act that would apply not just to today’s platforms like Facebook but also those that might exist in the metaverse. Outside of a few such laws in states such as California and Illinois, though, actual online privacy laws remain rare in the U.S.
Ex-Facebook manager criticizes company, urges more oversight
While accusing the giant social network of pursuing profits over safety, a former Facebook data scientist told Congress Tuesday she believes stricter government oversight could alleviate the dangers the company poses, from harming children to inciting political violence to fueling misinformation.
Frances Haugen, testifying to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, presented a wide-ranging condemnation of Facebook. She accused the company of failing to make changes to Instagram after internal research showed apparent harm to some teens and being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation. Haugen’s accusations were buttressed by tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company’s civic integrity unit.
But she also offered thoughtful ideas about how Facebook’s social media platforms could be made safer. Haugen laid responsibility for the company’s profits-over-safety strategy right at the top, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but she also expressed empathy for Facebook’s dilemma.
Haugen, who says she joined the company in 2019 because “Facebook has the potential to bring out the best in us,” said she didn’t leak internal documents to a newspaper and then come before Congress in order to destroy the company or call for its breakup, as many consumer advocates and lawmakers of both parties have called for.
Haugen is a 37-year-old data expert from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in business from Harvard. Prior to being recruited by Facebook, she worked for 15 years at tech companies including Google, Pinterest and Yelp.
Read: Outage highlights how vital Facebook has become worldwide
“Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” Haugen said. “The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”
“Congressional action is needed,” she said. “They won’t solve this crisis without your help.”
In a note to Facebook employees Tuesday, Zuckerberg disputed Haugen’s portrayal of the company as one that puts profit over the well-being of its users, or that pushes divisive content.
“At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted,” Zuckerberg wrote.
He did, however, appear to agree with Haugen on the need for updated internet regulations, saying that would relieve private companies from having to make decisions on social issues on their own.
“We’re committed to doing the best work we can, but at some level the right body to assess tradeoffs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Democrats and Republicans have shown a rare unity around the revelations of Facebook’s handling of potential risks to teens from Instagram, and bipartisan bills have proliferated to address social media and data-privacy problems. But getting legislation through Congress is a heavy slog. The Federal Trade Commission has taken a stricter stance toward Facebook and other tech giants in recent years.
“Whenever you have Republicans and Democrats on the same page, you’re probably more likely to see something,” said Gautam Hans, a technology law and free speech expert at Vanderbilt University
Haugen suggested, for example, that the minimum age for Facebook’s popular Instagram photo-sharing platform could be increased from the current 13 to 16 or 18.
She also acknowledged the limitations of possible remedies. Facebook, like other social media companies, uses algorithms to rank and recommend content to users’ news feeds. When the ranking is based on engagement — likes, shares and comments — as it is now with Facebook, users can be vulnerable to manipulation and misinformation. Haugen would prefer the ranking to be chronological. But, she testified, “People will choose the more addictive option even if it is leading their daughters to eating disorders.”
Haugen said a 2018 change to the content flow contributed to more divisiveness and ill will in a network ostensibly created to bring people closer together.
Read: Whistleblower: Facebook chose profit over public safety
Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, she said Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back — a pattern that helped the social media giant sell more of the digital ads that generate the vast majority of its revenue.
Haugen said she believed Facebook didn’t set out to build a destructive platform. “I have a huge amount of empathy for Facebook,” she said. “These are really hard questions, and I think they feel a little trapped and isolated.”
But “in the end, the buck stops with Mark,” Haugen said, referring to Zuckerberg, who controls more than 50% of Facebook’s voting shares. “There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself.”
Haugen said she believed that Zuckerberg was familiar with some of the internal research showing concerns for potential negative impacts of Instagram.
The subcommittee is examining Facebook’s use of information its own researchers compiled about Instagram. Those findings could indicate potential harm for some of its young users, especially girls, although Facebook publicly downplayed possible negative impacts. For some of the teens devoted to Facebook’s popular photo-sharing platform, the peer pressure generated by the visually focused Instagram led to mental health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research leaked by Haugen showed.
One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.
She also has filed complaints with federal authorities alleging that Facebook’s own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but that the company hides what it knows.
After recent reports in The Wall Street Journal based on documents she leaked to the newspaper raised a public outcry, Haugen revealed her identity in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday night.
As the public relations debacle over the Instagram research grew last week, Facebook put on hold its work on a kids’ version of Instagram, which the company says is meant mainly for tweens aged 10 to 12.
Read: Ex-Facebook manager alleges social network fed Capitol riot
Haugen said that Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and incitement to violence after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election, alleging that doing so contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
After the November election, Facebook dissolved the civic integrity unit where Haugen had been working. That was the moment, she said, when she realized that “I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.”
Haugen says she told Facebook executives when they recruited her that she wanted to work in an area of the company that fights misinformation, because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.
Facebook maintains that Haugen’s allegations are misleading and insists there is no evidence to support the premise that it is the primary cause of social polarization.
“Today, a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with (top) executives – and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question. We don’t agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about,” the company said in a statement.
Nasrul for technology sharing for development of renewable energy
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has called for sharing of advanced technologies to overcome land scarcity problem in the development of renewable energy.
He made the call while virtually addressing the first Asia Green Growth Partnership Ministerial Meeting on Monday.
It is an urgent need of the time to equally distribute the advanced technologies for development of clean energies, he said.
Also read: Year-wise roadmap made to implement renewable energy policy: Nasrul Hamid
The online conference, chaired by Japan’s Minister of Economy, Commerce and Industries Horoshi Kajiyama, was also addressed by Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Commerce and Technology Minister of the United Arab Emirate Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Arifin Tasrif and Executive Director of International Energy Agency Dr. Fatih Birol.
If there is a stronger cooperation among the nations, Nasrul said, the use of clean energy will be increased fast.
He informed the meeting that Bangladesh has taken up a year-wise plan to implement various renewable energy-related projects.
Nasrul said Bangladesh has set up 6 million solar home systems in the country’s remote areas through which about 20 million people are getting benefit of electricity.
Also read: Uninterrupted affordable energy main challenge in future: Nasrul Hamid
Anet metering system was introduced to popularize the rooftop solar systems while solar-run pumps are being used for irrigation purposes.
He mentioned Bangladesh is implementing 5 wind power projects to generate 245 MW power while 50MW electricity will come from a waste-to-energy power plant project.
Initiatives have been taken to import hydropower from Nepal and Bhutan while the power system master plan is being updated to promote renewable energy.
Trump asks US judge to force Twitter to restore his account
Former President Donald Trump has asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to restore his account, which the company suspended in January following the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s attorneys on Friday filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Miami seeking a preliminary injunction against Twitter and its CEO, Jack Dorsey. They argue that Twitter is censoring Trump in violation of his First Amendment rights, according to the motion.
Read:Trump aides aim to build GOP opposition to Afghan refugees
Twitter declined to comment Saturday on Trump’s filing.
The company permanently banned Trump from its platform days after his followers violently stormed the Capitol building to try to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win. Twitter cited concerns that Trump would incite further violence. Prior to the ban, Trump had roughly 89 million followers on Twitter.
Trump was also suspended from Facebook and Google’s YouTube over similar concerns that he would provoke violence. Facebook’s ban will last two years, until Jan. 7, 2023, after which the company will review his suspension. YouTube’s ban is indefinite.
Read: Biden backs Trump rejection of China’s South China Sea claim
In July, Trump filed lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against all three tech companies and their CEOs, claiming that he and other conservatives have been wrongfully censored. The motion for a preliminary injunction was filed as part of Trump’s case against Twitter.
Ford to add 10,800 jobs making electric vehicles, batteries
Ford and a partner company say they plan to build three major electric-vehicle battery factories and an auto assembly plant by 2025 — a dramatic investment in the future of EV technology that will create an estimated 10,800 jobs and shift the automaker’s future manufacturing footprint toward the South.
The factories, to be built on sites in Kentucky and Tennessee, will make batteries for the next generation of Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles that will be produced in North America. Combined, they mark the single largest manufacturing investment the 118-year-old company has ever made and are among the largest factory outlays in the world.
Notably, the new factories will provide a vast new supply of jobs that will likely pay solid wages. Most of the new jobs will be full time, with a relatively small percentage having temporary status to fill in for vacations and absent workers.
Together with its battery partner, SK Innovation of South Korea, Ford says it will spend $5.6 billion in rural Stanton, Tennessee, where it will build a factory to produce electric F-Series pickups. A joint venture called BlueOvalSK will construct a battery factory on the same site near Memphis, plus twin battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky, near Louisville. Ford estimated the Kentucky investment at $5.8 billion and that the company’s share of the total would be $7 billion.
Read:India will become hub for automobile manufacturing in next 5 yrs
With the new spending, Ford is making a significant bet on a future that envisions most drivers eventually making the shift to battery power from internal combustion engines, which have powered vehicles in the United States for more than a century. Should that transition run into disruptions or delays, the gamble could hit the company’s bottom line. Ford predicts 40% to 50% of its U.S. sales will be electric by 2030. For now, only about 1% of vehicles on America’s roads are powered by electricity.
In an interview Monday, CEO Jim Farley said it would be up to the workers at the new plants to decide whether to be represented by the United Auto Workers union. That question could set up an epic battle with union leaders, who want employees of the future to join the union and earn top UAW production wages of around $32 per hour. It represents a high-stakes test for the UAW, which will need jobs for thousands of members who will lose work in the transition away engines and transmissions for petroleum-powered vehicles.
Ford’s move also could put the company at odds with President Joe Biden’s quest to create “good-paying union jobs” in a new, greener economy.
Farley said it’s too early to talk about pay or unionization at the new factories. He stressed that Ford will maintain a geographic manufacturing balance when the company’s investments in Ohio and Michigan are included. Ford and General Motors have UAW-represented plants in Kentucky and Tennessee, states where it is common for political leaders to actively campaign against unionization.
“We love our UAW partners,” Farley said. “They’ve been incredible on this journey of electrification so far. But it’s up to the employees to decide.”
Just four months ago, Ford said it would build two new battery plants in North America. But Farley said demand for the electric Mustang Mach E SUV and over 150,000 orders for the F-150 electric pickup convinced the company to increase battery output.
Farley said Ford intends to lead the world in electric vehicles, a title now held by upstart Tesla Inc., which is adding jobs at a third factory now under construction near Austin, Texas.
Ford picked the Kentucky and Tennessee sites in part because of lower electricity costs, Farley said, as well being less exposed to flooding and hurricanes than other states. Battery factories use five times the electricity of a typical assembly plant to make cells and assemble them into packs, so energy costs were a big factor, Farley said.
The company also needed huge tracts of land for the plants that weren’t available in other states, Farley said.
Both Southern states also have skilled labor forces and are willing to train workers for the new jobs, he said.
“These jobs are very different than the jobs we’ve had in the past,” Farley said. “We want to work with states who are really excited about doing that training and giving you access to that low energy cost.”
Read:Motorola expects India business to grow at least in triple digits
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which serves the Memphis-area site, sells industrial electricity at a price that’s lower than 93% of competitors nationwide, said CEO Jeff Lyash. Rates have stayed flat for the past decade and are planned to stay flat for the next 10 years, he said.
Combined, the three new battery plants will be able to supply enough batteries to power 1 million vehicles per year, about 129 gigawatts of power, Ford Chief Operating Officer Lisa Drake said.
Shares of Ford Motor Co., which is based in Dearborn, Michigan, rose more than 4% in extended trading after the new factories were announced late Monday.
Reaction from the union was tempered Monday, with officials seemingly optimistic about organizing the factories.
“We look forward to reaching out and helping develop this new workforce to build these world-class vehicles and battery components,” union President Ray Curry said in a statement.
Kristin Dziczek, a senior vice president at the Center for Automotive Research who follows labor issues, said the union’s future depends largely on organizing the new plants.
“It’s imperative that the UAW organize these if they’re going to have a stake in the electrification of this industry,” she said.
Union representation of the plants could become a contentious issue in the next round of national contract talks with the union in two years.
When General Motors first announced joint venture battery factories over the past few years, its executives said workers would decide on unionization. UAW officials howled in protest. In May, GM said it would support union organizing at the plants.
The Kentucky site is only about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Louisville, where Ford has plants that make SUVs and trucks now powered by internal combustion engines. Ford wouldn’t comment on whether those plants eventually would make electric vehicles, but Dziczek said converting at least one would make sense. One plant makes the Ford Escape small SUV, in the most popular segment of the U.S market, she said.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in an interview that Ford’s 5,000 jobs at the Glendale battery plants is the largest single employment announcement in state history. And he said it will also bring jobs with suppliers that make components for the plants. Earlier this month state legislators approved $410 million worth of economic development incentives.
Read:Adidas to sell Reebok to ABG for $2.5 billion
Beshear said Ford would get a loan of up to $250 million to draw on through construction. It’s forgivable if the company hits completion milestones. The package also includes the cost of the Glendale land, plus up to $36 million in training incentives, he said.
Ford will formally announce the plants with ceremonies on Tuesday at both sites. In Glendale’s one-block downtown on Monday evening, there were no signs of pending dramatic changes in the economy from the new jobs. All was quiet in the town where the primary businesses are antique shops and corn and soybean fields that stretch in all directions.
The Tennessee assembly plant is to be built on a site about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Memphis that’s almost six square miles (15.5 square kilometers). Combined, the assembly plant, to be run by Ford, and the battery factory, would employ about 5,800 workers.
State officials have been trying to develop the site for years without success. Gov. Bill Lee said Tennessee offered Ford $500 million in incentives to win a contest with 15 other states. Lee said he is confident legislators will approve the spending.
US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression
Over two decades, the United States and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building databases for the Afghan people. The nobly stated goal: Promote law and order and government accountability and modernize a war-ravaged land.
But in the Taliban’s lightning seizure of power, most of that digital apparatus — including biometrics for verifying identities — apparently fell into Taliban hands. Built with few data-protection safeguards, it risks becoming the high-tech jackboots of a surveillance state. As the Taliban get their governing feet, there are worries it will be used for social control and to punish perceived foes.
Putting such data to work constructively — boosting education, empowering women, battling corruption — requires democratic stability, and these systems were not architected for the prospect of defeat.
“It is a terrible irony,” said Frank Pasquale, Brooklyn Law School scholar of surveillance technologies. “It’s a real object lesson in ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’”
Read: Taliban say they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province
Since Kabul fell Aug. 15, indications have emerged that government data may have been used in Taliban efforts to identify and intimidate Afghans who worked with the U.S. forces.
People are getting ominous and threatening phone calls, texts and WhatsApp messages, said Neesha Suarez, constituent services director for Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, an Iraq War veteran whose office is trying to help stranded Afghans who worked with the U.S. find a way out.
A 27-year-old U.S. contractor in Kabul told The Associated Press he and co-workers who developed a U.S.-funded database used to manage army and police payrolls got phone calls summoning them to the Defense Ministry. He is in hiding, changing his location daily, he said, asking not to be identified for his safety.
In victory, the Taliban’s leaders say they are not interested in retribution. Restoring international aid and getting foreign-held assets unfrozen are a priority. There are few signs of the draconian restrictions – especially on women – they imposed when they ruled from 1996 to 2001. There are also no indications that Afghans who worked with Americans have been systematically persecuted.
Ali Karimi, a University of Pennsylvania scholar, is among Afghans unready to trust the Taliban. He worries the databases will give rigid fundamentalist theocrats, known during their insurgency for ruthlessly killing enemy collaborators, “the same capability as an average U.S. government agency when it comes to surveillance and interception.”
The Taliban are on notice that the world will be watching how they wield the data.
All Afghans — and their international partners — have an obligation together to ensure sensitive government data only be used for “development purposes” and not for policing or social control by the Taliban or to serve other governments in the region, said Nader Nadery, a peace negotiator and head of the civil service commission in the former government.
Uncertain for the moment is the fate of one of the most sensitive databases, the one used to pay soldiers and police.
The Afghan Personnel and Pay System has data on more than 700,000 security forces members dating back 40 years, said a senior security official from the fallen government. Its more than 40 data fields include birth dates, phone numbers, fathers’ and grandfathers’ names, fingerprints and iris and face scans, said two Afghan contractors who worked on it, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Only authorized users can access that system, so if the Taliban can’t find one, they can be expected to try to hack it, said the former official, who asked not to be identified for fear of the safety of relatives in Kabul. He expected Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, long the Taliban’s patron, to render technical assistance. U.S. analysts expect Chinese, Russian and Iranian intelligence also to offer such services.
Read: Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Taliban’s challenges
Originally conceived to fight payroll fraud, that system was supposed to interface eventually with a powerful database at the Defense and Interior ministries modeled on one the Pentagon created in 2004 to achieve “identity dominance” by collecting fingerprints and iris and face scans in combat areas.
But the homegrown Afghanistan Automated Biometric Identification Database grew from a tool to vet army and police recruits for loyalty to contain 8.5 million records, including on government foes and the civilian population. When Kabul fell it was being upgraded, along with a similar database in Iraq, under a $75 million contract signed in 2018.
U.S. officials say it was secured before the Taliban could access it.
Before the U.S. pullout, the entire database was erased with military-grade data-wiping software, said William Graves, chief engineer at the Pentagon’s biometrics project management office. Similarly, 20 years of data collected from telecommunications and internet intercepts since 2001 by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency were wiped clean, said the former Afghan security official.
Among crucial databases that remained are the Afghanistan Financial Management Information System, which held extensive details on foreign contractors, and an Economy Ministry database that compiled all international development and aid agency funding sources, the former security official said.
Then there is the data — with iris scans and fingerprints for about 9 million Afghans — controlled by the National Statistics and Information Agency. A biometric scan has been required in recent years to obtain a passport or a driver’s license and to take a civil service or university entrance exam.
Western aid organizations led by the World Bank, one of the funders, praised the data’s utility for empowering women, especially in registering land ownership and obtaining bank loans. The agency was working to create electronic national IDs, known as e-Tazkira, in an unfinished project somewhat modeled on India’s biometrically enabled Aadhaar national ID.
“That’s the treasure chest,” said a Western election assistance official, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize future missions.
It is unclear whether voter registration databases — records on more than 8 million Afghans — are in Taliban hands, the official said. Full printouts were made during the 2019 presidential elections, though the biometric records used then for anti-fraud voter verification were retained by the German technology provider. After 2018 parliamentary elections, 5,000 portable biometric handhelds used for verification went inexplicably missing.
Yet another database the Taliban inherit contains iris and face scans and fingerprints on 420,000 government employees — another anti-fraud measure — which Nadery oversaw as civil service commissioner. It was eventually to have been merged with the e-Tazkira database, he said.
Read: Taliban control now-quiet Kabul airport after US withdrawal
On Aug. 3, a government website touted the digital accomplishments of President Ashraf Ghani, who would soon flee into exile, saying biometric information on “all civil servants, from every corner of the country” would allow them to them to be linked “under one umbrella” with banks and cellphone carriers for electronic payment. U.N. agencies have also collected biometrics on Afghans for food distribution and refugee tracking.
The central agglomeration of such personal data is exactly what worries the 37 digital civil liberties groups who signed an Aug. 25 letter calling for the urgent shutdown and erasure, where possible, of Afghanistan’s “digital identity tool,” among other measures. The letter said authoritarian regimes have exploited such data “to target vulnerable people” and digitized, searchable databases amplify the risks. Disputes over including ethnicity and religion in the e-Tazkira database — for fear it could put digital bullseyes on minorities, as China has done in repressing its ethnic Uyghurs — delayed its creation for most of a decade.
John Woodward, a Boston University professor and former CIA officer who pioneered the Pentagon’s biometric collection, is worried about intelligence agencies hostile to the United States getting access to the data troves.
“ISI (Pakistani intelligence) would be interested to know who worked for the Americans,” said Woodward, and China, Russia and Iran have their own agendas. Their agents certainly have the technical chops to break into password-protected databases.