Archives for June 2021

SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — Seeking to protect its image as a guardian of personal privacy, Apple maintains it was blindsided and handcuffed by a Trump administration probe that resulted in the company handing over phone data from two Democratic congressmen.

Apple delivered its version of events Friday in response to news reports detailing the U.S. Justice Department’s aggressive attempts to use its legal power to identify leaks tied to an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

The Justice Department was able to persuade a federal grand jury to issue a subpoena that culminated in Apple turning over the metadata — information that can include general records of calls and texts — about House Intelligence Committee members Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats, during 2018. Both lawmakers were key figures on the committee looking into Trump’s connections with Russia; Schiff is now the panel’s chair.

Neither Schiff and Swalwell knew some of the information had been seized until May 5, after a series of gag orders had finally expired, according to the company.

The revelation of Apple’s compliance with the subpoena emerged at a time when the company has been ramping up efforts to frame privacy as “fundamental human right” in its marketing campaigns. Apple also upped the privacy ante in April when it rolled out privacy controls on the iPhone as part of an effort to make it more difficult for companies such as Facebook to track people’s online activities to help sell ads.

In a statement, Apple emphasized it will continue to fight unjustified legal demands for personal information and keep customers informed about them.

But in this instance, Apple said it was constrained by a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge and said it had no information about the nature of the investigation.

“It would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts,” the Cupertino, California, company said. “Consistent with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide any content such as emails or pictures.”

Apple also believes other technology companies may have been confronted with similar legal demands, based on the broad nature of the request it received for “customer or subscriber account information” spanning 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses.

It remains unclear how many other companies may have been swept up in the Trump administration’s attempt to track down leakers.

In a statement, Microsoft acknowledged receiving at least one subpoena in 2017 related to a personal email account. It said it notified the customer after the gag order expired and learned that the person was a congressional staff member. “We will continue to aggressively seek reform that imposes reasonable limits on government secrecy in cases like this,” the company said.

Privacy experts were more troubled by the U.S. laws that allowed the Justice Department to secretly obtain the subpoenas and then keep them under wraps for years than by Apple’s limited compliance with the demands.

The subpoenas represent a “a quintessential example of government abuse” that ensnared Apple, said Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“It’s very difficult to challenge these types of subpoenas, but it’s not impossible,” Butler said. “And if there ever was one worth challenging, it might have been these.”

Apple’s response to the subpoena doesn’t necessarily contradict its stance on the sanctity of personal privacy, said Cindy Cohn, executive director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. That’s because Apple privacy commitments mostly revolve around shielding its customers from online surveillance.

She thinks the bigger issue is why U.S. law allows a grand jury to issue a subpoena and then block Apple from alerting the affected people.

“The overall secrecy of this is troubling, especially since it appears to have all been a politically motivated investigation,” Cohn said.

Apple has a history of fighting legal requests, most notably in 2016 when the Justice Department sought to force Apple to unlock the iPhone owned by one of the killers in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Apple refused to cooperate, contending it would open a digital backdoor that would pose threats to the security and privacy of all iPhone users. The legal showdown ended when the FBI hired another firm to unlock the iPhone connected to the shooting.

“Apple really put its money where its mouth is that time,” Butler said.

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NEW DELHI (AP) — Ram Babu moved from his village to the Indian capital New Delhi in 1980, to clean cars. Soon, he learned to drive and got a job as a tour bus driver. Decades later, he set up his own company, Madhubani Tours and Travels.

In March 2020, a stringent nationwide lockdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic froze economic activity overnight. Babu’s business collapsed, and he drove his family back to their village.

“Since March last year, we haven’t earned a single rupee,” he said. “All of my three buses are standing still for more than a year. We are completely broken.”

India’s economy was on the cusp of recovery from the first pandemic shock when a new wave of infections swept the country, infecting millions, killing hundreds of thousands and forcing many people to stay home. Cases are now tapering off, but prospects for many Indians are drastically worse as salaried jobs vanish, incomes shrink and inequality is rising.

Decades of progress in alleviating poverty are imperiled, experts say, and getting growth back on track hinges on the fate of the country’s sprawling middle class. It’s a powerful and diverse group ranging from salaried employees to small business owners like Babu: many millions of people struggling to hold onto their hard-earned gains.

The outbreak of the pandemic triggered the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s and as it gradually ebbs, many economies are bouncing back. The World Bank foresees 5.6% global growth for 2021, the best since 1973.

India’s economy contracted 7.3% in the fiscal year that ended in March, worsening from a slump that slashed growth to 4% from 8% in the two years before the pandemic hit. Economists fear there will be no rebound similar to the ones seen in the U.S. and other major economies.

“Coronavirus was the latest in a series of blows to hit India’s economy in recent years,” said Mahesh Vyas, chief executive at the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE). “But the shocks brought on by the virus have had a very debilitating effect on the economy and I fear it is going to be long lasting.”

The economy was one of the fastest growing when Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly yanked most of India’s currency out of circulation in 2016, targeting corruption. A major tax reform whose kinks are still being ironed out followed. Modi’s flagship Make in India program to energize manufacturing has floundered and unemployment has surged.

The poor are suffering the most from the pandemic. But this is the first time in several decades that India’s middle class has taken such a big hit, said Vyas.

After 40 years of hard work, tour company owner Babu was taking home about $2,000 a month. Business was going so well he took out a loan to buy his third tour bus.

In May 2020, he used one of those buses to drive his wife and three children back to Bhugol village in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. He could no longer afford the rent on their modest one-bedroom apartment in New Delhi.

Estimates of the size of India’s middle class vary from 200 million to 600 million, but all experts agree that its prosperity is crucial for reviving the economy.

“They are the primary consumers — if their consumption doesn’t revive, growth will continue to be slow and the economy will not recover,” said economist Arun Kumar.

An analysis from the Pew Research Center, published in March, estimates 32 million Indians had been pushed out of the middle class by the pandemic.

The report defined the middle class as people earning $10 to $20 a day. It estimated the number of India’s poor — those with incomes of $2 or less a day — has increased by 75 million because of the crisis.

To cushion the impact, the government provided $266 billion in extra spending in May 2020, with over $40 billion meant to help small and medium-sized businesses through measures like collateral-free loans from banks. Another $36 billion was promised in November to help create jobs, boost consumer spending and support manufacturing, agriculture and exports.

But for many, the measures haven’t been enough. No relief has yet been announced for the tourism sector, so Babu is still paying business taxes on his buses.

Last year’s lockdown destroyed more than 120 million jobs, according to the CMIE. Many returned soon after the lockdown ended in June, but the rebound was mostly of low-paying jobs in sectors like agriculture and construction.

Economists worry about a longer term decline in salaried jobs, of which 12.5 million remain lost, according to CMIE data, and about the fate of small and medium-sized businesses that are the backbone of India’s vast informal economy.

Many people have had to settle for far more precarious employment than before, according to the State of Working India 2021 report by researchers at Azim Premji University.

“What this signals is that people in distress are having to resort to any kind of employment, even if it pays substantially less than what they were making and comes with fewer protections,” said Rosa Abraham, one of the report’s lead authors. “It’s clear that the employment recovery we’re seeing now is characterized to a significant extent by far more informality.”

That’s true for Bijender and Kanika Gautam, owners of the Ultra Bodies Fitness Studio on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Gyms were among the last types of venues allowed to reopen from the 2020 lockdown and they were closed again during the latest outbreaks. The Gautams had been thriving on income from their 100 gym members, making enough to rent their two-story space and pay five trainers. Now, they’re relying on whatever they can scrape together from offering online fitness training, and struggling to afford rent and school fees for their two children.

“Earlier, we didn’t have to think twice about spending money when we went to the market with our children or went out to eat,” said Bijender. “But now, the situation is so bad that we are somehow just trying to survive. We don’t know if we will be able to keep our business,” he said.

On a wider scale, such setbacks on a wide scale may undermine confidence and future growth, said CMIE’s Vyas.

“You need that aspiration or drive to go to college, get a good job, save money to buy a home — you need that ambition to make your life better than what your parents had. This is what makes the economy thrive, and this is a crucial thing that has taken a big hit,” he said.

Babu says he fears his life is now moving in reverse. He had hoped his youngest daughter, aged 13, might become a pilot. Now that he’s had to pull her out of her school in New Delhi, that seems impossible.

His dreams of buying a home in the city have been crushed by the loans he can no longer repay, he said in a phone call from his village.

“I’m not used to living in the village now. Everything we own, everything we are, it’s all in Delhi,” he said. “I should have just continued working as a driver, maybe then I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

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Associated Press journalists Rishabh R. Jain and Neha Mehrotra contributed to this report.

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