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Hundreds of emergency responders were in place in Louisiana and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had power restoration experts and generators at the ready as Hurricane Ida hit on Sunday as one of the most powerful hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S., federal officials said.

The Coast Guard prepositioned vessels for “deep water search and rescue efforts,” the White House said. States also had sent teams to help with ground and water rescue.

“We’re as ready as we can be,” Gov. John Bel Edwards told CNN’s “State of the Union” a few hours before Ida’s predicted landfall. He said there were 600 people ready to deploy for search and rescue efforts, including teams from 15 other states, with “many more” on the way.

Much of the response began days before landfall and included special precautions due to the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said.

On Saturday, President Joe Biden met via videoconference with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who said more than 100 ground ambulances and 20 air ambulances were deployed to help evacuate nursing homes in the storm’s path. They also discussed precautions being taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the large shelters the American Red Cross is opening, including masking, rapid testing, and social distancing.

As of Saturday, FEMA had deployed an additional 500 emergency response personnel, 1 million meals, 1.6 million liters of water and generators, the White House said. Criswell told Biden 13 Urban Search and Rescue teams were in place to help people who could not evacuate their homes and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put in position power restoration experts and hundreds of generators.

Criswell spoke with Biden from the National Response Coordination Center, the multiagency center that coordinates disaster response and allocates federal resources, which is located at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington.

Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Jennah Durant said the agency’s personnel are coordinating with FEMA as well as state and local authorities in Louisiana. She said the agency had contacted the owners and operators of the 23 highly polluted Superfund sites in the state to ensure prestorm security preparations are being made.

Biden approved an emergency disaster declaration for Louisiana on Friday, which authorized direct federal help for all 64 parishes, including power generation, air transportation, wildlife management assistance and water management. The White House said Biden also spoke with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama “to make clear that States have the full support of the Federal government to provide assistance as needed and to aid local emergency response efforts.”

Biden also spoke Saturday with National Hurricane Center Director Kenneth Graham, about “how Ida will likely be very strong and destructive, with dangerous, life-threatening storm surge and significant rainfall that would impact both coastal and inland areas,” according to the White House.

Edwards told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Ida was a “major, major storm” that will test the state in ways it hasn’t been tested before, as it happens along with the COVID pandemic.

“It’s impossible today to say how long the power will be out. And that begins to test your systems,” Edwards said, “whether it’s the opportunity to deliver water to the hospitals. You can’t run a ventilator without electricity.”

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Associated Press reporter Michael Biesecker contributed to this report from Washington.

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New Orleans finds itself in the path of Hurricane Ida 16 years to the day after floodwalls collapsed and levees were overtopped by a storm surge driven by Hurricane Katrina. That flooding killed more than 1,000 people and caused billions in damage. But Ida arrives at the doorstep of a region transformed since 2005 by a giant civil works project and closer attention to flood control.

The system already has been tested by multiple storms, including 2012’s Isaac, with little damage to the areas it protects. Every storm raises questions about New Orleans’ defenses, though, and as Ida approaches, here are some answers:

WHAT’S CHANGED SINCE KATRINA?

The federal government spent $14.5 billion on levees, pumps, seawalls, floodgates and drainage that provides enhanced protection from storm surge and flooding in New Orleans and surrounding suburbs south of Lake Pontchartrain. With the exception of three drainage projects, that work is complete.

“The post-Katrina system is so different than what was in place before,” said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Matt Roe.

Starting with a giant surge barrier east of the city, the system is a 130-mile (210-kilometer) ring built to hold out storm surge of about 30 feet (9 meters). The National Hurricane Center on Friday projected Ida would bring a surge of 10 feet to 15 feet (3 to 4.6 meters) on the west bank.

At that level, it could come over the levees in some areas, said emergency manager Heath Jones of the Army Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District.

“They’re designed to overtop in places” with protections against worse damage, including armoring, splash pads and pumps with backup generators, he said.

“We’ve built all that since Katrina,” and they’re designed for a worse storm than the Ida is expected to be, he said.

Jones said there does not appear to be any danger of storm surge coming over the levees on the east bank, which makes up most of the city. It was the east bank levees that broke after Katrina.

Governments as of Friday were not ordering people protected by the levees to evacuate, showing their confidence in the system.

A number of floodgates are being closed as the storm approaches. That includes massive gates that ships can normally sail through, such as ones that close off the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal near the Lower 9th Ward. That has reduced the risk of flooding in an area long viewed as among the city’s most exposed. At least one smaller floodgate on land has been removed for maintenance, though, with officials planning to close the gap with sandbags.

WHAT ABOUT RAINFALL FLOODING?

Inside the ring of levees, rainfall must be pumped out. The New Orleans area has an elaborate system of canals and pumps to remove water, but it can be overwhelmed by persistent heavy rainfall, like in 2017 and 2019, when two storms each dumped more than 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rain in some areas. Heavy downpours have been a constant on the soggy Gulf Coast, but some exceptional rainstorms have been observed in recent years, with experts saying such torrents are becoming more common as a warming atmosphere carries more water vapor.

Capacity in some areas has been improved since 2005 through more than $2 billion in drainage work, allowing parts of the system to remove as much as 4.7 inches (120 millimeters) of rain in three hours — what designers accounted as a rainstorm that would come only once every 10 years.

The city of New Orleans drainage system has 24 pumping stations with a combined capacity of over 50,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), which is nearly 400,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) per second. That doesn’t include pumps in neighboring suburbs.

But some of the pumps as well as the power system supplying them in the city are antiques plagued with reliability problems. On Friday, officials were trying to bring an electrical turbine back online to provide reserve power for the system. Three of 99 pumps were also out of commission, but New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Executive Director Ghassan Korban said there’s enough redundancy to back them up.

One of the lessons of the 2017 and 2019 storms has been that maintenance of drains, pipes and canals has been neglected. Officials urged residents Friday to sweep up around storm drains, underlining a concern that even the best pumps won’t work if drains are clogged.

“Our mission is obviously to stay ahead of the storm, stay ahead of the rain and keep the city dry,” Korban told reporters Friday. “But at one point, once our system is overrun, our mission shifts from keeping the city dry to just pumping the city as fast as we can.”

WILL THE LEVEES HOLD UP OVER THE LONG RUN?

Experts note that the levee system was built to protect against a 100-year level of storm surge — a surge that has a 1% chance of happening any given year. With rising seas from climate change and the sinking of Louisiana’s spongy coast, there’s concern that simply isn’t enough.

Reports issued in 2021 recommend spending a projected $1.7 billion to raise levees and floodwalls to keep providing the 100-year protection through 2078. That includes raising the height of 99 miles (159 kilometers) of levees, replacing more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) of floodwall and building 3.2 miles (5.15 kilometers) of new floodwall.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS IN OUTLYING AREAS?

Areas outside the urban core that the levee system protects may have little or no protection against storm surge. Hurricane Isaac in 2012 flooded about 7,000 homes in LaPlace and other areas upriver from New Orleans after 8 feet (2.5 meters) of storm surge entered Lake Pontchartrain. The Corps of Engineers has started construction on a levee to protect that area, but Corps of Engineers spokesperson Rene Poche said it’s not projected to be completed until 2024.

A number of local governments have ordered people to evacuate from low-lying and exposed areas outside of protective levees, including parts of New Orleans.

Suburbs north of Lake Pontchartrain are also not protected by levees or floodgates, although improvements for St. Tammany Parish are being studied. Areas close to the shore, as well as the rivers that feed into the lake and the Mississippi Sound, are vulnerable to storm surge.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Republican efforts questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential race have led to voting system breaches that election security experts say pose a heightened risk to future elections.

Copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software used to manage elections — from designing ballots to configuring voting machines and tallying results — were distributed at an event this month in South Dakota organized by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of former President Donald Trump who has made unsubstantiated claims about last year’s election.

“It’s a game-changer in that the environment we have talked about existing now is a reality,” said Matt Masterson, a former top election security official in the Trump administration. “We told election officials, essentially, that you should assume this information is already out there. Now we know it is, and we don’t know what they are going to do with it.”

The software copies came from voting equipment in Mesa County, Colorado, and Antrim County, Michigan, where Trump allies had sue unsuccessfully challenging the results from last fall.

The Dominion software is used in some 30 states, including counties in California, Georgia and Michigan.

Election security pioneer Harri Hursti was at the South Dakota event and said he and other researchers in attendance were provided three separate copies of election management systems that run on the Dominion software. The data indicated they were from Antrim and Mesa counties. While it’s not clear how the copies came to be released at the event, they were posted online and made available for public download.

The release gives hackers a “practice environment” to probe for vulnerabilities they could exploit and a road map to avoid defenses, Hursti said. All the hackers would need is physical access to the systems because they are not supposed to be connected to the internet.

“The door is now wide open,” Hursti said. “The only question is, how do you sneak in the door?”

A Dominion representative declined comment, citing an investigation.

U.S. election technology is dominated by just three vendors comprising 90% of the market, meaning election officials cannot easily swap out their existing technology. Release of the software copies essentially provides a blueprint for those trying to interfere with how elections are run. They could sabotage the system, alter the ballot design or even try to change results, said election technology expert Kevin Skoglund.

“This disclosure increases both the likelihood that something happens and the impact of what would happen if it does,” he said.

The effort by Republicans to examine voting equipment began soon after the November presidential election as Trump challenged the results and blamed his loss on widespread fraud, even though there has been no evidence of it.

Judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, election officials of both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have dismissed the claims. A coalition of federal and state election officials called the 2020 election the “most secure” in U.S. history, and post-election audits across the country found no significant anomalies.

In Antrim County, a judge had allowed a forensic exam of voting equipment after a brief mix-up of election results led to a suit alleging fraud. It was dismissed in May. Hursti said the date on the software release matches the date of the forensic exam.

Calls seeking information from Antrim County’s clerk and the local prosecutor’s office were not immediately returned; a call to the judge’s office was referred to the county clerk. The Michigan secretary of state’s office declined comment.

In Colorado, federal, state and local authorities are investigating whether Mesa County elections staff might have provided unauthorized individuals access to their systems. The county elections clerk, Tina Peters, appeared onstage with Lindell in South Dakota and told the crowd her office was being targeted by Democrats in the state.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said she alerted federal election security officials of the breach and was told it was not viewed as a “significant heightening of the election risk landscape at this point.” This past week, Mesa County commissioners voted to replace voting equipment that Griswold had ordered could no longer be used.

Geoff Hale, who leads the election security effort at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said his agency has always operated on the assumption that system vulnerabilities are known by malicious actors. Election officials are focused instead on ways they can reduce risk, such as using ballots with a paper record that can be verified by the voter and rigorous post-election audits, Hale said.

He said having Dominion’s software exposed publicly doesn’t change the agency’s guidance.

Security researcher Jack Cable said he assumes U.S. adversaries already had access to the software. He said he is more concerned the release would fan distrust among the growing number of people not inclined to believe in the security of U.S elections.

“It is a concern that people, in the pursuit of trying to show the system is insecure, are actually making it more insecure,” said Cable, who recently joined a cybersecurity firm run by former CISA Director Christopher Krebs and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos.

Concerns over access to voting machines and software first surfaced this year in Arizona, where the Republican-controlled state Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no previous election experience, to audit the Maricopa County election. The firm’s chief executive also had tweeted support of conspiracy theories surrounding last year’s election.

After the county’s Dominion voting systems were turned over to the firm, Arizona’s top election official said they could not be used again. The GOP-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted in July to replace them.

Dominion has filed suits contesting various unfounded claims about its systems. In May, it called giving Cyber Ninjas access to its code “reckless,” given the firm’s bias, and said it would cause “irreparable damage” to election security.

Election technology and security expert Ryan Macias, in Arizona earlier this year to observe that review, was alarmed by a lack of cybersecurity protocols. There was no information about who was given access, whether those people had passed background checks or were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Cyber Ninjas did not respond to an email with questions about the review and their security protocols.

Macias was not surprised to hear that copies of Antrim County’s election management system had surfaced online given the questionable motives of the various groups conducting the reviews and the central role that voting systems have played in conspiracy theories.

“This is what I anticipated would happen, and I anticipate it will happen yet again coming out of Arizona,” Macias said. “These actors have no liability and no rules of engagement.”

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BEIJING (AP) — Chinese regulators will exercise greater control over the algorithms used by Chinese technology firms to personalize and recommend content, the latest move in a regulation spree across the internet sector.

China’s internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, on Friday released a draft proposal of “algorithm recommendation management regulations” aimed at managing how technology companies use algorithms when providing services to consumers.

The move expands the crackdown on the internet sector in China, as regulators seek to strengthen data privacy and consumer rights and curtail anti-competitive practices in order to curb the outsized influence of technology companies.

Under the draft regulations, companies must disclose the basic principles, purpose and operation mechanism of its algorithm recommendation services, and must include convenient options for users to turn off the recommendation service.

Algorithms should also not be used in ways that may cause addictive behaviors in users, or induce them to spend excessively. It was not immediately clear how that would be enforced.

Companies who use algorithms in ways that could influence public opinion must also submit their algorithms for approval, or risk having their service terminated and a fine of up to 30,000 yuan ($4,630).

The draft algorithm management regulations could affect companies like ByteDance, which owns short video platforms Douyin and TikTok, as well as e-commerce firm Alibaba.

Bytedance uses recommendation algorithms to push videos to users, while Alibaba’s algorithms tailor product recommendations to each user on its e-commerce platform Taobao based on their browsing and purchasing history.

China’s largest technology firms, such as Alibaba and Tencent, have experienced breakneck growth in the last decade as hundreds of millions of Chinese internet users rapidly adopted smartphones.

These companies offer everything from payments, games, entertainment and e-commerce. Algorithms and data collected from users became valuable assets as companies could mine data for important trends or recommend more personalized content to users.

However, a lack of regulation in this sector also saw an uptick in excessive collection of user data, online fraud and unfair consumer practices across the technology sector. In some cases, algorithms were also used in differential pricing for consumers.

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BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) — T-Mobile says it has notified nearly all of the millions of customers whose personal data was stolen and that it is “truly sorry” for the breach.

CEO Mike Sievert said in a written statement Friday that the company spends lots of effort to try to stay ahead of criminal hackers “but we didn’t live up to the expectations we have for ourselves to protect our customers. Knowing that we failed to prevent this exposure is one of the hardest parts of this event.”

The company disclosed earlier in August that the names, Social Security numbers and information from driver’s licenses or other identification of just over 40 million people who applied for T-Mobile credit were exposed in a recent data breach. The same data for about 7.8 million current T-Mobile customers who pay monthly for phone service also appeared to be compromised.

Sievert’s statement follows a Thursday report in the Wall Street Journal in which John Binns, a 21-year-old American hacker living in Turkey, told the newspaper he was responsible for the hack and blamed T-Mobile’s lax security for making it possible.

Binns told the Journal he discovered an unprotected router exposed on the internet in July, and used that entry point to gain access to servers in a T-Mobile data center near East Wenatchee, Washington, a few hours east of the company’s headquarters in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue.

Sievert made no direct reference to Binns on Friday but said that, “in short, this individual’s intent was to break in and steal data, and they succeeded.”

Sievert said the breach has been contained, the investigation is “substantially complete” and that customer financial information wasn’t exposed. He said T-Mobile hired cybersecurity experts from Mandiant to help with the investigation and is coordinating with law enforcement.

“What we can share is that, in simplest terms, the bad actor leveraged their knowledge of technical systems, along with specialized tools and capabilities, to gain access to our testing environments and then used brute force attacks and other methods to make their way into other IT servers that included customer data,” Sievert wrote.

Sievert said the company has notified “just about every” current customer who was affected, and is now doing the same for former customers and prospective customers who might have supplied some personal information in applying for an account. Unaffected customers will see a banner on their T-Mobile online account page letting them know their data was not exposed.

T-Mobile became one of the country’s largest cellphone service carriers, along with AT&T and Verizon, after buying rival Sprint last year. It reported having a total of 102.1 million U.S. customers after the merger.

T-Mobile has previously disclosed a number of data breaches over the years, though the most recent was the largest. Sievert said the company is taking steps to improve its security.

The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates wireless carriers, has said it is investigating the breach.

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