FBI chief visits Kenya to bolster security collaboration
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Nairobi —
The head U.S. laws enforcement officer has concluded a five-day visit to Kenya, pledging to proceed working with the East African nation to be obvious peace and balance in the divulge. FBI Director Christopher Wray said there modified into a necessity for persevered cooperation and collaboration with Kenyan security agencies to take care of ongoing terror threats from teams similar to al-Shabab.
The USA Federal Bureau of Investigation will partner with Kenya’s security agencies to abet operations for the soundness of Kenya and the divulge.
Speaking at Kenya’s Division of Criminal Investigations (DCI), FBI Director Christopher Wray said there modified into a bear to work collectively to halt criminals who threaten the nation and global peace and balance.
“I if truth be told bear said sooner than that the sinister guys are no longer constrained by global borders, so the valid guys must never be either. And collectively, leveraging our collective insights and authorities and perspectives, we’re making an enormous impact on the threats we face. Terrorism, pointless to command, is terribly worthy prime among them,” he said.
Whereas in Kenya, the FBI head visited shopping shops, a national park, and the Dusit D2 Resort, which modified into attacked by al-Shabab militants in January 2019, main to the deaths of 21 folk.
In February 2020, a yr after the Dusit D2 lodge terror attack, the FBI and the U.S. Issue Division partnered to reduction Kenya in creating the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which contains the nation’s security agencies and some ministries. The agencies depend on each varied’s ride to fight threats.
Kenyan security agencies were accused of lacking coordination in going through terrorists after they storm populated areas love the Westgate Mall attack in 2013 and the Garissa University attack in 2015.
Kenya’s head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Amin Mohamed, said the Joint Terrorism Task Force has helped his nation provide better security to its residents and guests.
“Our a amount of security agencies were running in silos. Then we said, why cannot we all deliver them love a one-halt store, whereby now we are able to alternate data and tips. And now we bear if truth be told registered rather so a lot of success,” he said.
Kenyan security professional Richard Tuta said a security collaboration can defeat criminals who bear defied borders.
“I have faith what’s of significance is that divulge of collaboration. Collaboration relating to intelligence gathering, intelligence examining and intelligence dissemination. That is one thing that is terribly critical because one thing that we must agree among us, all of us, is that it takes a community to beat a community. Criminals are networked, so security agencies must be networked,” said Tuta.
He said there are additionally extra power security threats and challenges on this planet that can require U.S. abet for Kenya to lift watch over.
“Some features of crime defies nation boundaries, love, for example, issues to make with human trafficking, drug trafficking, terrorism, varied considerations, love, for example, issues to make with cybercrime. All of it now, it requires a concerted effort to counter such love divulge of crime,” said Tuta.
The al-Qaida-linked terror team of workers al-Shabab has been unsuccessful in conducting terror attacks in the capital, Nairobi, for the closing couple of years, nevertheless the team of workers continues to make attacks against government forces and civilians in northeastern and coastal areas that border Somalia.
In his five-day visit to Nairobi, Wray met with the ethics and anti-corruption company head and officers, and centered on countering corruption, money laundering, and varied economic crimes.
Washington said this can provide abet, coaching, and stylish investigation instruments to reduction agencies prosecute economic crimes suspects which bear contributed to terrorism and insecurity in the continent.
Kenyan government agencies hope the visit will execute them better ready to lift watch over the safety of the nation and, if want be, the divulge.
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It used to be presumably a if truth be told narcissistic name by Christopher Wray. Photograph illustration by Slate. Photograph by Chris Kleponis/AFP via Getty Photography.
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On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that he would resign rapidly ahead of Donald Trump reenters the White Residence in January. Wray is a Republican, and used to be if truth be told appointed by Trump in 2017 to a 10-yr length of time. However Trump announced in November that he intended to replace Wray with Kash Patel, a a long way-correct loyalist who’s committed to prosecuting perceived enemies of the MAGA area off. Somewhat than wait to be fired, Wray will preemptively step down, easing the formulation for Trump’s instantaneous takeover of the important agency.
Dahlia Lithwick and Place Joseph Stern discuss about the major lawful consequences of Wray’s resign on Saturday’s drawing stop episode of Amicus. A preview of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for readability.
Dahlia Lithwick: Christopher Wray’s planned resignation feels admire a textbook instance of Timothy Snyder’s rule, from On Tyranny, against obeying upfront. Previous that, what does it topic structurally that he factual walked away and gave this to Donald Trump?
Place Joseph Stern: Clearly it sends a frightful message—the FBI director is given a 10-yr length of time for a motive; the president is now now not supposed so to frightful the agency with loyalists. Wray isn’t accomplished along with his length of time, however he acquired the stamp from Trump that he might maybe presumably be fired, so he factual threw up his hands and said, “I’m out.” It sends a frightful message, and has frightful lawful consequences.
By stepping down voluntarily, Wray opens up a bunch of pathways for Trump to at as soon as install a loyalist as acting director below the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which governs who will get to serve because the acting head of agencies. Thanks to this resignation, below the FVRA, Trump can shift some diversified Senate-confirmed appointee to the FBI. Or he can pluck some obscure loyalist from the higher ranks of the agency and elevate them to acting director while the Kash Patel nomination is pending within the Senate. There are lots of oldsters within the higher ranks of the FBI who’re eligible, below the statute, to be made acting director. Trump might maybe presumably obtain the one who swears essentially the most fidelity and loyalty to MAGA and build him to blame of the agency. I’m obvious there’s someone ready within the wings who had made his allegiance to Trump obvious, factual ready to be elevated to the live of the FBI. And now that can happen.
Then, if the Kash Patel nomination fails within the Senate, Trump can exploit the FVRA to relieve his acting FBI director in vitality for so long as two and a half of years by pulling all of these lawful levers that are readily available to him. It’s somewhat obvious that his group of workers is procuring for the total solutions he can dangle advantage of these loopholes and ambiguities within the law to avoid the Senate and factual form a complete authorities stout of toadies and hacks. And Wray’s voluntary resignation from the FBI lays out that route for him.
On closing week’s episode with Joyce Vance, the search recordsdata from used to be going to be whether we’d look a wrestle between Kash Patel and Christopher Wray. Now it appears admire Trump’s FBI director shall be Kash Patel or someone vastly worse—that’s the choice now?
That’s correct. And it’s a distinct choice from what we’d face if Wray hadn’t resigned. If he had insisted on staying build, and compelled Trump to fireplace him prematurely, Trump’s recommendations would had been a long way extra miniature, or a minimum of in serious dispute. The law is a chunk unclear right here, however the right reading of the FVRA is that Trump can’t use the law to replace somebody he’s fired. He can use it to replace someone who resigned, however now now not someone he eliminated. Jack Goldsmith has written broadly about this, and I feel it’s somewhat obvious from the textual bid of the law.
What which formulation is that if Trump had fired Wray, then he couldn’t like pulled some obscure loyalist from the higher ranks of the FBI, or some diversified extremist who occurred to be confirmed by the Senate for a distinct location. He couldn’t like accomplished all these shenanigans. In its set aside, he would’ve had to coach the FBI’s line of succession, which would maybe maybe like elevated deputy FBI director Paul Abbate, who’s a Wray appointee with somewhat a few integrity and independence. That’s fair correct of the oldsters down the road of succession who’d turn out to be acting head of the FBI if Trump fired Abbate. So at a minimum, it will like taken Trump longer to frightful the FBI if Wray had insisted on being fired. It might maybe maybe presumably like build extra stress on Trump to push Kash Patel via the Senate if he used to be committed to this purpose of taking on and basically destroying the agency.
Now, watch: I don’t know if federal courts would prefer agreed with this interpretation of the FVRA. However it certainly appears admire it must had been definitely value the fight for Wray, at a minimum, to uphold the integrity of his agency by forcing this wrestle. However evidently it used to be now now not.
Originate you like any idea what it used to be that led Wray to factual lie down?
I like my grasp hypothesis, which is that he’s a particular person of pleasure and didn’t wish to be fired. He wished to exit gracefully in its place of face the indignity of a letter at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20 asserting “you’re fired.” So he did it on his grasp terms. However there used to be plenty riding, legally, on him now now not heading to the exit early. And by doing so, he makes it even more straightforward for Trump to dangle over the FBI and use it to persecute his perceived enemies starting on Day 1.
If that’s the case, it used to be a if truth be told narcissistic name by Christopher Wray, one that valued his non-public priorities over the accurate of his nation. That’s one thing he if truth be told hasn’t accomplished for varied of his length of time. So it is a if truth be told fair correct-wanting and disappointing formulation to complete it.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Fetch the higher of news and politics
Cloud computing has always been marketed to enterprises as a more cost-effective way for companies to access the compute resources they need, because they only pay for what they use and can easily scale back how much they are using, based on demand.
Enterprises were encouraged, on the back of these benefits, to streamline their on-premise datacentres and start migrating the applications and workloads that resided in them to the public cloud.
In the early 2010s, it is fair to say that companies had a much wider choice of public cloud providers to entrust their data to, with (the technology firms formally known as) HP and Dell both having enterprise propositions in this space, alongside Rackspace and the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Towards the latter half of that decade, HP, Dell and Rackspace (and a handful of others) had all bowed out of the public cloud race, with the rise of AWS often cited as a factor in their decisions to pivot their business models towards a mix of private and managed cloud services provision.
This, in turn, has paved the way for the cloud infrastructure market to become the three-horse race it is today, with AWS leading the charge, followed by Microsoft and Google Cloud.
With around two-thirds of an entire market dominated by just three players, it is perhaps unsurprising that the hold companies like AWS, Microsoft and Google have on the cloud infrastructure services market is coming under increased regulatory scrutiny in various markets across the world – and the UK is no different.
In September 2022, the communications regulator Ofcom launched year-long probe into the UK’s £15m cloud services market, with particular emphasis on the actions and activities of the market’s biggest players: AWS, Microsoft and Google.
The study’s aim, as outlined by Ofcom at the time, was to “assess the strength of the competition in cloud services and the position key companies hold in the market” under the terms of the Enterprise Act 2002, which is an act of Parliament concerned with preserving market competitiveness.
Halfway through its investigation, Ofcom published an interim report in April 2023 that singled out AWS and Microsoft, specifically, for engaging in anti-competitive behaviours that it claimed might financially disadvantage UK consumers and businesses.
The “behaviours” were serious enough for Ofcom to confirm it was consulting on whether to refer the UK cloud infrastructure services market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
This was in the wake of its investigation bringing to light evidence that users were being hampered in their ability to switch from one cloud provider to another or add additional ones to their roster of technology providers.
Despite opposition from both Amazon and Microsoft, Ofcom confirmed – at the time its final report into the UK cloud infrastructure services market dropped in October 2023 – that it would be referring the market to the CMA for a further anti-trust probe.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Why did Ofcom refer the UK cloud services market to the CMA?
Ofcom published a full-year report that chronicled the findings of its 12-month investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure market in October 2023 that raised red flags about some anti-competitive behaviours it claimed AWS and Microsoft are both known to display. This is why the market has been referred to the CMA.
These red flags included concerns about the fact cloud providers charge customers egress fees to transfer their data to a competitor’s environment, which Ofcom claimed could discourage users from switching between providers.
The report also flagged interoperability restrictions as being another matter of concern, as it means users often have to put additional effort into reconfiguring their data and applications to work in different cloud environments.
The offering of committed spend discounts, which Microsoft and AWS are both known to do to public sector users, was also raised as a red flag by Ofcom as it incentivises users to back a single cloud provider for all or most of their cloud needs, the regulator claimed.
Ofcom’s full-year report also devoted several pages to detailing concerns it had received about how Microsoft charges users more for running versions of its cloud products in its competitors’ hosting environments.
“We have received submissions that say Microsoft engages in several practices that make it less attractive for customers to use Microsoft’s licensed software products on the cloud infrastructure of rival providers compared to Microsoft Azure. The submissions allege that this limits their ability to compete for customers.”
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: What will the CMA investigation cover?
It will be the CMA’s responsibility to fully investigate the anti-competitive behaviours flagged in the Ofcom report. As well as this, the CMA also has powers to intervene and roll out changes to how the likes of AWS and Microsoft behave to correct any anti-competitive behaviours its work brings to light.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Who is overseeing the CMA investigation?
The CMA appointed an inquiry group to oversee the investigation on 5 October 2023. The group comprises four members: CMA inquiry chair Kip Meek, Robin Foster, Paul Hughes and Colleen Keck.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: How long will the CMA investigation into AWS and Microsoft last?
The CMA’s investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market is due to run until April 2025, meaning that by the time it ends, it will have run for about 18 months.
The investigation’s length has raised eyebrows and proven to be a great source of concern for UK cloud market stakeholders, who fear the 18-month timeline will pave the way for the companies under investigation to gain more share and influence at the expense of other, smaller providers.
And AWS made a similar announcement on 5 March 2024, with its pledge to waive the charges associated with transferring data out to the internet when users want to migrate workloads from its public cloud infrastructure.
In a blog post, announcing the move, the company claimed more than 90% of its customers never incur fees when transferring data out of AWS, because the company already offers 100 gigabytes per month of free transfers from its datacentre regions to the internet.
“If you need more than 100 gigabytes of data transfer out per month while transitioning, you can contact AWS support to ask for free data transfer out to the internet charges for the additional data,” the post stated.
“It’s necessary to go through support because you make hundreds of millions of data transfers each day, and we generally do not know if the data transferred out to the internet is a normal part of your business or a one-time transfer as part of a switch to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the company added.
The AWS blog post made no reference to regulatory pressure being a factor in its decision to waive data egress fees, but did say the move is in keeping with its view that moving to the cloud should give users choice and flexibility.
“We believe this choice must include the one to migrate your data to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the post added.
And doing so will not require users to close their accounts with AWS or change their relationship with the company in anyway, it added.
Just over a week after AWS said it was scrapping data egress fees, Microsoft published a brief blog post confirming that it was doing the same.
“We support customer choice, including the choice to migrate your data away from Azure,” said the Microsoft blog post. “Azure now offers free egress for customers leaving Azure when taking their data out of the Azure infrastructure via the internet to switch to another cloud provider or an on-premises datacentre.”
Technical and interoperability barriers were also flagged by Ofcom as complicating the lives of enterprises that might want to mix and match cloud services from competing providers. Therefore, Ofcom said the CMA could address this by forcing the hyperscalers to be more transparent about how nicely (or not) their technologies play with their competitors’ offerings.
One area that might be trickier for the CMA to fix is the offering of committed spend discounts, Ofcom acknowledged, because putting a stop to customers being able to access preferential pricing on products would mean higher prices and costs for users.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has there been any shift in behaviour from AWS and Microsoft since the CMA investigation started?
On the whole, it has been business as usual for AWS and Microsoft. There has been no let-up in Amazon’s use of committed spend discounts to lure in public sector customers, for example.
Despite the offering of discounted pricing being a key area of focus for the CMA’s inquiry, details emerged in December 2023 that AWS had quietly renewed the preferential pricing scheme it had in place with the UK government.
This pricing scheme, known as the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA), has already been used to call off several multimillion-pound contracts, including one valued at £450m with the UK Home Office since its introduction in late 2023.
As reported by Computer Weekly in February 2024, Microsoft confirmed it had opened discussions with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body with a view to resolving its concerns about how it charges more for customers opting to run their own software in its cloud.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has the CMA released any interim findings from its work so far?
On 23 May 2024, the CMA published the first in a series of working papers, to give stakeholders an insight into the shape its investigation is taking. The publications were released with the caveat that the working papers’ contents is not intended to give readers a steer on any provisional or final decisions the CMA is making.
The working papers include one examining the UK cloud market’s overall competitive landscape, along with others separately looking at how the charging of egress fees and the offering of committed spend discounts might impact which providers companies choose to use.
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Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, declared on Monday that he would ban Apple devices from his companies if the iPhone maker integrates OpenAI’s artificial intelligence expertise at the working system level. The risk, posted on Musk’s social media platform X.com, formerly identified as Twitter, came hours after Apple unveiled a sweeping partnership with OpenAI at its annual Worldwide Builders Conference.
“That’s an unacceptable security violation,” Musk wrote in an X put up, relating to Apple’s plans to weave OpenAI’s worthy language devices and other AI capabilities into the core of its iOS, iPadOS and macOS working systems. “And guests will have to take a look at their Apple devices at the door, the establish they’ll be saved in a Faraday cage,” he added, it appears to be like relating to a shielded enclosure that blocks electromagnetic indicators.
If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That’s an unacceptable security violation.
Musk’s broadside in opposition to Apple and OpenAI underscores the escalating rivalry and tensions amongst tech giants as they flee for dominance in the booming market for generative AI. The Tesla CEO has been an outspoken critic of OpenAI, a firm he helped learned as a non-profit in 2015 sooner than an acrimonious split, and is now positioning his have AI startup xAI as a reveal competitor to Apple, OpenAI, and other major avid gamers.
But Musk isn’t very any longer by myself in expressing concerns about the safety implications of Apple’s tight integration with OpenAI’s expertise, which is in a establish to enable builders across the iOS ecosystem to faucet the startup’s worthy language devices for functions delight in natural language processing, image generation and extra. Pliny the Prompter, a pseudonymous but broadly respected cybersecurity researcher identified for jailbreaking OpenAI’s ChatGPT mannequin, called the pass a “daring” but potentially harmful step given the fresh voice of AI security.
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HOLY MOLY @APPLE IS MAKING IT RAIN ATTACK VECTORS ?
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY HANDS ?
— Pliny the Prompter ? (@elder_plinius) June 10, 2024
Security Concerns Loom Gigantic
“Time will vow! Valorous pass integrating to this extent, given the fresh voice of llm security,” Pliny posted on X, utilizing the acronym for orderly language devices delight in OpenAI’s GPT sequence. In most trendy months, Pliny and other researchers have demonstrated the skill to avoid the safeguards on ChatGPT and other AI devices, prompting them to generate corrupt reveal or repeat confidential knowledge aged in their practicing knowledge.
time will vow! daring pass integrating to this extent, given the fresh voice of llm security
— Pliny the Prompter ? (@elder_plinius) June 10, 2024
The tech enterprise has struggled in most trendy years with knowledge breaches, cyberattacks and the theft of gorgeous consumer knowledge, raising the stakes for Apple because it opens its working systems to a third-gain together AI. Whereas Apple has long championed consumer privacy and insists OpenAI will respect its strict knowledge security insurance policies, some security experts difficulty the partnership could perhaps well hold unusual vulnerabilities for nefarious actors to exhaust.
From our perspective, Apple is largely placing in a sad box into the coronary heart of its working system, and trusting that OpenAI’s systems and security are worthy ample to again users protected. But even basically the most superior AI devices this day are susceptible to errors, biases and seemingly misuse. It’s a calculated risk on Apple’s segment.
Musk’s tumultuous history with OpenAI
Apple and OpenAI every command that the AI systems built-in into iOS will scramble entirely on users’ devices by default, in desire to transmitting gorgeous knowledge to the cloud, and that builders leveraging Apple Intelligence instruments will be enviornment to strict guidelines to forestall abuse. But important aspects remain scarce, and some difficulty the charm of consumer knowledge from Apple’s 1.5 billion packed with life devices could perhaps well hold temptations for OpenAI to bend its have rules.
Musk’s history with OpenAI has been tumultuous. He modified into once an early backer of the firm and served as chairman of its board sooner than departing in 2018 over disagreements about its route. Musk has since criticized OpenAI for remodeling from a non-profit compare lab to a for-profit juggernaut and accused it of abandoning its fashioned mission of developing protected and worthwhile AI for humanity.
Now, alongside with his xAI startup driving a wave of hype and a most trendy $6 billion fundraising round, Musk seems desperate to gasoline the story of an account AI warfare for the ages. By threatening to ban Apple devices from his companies’ locations of work, factories and services worldwide, the tech magnate is signaling he views the looming competition as no-holds-barred and 0-sum.
Whether or no longer Musk follows through with a wholesale Apple ban at Tesla, SpaceX and his other companies stays to be seen. As Meta’s chief AI scientist honest as of late identified, Musk usually makes “blatantly pretend predictions” in the press. The logistical and security challenges by myself of enforcing this kind of policy amongst tens of thousands of workers could perhaps well be mountainous. Some also inquire of whether or no longer Musk in actuality has the licensed correct as a major executive to unilaterally ban workers’ deepest devices.
But the episode highlights the unfamiliar alliances and enmities taking form in Silicon Valley’s AI gold flee, the establish the day long gone by’s companions can rapidly turn out to be this day’s competitors and visa versa. With tech superpowers delight in Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon all now deeply in bed with OpenAI or developing their have superior AI in-home, the warfare lines are being drawn for a showdown over the formulation forward for computing.
As the stakes upward push and the saber rattling intensifies, cybersecurity researchers delight in Pliny the Prompter will be watching and probing for any signs of vulnerabilities that could perhaps well harm customers caught in the heart. “We are going to have some enjoyable Pliny!” quipped Comed, any other outstanding AI security tester, in a playful but ominous X alternate on Monday. Relaxing, it seems, is one observe for it.
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