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NATION Tuesday, March 20, 2018 East Oregonian Page 7A Facebook used to profile voters for manipulation By BARBARA ORTUTAY AND ANICK JESDANUN AP Technology Writers NEW YORK — Face- book likes can tell a lot about a person. Maybe even enough to fuel a voter-manip- ulation effort like the one a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm stands accused of — and which Facebook may have enabled. The social network is now under fire after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inap- propriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to influence elections. Facebook’s stock plunged 7 percent Monday in its worst one-day decline since 2014. Officials in the EU and the U.S. sought answers, while Britain’s information commissioner said she will seek a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica’s servers because the British firm had been “uncooper- ative” in her investigation. After two years of failing to disclose the harvesting, Facebook said Monday that it hired an outside firm to audit Cambridge. Researchers in a 2013 study found that Facebook likes on hobbies, interests and other attributes can predict personal attributes such as sexual orientation and political affiliation. Computers analyze such data to look for patterns that might not be obvious, such as a link between a preference for curly fries and higher intelligence. Chris Wylie, a Cambridge co-founder who left in 2014, said the firm used such techniques to learn about individuals and create an information cocoon to change their perceptions. In doing so, he said, the firm “took fake news to the next level.” “This is based on an idea called ‘informational dominance,’ which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of informa- tion around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what’s actually happening,” Wylie said Monday on NBC’s “Today.” It’s not yet clear exactly how the firm might have attempted to do that. Late Friday, Facebook said Cambridge improperly obtained information from 270,000 people who down- loaded an app described as a personality test. Those people agreed to share data with the app for research — not for political targeting. And the data included who their Facebook friends were and what they liked — even though those friends hadn’t downloaded the app or given explicit consent. Cambridge was backed by the conservative billion- aire Richard Mercer, and at one point employed Stephen Bannon — later President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and White House adviser — as a vice presi- dent. The Trump campaign paid Cambridge roughly $6 million, according to federal election records, although officials have more recently played down that work. BRIEFLY Republicans tell Trump: Lay off Mueller, but take no action WASHINGTON — More Republicans are telling President Donald Trump in ever blunter terms to lay off his escalating criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia probe. But party leaders are taking no action to protect Mueller, embracing a familiar strategy with the president — simply waiting out the storm. Trump blistered Mueller and his investigation all weekend on Twitter and started in again on Monday, questioning the probe’s legitimacy with language no recent president has used for a federal inquiry. “A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!” Trump tweeted. Mueller is leading a criminal probe into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had ties to Russia and whether there has been obstruction of justice since then. Trump was told to cut it out on Sunday by such notable Republicans as Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Then on Monday he was told that firing Mueller would be “the stupidest thing the president could do” by Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. But Hatch, on CNN, also said he didn’t see any need for legislation to protect Mueller. And that sentiment was widely echoed by GOP leaders. Trump calls for death penalty to ‘get tough’ on drug pushers MANCHESTER, N.H. — Embracing the tough penalties favored by global strongmen, President Donald Trump on Monday brandished the death penalty as a fitting punishment for drug traffickers fueling the opioid epidemic. The scourge has torn through the rural and working-class communities that in large numbers voted for Trump. And the president, though he has come under criticism for being slow to unveil his plan, has seized on harsh sentences as key to stopping the plague. “Toughness is the thing that they most fear,” Trump said. The president made his announcement in New Hampshire, a state hit hard by opioids and an early marker for the re-election campaign he has already announced. Trump called for broadening education and awareness about drug addiction while expanding access to proven treatment and recovery efforts. But the backbone of his plan is to toughen punishments for those caught trafficking highly addictive drugs. “This isn’t about nice anymore,” Trump said. “This is about winning a very, very tough problem and if we don’t get very tough on these dealers it’s not going to happen folks. ... I want to win this battle.” Mississippi imposes 15-week abortion ban; nation’s toughest JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s governor signed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law Monday — and was slapped with a lawsuit less than an hour later. The law and responding challenge set up a confrontation sought by abortion opponents, who are hoping federal courts will ultimately prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable. Current federal law does not. Some legal experts have said a change in the law is unlikely unless the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court changes in a way that favors abortion opponents. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1510 , which bans most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, on Monday in a closed ceremony attended by legislative supporters and abortion opponents. “We are saving more of the unborn than any state in America and what better thing can we do?” Bryant said in a video his office posted on social media. The law’s only exceptions are if a fetus has health problems making it “incompatible with life” outside of the womb at full term, or if a pregnant woman’s life or a “major bodily function” is threatened by pregnancy. Pregnancies resulting from rape and incest aren’t exempted. Mississippi previously tied with North Carolina for the nation’s strictest abortion limits at 20 weeks. Both states count pregnancy as beginning on the first day of a woman’s previous menstrual period. That means the restrictions kick in about two weeks before those of states whose 20-week bans begin at conception. Fear mounts in Austin as serial bomber uses tripwire AUSTIN, Texas — The hunt for the serial bomber who has been leaving deadly explosives in packages on Austin doorsteps took an even more sinister turn Monday when investigators said the fourth and latest blast was triggered along a street by a nearly invisible tripwire. Police and federal agents said that suggests a “higher level of sophistication” than they have seen before, and means the carnage is now random, rather than targeted at someone in particular. “The game went up a little bit — well, it went up a lot yesterday with the tripwire,” Christopher Combs, FBI agent in charge of the bureau’s San Antonio division, said in an interview. Two people have now been killed and four wounded in bombings over a span of less than three weeks. The latest blast happened Sunday night in southwest Austin’s quiet Travis Country neighborhood, wounding two men in their 20s who were walking in the dark. They suffered what police said were significant injuries and remained hospitalized in stable condition. The three earlier bombings involved parcels that were left on doorsteps and blew up when they were moved or opened. Dems reject immigration deal as budget deadline nears WASHINGTON — Capitol Hill Democrats have rejected a White House bid to extend protections for so-called Dreamer immigrants in exchange for $25 billion in funding for President Donald Trump’s long-sought border wall as Washington talks on a $1.3 trillion catchall spending bill hit a critical stage on Monday. Disputes remain over immigration enforcement and a smaller infusion of wall funding, as well as a major rail project that pits Trump against his most powerful Democratic adversary, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Monday’s developments were described by congressional aides in both parties who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks remain secretive. All sides pressed toward an agreement by Monday night, though aides said it appeared more likely that the measure would be unveiled Tuesday for a House vote Thursday. House and Senate action is needed by midnight Friday to avert another government shutdown. — Associated Press ABC-15.com via AP A still image taken from video shows investigators at the scene of a fatal accident involving a self driving Uber car on the street in Tempe, Ariz. Police in the city of Tempe said Monday that the vehicle was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel when the woman walking outside of a crosswalk was hit. Self-driving vehicle strikes and kills pedestrian in Arizona By FELICIA FONSECA AND TOM KRISHER Associated Press FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedes- trian in suburban Phoenix in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle — an accident that could have far-reaching consequences for the new technology. The crash Sunday night in Tempe was the event many in the auto and technology industries were dreading but knew was inevitable. Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The testing has been going on for months as automakers and technology companies like the ride-hailing service compete to be the first with cars that operate on their own. The Volvo was in self- driving mode with a human backup driver at the wheel when it hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was walking a bicycle outside the lines of a crosswalk, police said. She died at a hospital. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on his Twitter account and said the company is working with local law enforcement on the investigation. The National Transpor- tation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which can enact regulations, sent investigators. Tempe police Sgt. Ronald Elcock said local authorities haven’t drawn any conclusions about who is at fault but urged people to use crosswalks. He told reporters at a news conference Monday the Uber vehicle was traveling around 40 mph when it hit Helzberg immediately as she stepped on to the street. Neither she nor the backup driver showed signs of impairment, he said. The public’s image of the vehicles will be defined by stories like the crash in Tempe, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies self-driving vehicles. Although the Uber vehicle and its human backup could be at fault, it may turn out that there was nothing either could have done to stop the crash, he said. Either way, the fatality could hurt the technology’s image and lead to a push for more regulations at the state and federal levels, Smith said. Autonomous vehicles with laser, radar and camera sensors and sophisticated computers have been billed as the way to reduce the more than 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the U.S. alone. Ninety-four percent of crashes are caused by human error, the govern- ment says. Autonomous vehicles don’t drive drunk, don’t get sleepy and aren’t easily distracted. But they do have faults. “We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”