"Chinese technology provider Huawei was recently accused of being able to monitor all calls made using Dutch mobile operator KPN," writes the Conversation. Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares their report: The revelations are from a secret 2010 report made by consultancy firm Capgemini, which KPN commissioned to evaluate the risks of working with Huawei infrastructure. While the full report on the issue has not been made public, journalists reporting on the story have outlined specific concerns that Huawei personnel in the Netherlands and China had access to security-essential parts of KPN's network - including the call data of millions of Dutch citizens - and that a lack of records meant KPN couldn't establish how often this happened... KPN essentially granted Huawei "administrator rights" to its mobile network by outsourcing work to the Chinese firm.

Legislation is only now catching up to prevent similar vulnerabilities in telecoms security...

Lower revenues force operators to carefully manage costs. This means that operators have been keen to outsource parts of their businesses to third parties, especially since the late 2000s. Large numbers of highly skilled engineers are an expensive liability to have on the balance sheet, and can often appear underused when things are running smoothly... , outsourcing by mobile operators is widespread. And firms in the UK and across Europe have often turned to Huawei to provide IT services and to help build core networks.

In 2010, Huawei was managing security-critical functions of KPN's core network.

The New York Times shares the dilemma of Jeff Sheu, managing director of a private equity firm, who is "exactly the type of high earner California does not want to lose. When people in his tax bracket leave, the state is likely to audit them to make sure they really have left."

But fortunately, there's an app for that: With the May 17 tax filing deadline approaching, people who have moved to another state or are working more remotely need to be extra vigilant with their tax documents. For Mr. Sheu, that involves an app on his smartphone that uses location services to track him all the time. What he is sacrificing in privacy, he is gaining in peace of mind, knowing he will be able to show exactly when and where he was in a particular state, should California's tax authority come after him... "I'm never apart from my phone," Mr. Sheu said... "It feels to me like a pretty undebatable way to track where I am...."

Tax apps like TaxBird — which Mr. Sheu uses — and TaxDay and Monaeo were created years ago... "We've seen a fourfold increase in our app without any advertising in the past year," said Jonathan Mariner, founder and president of TaxDay, who was himself audited when he worked for Major League Baseball in New York but lived in Florida. "When people are concerned about privacy, I say you probably have a dozen apps on your phone that are tracking you, and you don't even know it...." Monaeo makes a point of describing how the data is cataloged — city, state and country, but without specific locations. It also says upfront that it does not share any data. (All three of the apps are vigilant about that.) While each tax app has different levels of precision and features to upload supporting documents, they all fulfill the basic need to prove your location to a tax authority. When it comes time to file taxes, users download reports detailing where they worked with varying degrees of specificity, from a simple day count to more detailed location information...

With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, states in need of revenue are not going to let the money go without a fight. "This has the potential to become as messy as you can envision it," said Dustin Grizzle, a tax partner at MGO, an accounting firm. "States are going to say, 'Hey you're just using Covid to give you the ability to work remotely.'"

NBC News reports more than 440 Americans have now been charged with storming the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th, with charges now filed against people from 44 of America's 50 states. They describe it as "one of the largest criminal investigations in American history." The largest number come from Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida, in that order. Men outnumber women among those arrested by 7 to 1, with an average age of 39, according to figures compiled by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. A total of 44 are military veterans.
Hundreds of arrests happened because rioters later bragged online: In nearly 90 percent of the cases, charges have been based at least in part on a person's own social media accounts.

A New York man, Robert Chapman, bragged on the dating app Bumble that he'd been in the Capitol during the riot. The person he was seeking to date responded, "We are not a match," and notified the FBI.
In fact, the investigative agency has now received "hundreds of thousands" of tips from the public, and has even posted photos of people who participated in the riots online asking for the public's help to identify them.

But NBC also reports that technology is being used to identify participants:

• "Investigators have also used facial recognition software, comparing images from surveillance cameras and an outpouring of social media and news agency videos against photo databases of the FBI and at least one other federal agency, Customs and Border Protection, according to court documents."

• Investigators "have also subpoenaed records from companies providing cellphone service, allowing agents to tell whether a specific person's phone was inside the Capitol during the siege."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Today, with the expansion of its Galaxy Upcycling at Home service (which is still in beta), users in the U.S., U.K., and South Korea will get access to an experimental feature in the SmartThings app designed to give an old Galaxy handset new life as a useful smart home accessory. By using the app to reconfigure the device's battery usage and optimization, Samsung says even older devices will still be able to deliver good longevity, while the phone's usual assortment of wireless connectivity features makes it easy to pair the phone with other devices in your home.

In the SmartThings app, Samsung provides a range of functions that an old smartphone can perform, including serving as a light sensor that can automatically turn on your smart lights or even your TV when it gets dark. Alternatively, you can also convert an old Galaxy phone into a sound sensor, with the phone using AI to detect common household noises like a barking dog, crying baby, or a knock on the door. In this way, you can also repurpose an old Samsung phone as a baby monitor of sorts [...]. And of course, even without much fiddling, upcycled Samsung phones can also be used as universal remotes, providing an easy way to control your streaming video box, play music on your smart speakers, control your lights, and more.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill on Tuesday requiring all cellphones and tablets sold in the state to automatically block pornography. In order for it to take effect though, at least five other states have to pass the measure. The Hill reports: The bill, H.B. 72, is aimed at establishing filter requirements and enforcement for tablets and smartphones activated in the state on or after Jan. 1 of the year the measure takes effect, according to its text. Manufacturers that don't abide by the law could face fines of $10 for each violation with a cap of $500. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Susan Pulishper (R), said she was "grateful" that Cox signed the bill, which she said was aimed at keeping porn away from children, the AP notes. She also noted that parents could take the filters off.

Jason Groth, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, told the news service that the measure was "another example of the Legislature dodging the constitutional impacts of the legislation they pass." He further said the bill's constitutionality will likely be argued in court.

The OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro are OnePlus' newest smartphones powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 888 chipset. The flagship device is the OnePlus 9 Pro, featuring a 120Hz LPTO curved display, 8GB of RAM, 128GB storage, Hasselblad-branded cameras, and a starting price of $969. If that price is too much to stomach, the OnePlus 9 features slightly lower-end specs and a more affordable $729 starting price. The Verge has already called the OnePlus 9 Pro "the best Android alternative to Samsung." From the report: OnePlus spent much of its announcement talking about the cameras on the new phones, which have been developed in partnership with Hasselblad. OnePlus says the colors have been tuned to look more natural and that the ultrawide sensor on the 9 Pro and 9 is one of the biggest to ever ship on a smartphone. The ultrawide uses a 50-megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor that's 1/1.56" in size with an aperture of f/2.2. Meanwhile, the 9 Pro's main Sony IMX789 sensor has a resolution of 48 megapixels and is 1/1.43" in size. (The regular 9 has a Sony IMX689 sensor, but it has the same resolution of 48 megapixels.) Both have a 2-megapixel monochrome sensor and 16-megapixel selfie camera, but only the 9 Pro has an 8-megapixel telephoto.

As previously announced, the 9 Pro has a 1440p 120Hz curved display that makes use of LPTO technology to adjust its refresh rate between 1 and 120Hz based on the content being displayed on-screen, reducing power consumption by "up to 50 percent." OnePlus also claims it should feel more responsive to use in games that support its Hyper Touch technology. The screen has a maximum brightness of 1300 nits and supports HDR10+. Meanwhile, the OnePlus 9 has a flat rather than curved display. It's not LTPO, it's slightly less bright at 1,100 nits, and it's also lower resolution at 1080p. It's still got a refresh rate of 120Hz, however. Additionally, both phones support Warp Charge 65T, which OnePlus claims should be able to charge the phones' 4,500mAh batteries to 100 percent in under half an hour. The 9 Pro and 9 can also charge wirelessly at up to 50W and 15W, respectively. Both phones will go on sale on April 2nd, with preorders starting March 26th.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: LG Electronics may shutter its mobile communication business rather than sell it, DongA Ilbo reports, citing an unidentified person in the electronics industry. Negotiations with Germany's Volkswagen AG and Vietnam's Vingroup JSC on possible sale of the smartphone business seemed to have failed, according to the report.

LG Electronics' CEO said in January that all options were on the table for the loss-making operation. The company was said to have halted development last month of phones with a rollable display, and DongA said Sunday that LG has shelved a planned first-half rollout of all new smartphones. LG may share its decision on the business' fate with employees as soon as early April, the DongA report said.

Conservative lawmakers in Utah have a passed a proposal this month requiring all cellphones and tablets sold in the state to automatically block pornography. It's unknown whether Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, will sign or veto the proposal. He has until March 25 to decide. The Associated Press reports: Supporters argue the restriction is a critical step to help parents keep explicit content away from kids -- especially as more children have their own electronic devices and have been forced to spend more time online during the pandemic. Combating porn is a perennial issue for Utah lawmakers who have previously mandated warning labels on print and online pornography and declared porn a "public health crisis."

Utah's generally conservative culture means racy mainstream magazines and lingerie catalogs can be considered risque. Leaders of the predominant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faith have also drawn attention to what they consider the harms of pornography. Even if Cox signs the measure, it wouldn't go into effect unless five other states also enacted similar laws, a provision added after manufacturers and retailers voiced concerns that it would be difficult to implement the filters for a single state. If Cox signs the bill, Utah appears poised to become the first state to mandate filters on devices, according to two prominent technology experts and the bill's sponsor, though federal internet restrictions aimed at preventing kids from accessing porn were passed in the late 1990s and later stuck down in the courts.

"A federal judge in Washington blocked the Defense Department from restricting U.S. investment in the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi Corp," reports Bloomberg: In the final days of the Trump administration, the Defense Department placed Xiaomi on a list of companies with alleged links to the Chinese military, triggering financial restrictions that were scheduled to go into effect next week. But on Friday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras put a temporary halt to the ban, siding with Xiaomi in a lawsuit that argued that the move was "arbitrary and capricious" and deprived the company of its due process rights. Contreras said Xiaomi was likely to win a full reversal of the ban as the litigation unfolds and issued an initial injunction to prevent the company from suffering "irreparable harm." After the ban was announced, the smartphone manufacturer faced the prospect of being de-listed from U.S. exchanges and deleted from global benchmark indexes.

Xiaomi is the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world by volume. In the third quarter, it surpassed Apple Inc. in smartphone sales, according to the International Data Corporation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Now researchers at MIT have developed a new way to produce holograms nearly instantly -- a deep-learning based method so efficient, it can generate holograms on a laptop in a blink of an eye. They detailed their findings this week, which were funded in part by Sony, online in the journal Nature. Using physics simulations for computer-generated holography involves calculating the appearance of many chunks of a hologram and then combining them to get the final hologram. Using lookup tables is like memorizing a set of frequently used chunks of hologram, but this sacrifices accuracy and still requires the combination step.
[...]
The researchers first built a custom database of 4,000 computer-generated images, which each included color and depth information for each pixel. This database also included a 3D hologram corresponding to each image. Using this data, the convolutional neural network learned how to calculate how best to generate holograms from the images. It could then produce new holograms from images with depth information, which is provided with typical computer-generated images and can be calculated from a multi-camera setup or from lidar sensors, both of which are standard on some new iPhones. The new system requires less than 620 kilobytes of memory, and can generate 60 color 3D holograms per second with a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels on a single consumer-grade GPU. The researchers could run it an iPhone 11 Pro at a rate of 1.1 holograms per second and on a Google Edge TPU at a rate of 2 holograms per second, suggesting it could one day generate holograms in real-time on future virtual-reality (VR) and augmented-reality (AR) mobile headsets.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple could be launching a folding iPhone in 2023, and that the phone could have a screen between 7.5 and eight inches. The Verge reports: There have been numerous reports about Apple prototyping a folding iPhone, but according to MacRumors, Kuo says that the product has "not yet officially kicked off." According to Kuo, the screen will be iPad Mini-sized when folded out, so it seems as if Apple is going for the Galaxy Fold approach of having a regular-sized phone that folds out into a small tablet, rather than the Z Flip or Razr approach of having a compact folding phone. (This is a bummer to me, but it seems like the folding phablet approach is the most popular at the moment.) It's unclear who would be making those folding displays -- there have been rumors of Apple working with both LG and Samsung.

While the rumors of a prototype and this report from Kuo indicate that Apple is indeed working on a folding phone, it's not something to wait around for just yet. Kuo's 2023 launch date is dependent on Apple being able to figure out "key technology and mass production issues." As we've seen, folding phones can be hard to get right. If Apple can do it, though, it could be in the position to do what it does best: adopt a technology after other companies have figured out the bugs and pitfalls, and release a product that seems polished in comparison.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: /e/ OS, the "open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled" fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you've always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It's Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously, /e/ only did business in Europe. Like normal, the e Foundation's smartphone strategy is to sell refurbished Samsung devices with /e/ preloaded. In the US, there are only two phones right now: the Galaxy S9 for $379.99 or a Galaxy S9+ for $429.99. North Americans still have reason to be jealous of Europe, where you can get /e/ preloaded on a Fairphone, which is also Europe-exclusive. These Samsung phones are used devices, but the site says the devices have "been checked and reconditioned to be fully working at our partner's facilities." The phones have a one-year warranty and are described as "Good-as-New" with "no surprises." An /e/ device means you'll be getting a fork of Android 10, and for ongoing support, the e Foundation says, "We aim to support with at least 3 years of software updates and security patches."

/e/ OS was founded by Gael Duval, the creator of Mandrake Linux, and the project describes itself as a "non-profit project in the public interest." /e/ is built a lot like a Linux distribution, in that it takes a curated collection of other open source projects, merges them into a single product, and does its best to fill in the remaining gaps. In this case, /e/ is based on LineageOS, the Android community's open source, device-ready version of Google's Android source code. The primary contribution of /e/ is filling in all the gaps left by the lack of Google apps, so there's an /e/ app store, an /e/ cloud storage and account system, and various Google-replacement apps like a Chromium-based browser, a fork of K-9 Mail for email, contacts, search, photos, etc. The company is even trying to build a Google Assistant replacement. Actually getting regular Android apps to run on a forked version of Android is a challenge. Google Play Services is built into many apps for things like push notifications, and there's a good chance that functionality won't work on /e/ OS. These apps will at least run on /e/ OS instead of exiting outright, thanks to the inclusion of MicroG, an open source project that hijacks Google API calls.

"Are you noticing your battery life is draining faster than normal?" tweeted Verizon Wireless customer support on Sunday, the Verge reports: Despite its relentless promotion of 5G phones and the fact that it spent more than $45 billion bidding on a new faster spectrum, Verizon support now is advising people on Twitter to turn off their phones' 5G access to preserve battery life.

In a Sunday morning tweet, Verizon support helpfully suggested that "one way to help conserve battery life is to turn on LTE" if users found their batteries were "draining faster than normal." That step would, of course, turn off 5G in a phone that has it available. It's also worth pointing out that you don't actually "turn on LTE" when doing this step — LTE is always enabled as a fallback for the 5G network. But Verizon is obviously being cautious so as not to actually tell its customers to "turn off 5G".
Verizon's tweet is now "unavailable," having apparently been since deleted.

The Verge also points out that Verizon's nationwide 5G network "uses a technology called DSS, which in many instances is actually slower than the LTE network it's trying to replace."

Bill Gates "prefers the more open nature of the Android ecosystem, as it's more 'flexible' about how software interfaces with the OS," reports PC Magazine, citing remarks Gates made on Clubhouse to CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin: "I actually use an Android phone," Gates told Sorkin. "Because I want to keep track of everything, I'll often play around with iPhones, but the one I carry around happens to be Android. Some of the Android manufacturers pre-install Microsoft software in a way that makes it easy for me. They're more flexible about how the software connects up with the operating system. So that's what I ended up getting used to. You know, a lot of my friends have iPhone so there's no purity."

In 2019, Gates admitted the way he handled Microsoft's own mobile phone division was his "greatest mistake." Microsoft ended up letting Google transform Android into the only true rival for iPhone. Microsoft missed out on a $400 billion market at the time, something Gates deeply regrets. In 2017, however, he went ahead and adopted an Android phone.

During the interview, Davidson indicated that an Android version of Clubhouse could be on its way. He called it a "top feature," which could mean the iPhone Clubhouse could soon dissipate.

Amazon is using AI cameras to monitor drivers of its delivery vans for safety issues — but also a second driver safety app on their phones.

Though it's named Mentor, Mashable reports that "it doesn't seem to be helping..." CNBC talked to drivers who said the app mostly invades their privacy or miscalculates dangerous driving behavior. One driver said even though he didn't answer a ringing phone, the app docked points for using a phone while driving. Another worker was flagged for distracted driving at every delivery stop she made.

The incorrect tracking has real consequences, ranging from restricted payouts and bonuses to job loss. The app gives a safety score which is used to rank drivers and compare them to colleagues.

The App Store description calls this "a little friendly competition!"
CNBC reports that one driver even created a YouTube video showing how Amazon's delivery van drivers could appease the app: by wrapping their cellphone in a sweater and then shoving it in their glovebox.

Otherwise, "If your device moves at all, it's going to count against you."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bad news for lovers of smaller phones: the iPhone 12 mini has sold poorly compared to other phones in the iPhone 12 lineup -- poorly enough that analysts wonder whether Apple will remain committed to the smaller phone design moving forward. A data firm called Counterpoint Research found that the iPhone 12 mini accounted for just 5 percent of overall sales from the company's smartphone lineup in early January. And J.P. Morgan analyst William Yang told Reuters that screens under 6 inches now account for only 10 percent of smartphones sold industry-wide.

The data from Counterpoint is not the first to tell this story. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) broke down iPhone 12 lineup sales in detail last month. They found that the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max made up about 20 percent of sales from the larger iPhone 12 lineup during the launch window, while the non-Pro, 6.1-inch iPhone 12 accounted for 27 percent. But they also said the iPhone 12 mini "likely disappointed Apple" with only 6 percent of sales during the period measured -- pretty close to the number Counterpoint shared a couple of months later.

While all this data shows that the iPhone 12 mini has underperformed, it doesn't tell us why. According to CIRP's data, the also-small iPhone SE performed a little better (likely due to its significantly lower price) but it still didn't make up a huge chunk of sales. So while it's possible that the iPhone 12 mini's slow sales are partially a result of cannibalization by the cheaper SE, small phones are clearly not doing well in general. There are a lot of reasons small phones are less popular now. For one thing, users are consuming more rich media content. Many people watch as much TV and film on their phones as they do on their TVs now, and some social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are focused on rich media that may be more enjoyable to some on a larger display. But if anything, these sales numbers make the future of one-handed smartphones look even dimmer than before.

In 2019 two New York Times opinion writers obtained cellphone app data "containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017." (It's data that they say is "supposed to be anonymous, but it isn't. We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans.")

Now they've obtained a remarkable new trove of data, "this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump's political rally turned into a violent insurrection."

And here the stakes for a privacy violation were even higher: [The data set] shows how Trump supporters traveled from South Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Kentucky to the nation's capital, with pings tracing neatly along major highways, in the days before the attack. Stops at gas stations, restaurants and motels dot the route like bread crumbs, each offering corroborating details. In many cases, these trails lead from the Capitol right back to their homes... Unlike the data we reviewed in 2019, this new data included a remarkable piece of information: a unique ID for each user that is tied to a smartphone. This made it even easier to find people, since the supposedly anonymous ID could be matched with other databases containing the same ID, allowing us to add real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other information about smartphone owners in seconds.

The IDs, called mobile advertising identifiers, allow companies to track people across the internet and on apps. They are supposed to be anonymous, and smartphone owners can reset them or disable them entirely. Our findings show the promise of anonymity is a farce. Several companies offer tools to allow anyone with data to match the IDs with other databases. We were quickly able to match more than 2,000 supposedly anonymous devices in the data set with email addresses, birthdays, ethnicities, ages and more...

Smartphone users will never know if they are included in the data or whether their precise movements were sold. There are no laws forcing companies to disclose what the data is used for or for how long. There are no legal requirements to ever delete the data. Even if anyone could figure out where records of their locations were sold, in most states, you can't request that the data be deleted. Their movements could be bought and sold to innumerable parties for years. And the threat that those movements could be tied back to their identity will never go away.

If the January 6 rioters didn't know before, they surely know now the cost of leaving a digital footprint...
The article argues that de-anonymizing the data "gets easier by the day," warning this latest data set demonstrates "the looming threat to our liberties posed by a surveillance economy that monetizes the movements of the righteous and the wicked alike."

But it also warns that "The location-tracking industry exists because those in power allow it to exist... The dark truth is that, despite genuine concern from those paying attention, there's little appetite to meaningfully dismantle this advertising infrastructure that undergirds unchecked corporate data collection.

"This collection will only grow more sophisticated."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A new company called Metalenz, which emerges from stealth mode today, is looking to disrupt smartphone cameras with a single, flat lens system that utilizes a technology called optical metasurfaces. A camera built around this new lens tech can produce an image of the same if not better quality as traditional lenses, collect more light for brighter photos, and can even enable new forms of sensing in phones, all while taking up less space.

Instead of using plastic and glass lens elements stacked over an image sensor, Metalenz's design uses a single lens built on a glass wafer that is between 1x1 to 3x3 millimeter in size. Look very closely under a microscope and you'll see nanostructures measuring one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Those nanostructures bend light rays in a way that corrects for many of the shortcomings of single-lens camera systems. The core technology was formed through a decade of research when cofounder and CEO Robert Devlin was working on his PhD at Harvard University with acclaimed physicist and Metalenz cofounder Federico Capasso. The company was spun out of the research group in 2017.

Light passes through these patterned nanostructures, which look like millions of circles with differing diameters at the microscopic level. The resulting image quality is just as sharp as what you'd get from a multilens system, and the nanostructures do the job of reducing or eliminating many of the image-degrading aberrations common to traditional cameras. And the design doesn't just conserve space. Devlin says a Metalenz camera can deliver more light back to the image sensor, allowing for brighter and sharper images than what you'd get with traditional lens elements. Another benefit? The company has formed partnerships with two semiconductor leaders (that can currently produce a million Metalenz "chips" a day), meaning the optics are made in the same foundries that manufacture consumer and industrial devices -- an important step in simplifying the supply chain. Metalenz will go into mass production toward the end of the year. Its first application will be to serve as the lens system of a 3D sensor in a smartphone. (The company did not give the name of the phone maker.)

Apple's latest iOS 14.5 update for beta testers brings support for the new PS5 DualSense and Xbox Series X controllers. The Verge reports: Apple's upcoming iOS 14.5 update follows the company revealing back in November that it was working with Microsoft to include support for the Xbox Series X controllers. Steam also added PS5 controller support last year, followed by Nvidia's Shield TV support last month. Other features of iOS 14.5 include the ability to unlock an iPhone with an Apple Watch while wearing a mask, Siri emergency contact calling, CarPlay ETA sharing, and dual-SIM 5G support. The official release is expected in the next couple of months.

"Huawei, the crown jewel of China's technology industry, has suffered from a sustained American campaign to keep its equipment from being used in new 5G networks around the world," reports the New York Times. Now they've identified "a covert pro-Huawei influence campaign in Belgium about 5G networks." [Alternate URL here]

It began when trade lawyer Edwin Vermulst was paid to write an article criticizing a Belgian policy that would block Huawei from lucrative contracts: First, at least 14 Twitter accounts posing as telecommunications experts, writers and academics shared articles by Mr. Vermulst and many others attacking draft Belgium legislation that would limit "high risk" vendors like Huawei from building the country's 5G system, according to Graphika, a research firm that studies misinformation and fake social media accounts. The pro-Huawei accounts used computer-generated profile pictures, a telltale sign of inauthentic activity. Next, Huawei officials retweeted the fake accounts, giving the articles even wider reach to policymakers, journalists and business leaders. Kevin Liu, Huawei's president for public affairs and communications in Western Europe, who has a verified Twitter account with 1.1 million followers, shared 60 posts from the fake accounts over three weeks in December, according to Graphika. Huawei's official account in Europe, with more than five million followers, did so 47 times...

Twitter said it had removed the fake accounts after Graphika alerted it to the campaign on Dec. 30... Many of their followers appeared to be bots...

The effort suggests a new twist in social media manipulation, said Ben Nimmo, a Graphika investigator who helped identify the pro-Huawei campaign. Tactics once used mainly for government objectives — like Russia's interference in the 2016 American presidential election — are being adapted to achieve corporate goals. "It's business rather than politics," Mr. Nimmo said. "It's not one country targeting another country. It looks like an operation to promote a major multinational's interests — and to do it against a European state."
Though the social media campaign had little impact on Belgian policymakers, one telecom consultancy noted Huawei's fear that similar legislation "could spread to other parts of the world." (The article points out Belgium is the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union.)

But Phil Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute, see a future where disinformation will become increasingly commercialized. "The flow of money is increasingly there," he tells the Times. "Large-scale social media influence operations are now part of the communications tool kit for any large global corporation."