Google Street View's cameras have returned to Germany more than a decade after a privacy backlash in the country pushed it to stop updating images. From a report: Alphabet's update will start with new photos of the streets and landmarks of the country's 20 largest cities and expand from there, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday. Google voluntarily suspended Street View photography in Germany in 2011, after an outcry from privacy advocates and opposition from regulators.

"We've been back on the road with our vehicles in Germany since June and will be posting the latest images as they become available -- adding footage from other regions across the country," Sven Tresp, a program manager for Street View, wrote. Google is posting information about where its cameras are traveling, he said. The Street View rollout across Europe more than a decade ago triggered probes by data protection watchdogs across the European Union. The investigations included a probe by the Hamburg authority, where Google had its main German base. Some led to fines, including a $1.1 million penalty in Italy.

The Council of the EU has adopted new rules intended to make it much easier for EV owners to travel across Europe, while simultaneously helping to reduce the output of harmful greenhouse gases. From a report: The new regulation is set to benefit owners of electric cars and vans in three ways: It reduces range anxiety by expanding the EV charging infrastructure along Europe's main highways, it makes payments "at the pump" easier without requiring an app or subscription, and ensures pricing and availability is clearly communicated to avoid surprises. From 2025 onward, the new regulation requires fast charging stations offering at least 150kW of power to be installed every 60km (37mi) along the EU's Trans-European Transport Network, or (TEN-T) system of highways, the bloc's main transport corridor. The fast charging network along European highways is already pretty robust, I discovered on a recent 3,000km (2,000 mile) roadtrip with a VW ID Buzz. This new law could all but eliminate range anxiety for those sticking to TEN-T roads.

Chainalysis' head of investigations doesn't seem to have a great understanding of whether her company's flagship software even works. From a report: Elizabeth Bisbee, head of investigations at Chainalysis Government Solutions, testified she was "unaware" of scientific evidence for the accuracy of Chainalysis' Reactor software used by law enforcement, an unreleased transcript of a June 23 hearing shared with CoinDesk shows.

The fact that Chainalysis' blockchain demystification tools have become so widespread is a serious threat to the crypto ecosystem. Although industry insiders have raged against Chainalysis since it was founded, often accusing it of violating people's financial privacy, there may be a better argument to make against the company and analysis firms like it: it's within the realm of possibility that these "probabilistic" machines don't work as well as advertised. This is a big deal considering Chainalysis' surveillance tools are used widely across the industry for compliance, and have at times led to unjustified account restrictions and -- even worse -- land unsuspecting individuals on the radar of law enforcement agencies without probable cause.

Google's newest proposed web standard is... DRM? Over the weekend the Internet got wind of this proposal for a "Web Environment Integrity API. " From a report: The explainer is authored by four Googlers, including at least one person on Chrome's "Privacy Sandbox" team, which is responding to the death of tracking cookies by building a user-tracking ad platform right into the browser. The intro to the Web Integrity API starts out: "Users often depend on websites trusting the client environment they run in. This trust may assume that the client environment is honest about certain aspects of itself, keeps user data and intellectual property secure, and is transparent about whether or not a human is using it."

The goal of the project is to learn more about the person on the other side of the web browser, ensuring they aren't a robot and that the browser hasn't been modified or tampered with in any unapproved ways. The intro says this data would be useful to advertisers to better count ad impressions, stop social network bots, enforce intellectual property rights, stop cheating in web games, and help financial transactions be more secure. Perhaps the most telling line of the explainer is that it "takes inspiration from existing native attestation signals such as [Apple's] App Attest and the [Android] Play Integrity API." Play Integrity (formerly called "SafetyNet") is an Android API that lets apps find out if your device has been rooted.

Root access allows you full control over the device that you purchased, and a lot of app developers don't like that. So if you root an Android phone and get flagged by the Android Integrity API, several types of apps will just refuse to run. You'll generally be locked out of banking apps, Google Wallet, online games, Snapchat, and some media apps like Netflix. [...] Google wants the same thing for the web. Google's plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an "environment attestation" test before you get any data. At this point your browser would contact a "third-party" attestation server, and you would need to pass some kind of test. If you passed, you would get a signed "IntegrityToken" that verifies your environment is unmodified and points to the content you wanted unlocked. You bring this back to the web server, and if the server trusts the attestation company, you get the content unlocked and finally get a response with the data you wanted.

The European Union's plan to bolster domestic semiconductor production will become law after ministers completed the final approval on Tuesday. From a report: The EU's Chips Act, which was approved by the European Parliament earlier this month, will take effect once it's published in the bloc's Official Journal. The European Commission first proposed the $47.5 billion Chips Act as part of an ambitious goal of producing 20% of the world's semiconductors by 2030. Numerous companies, including Intel and STMicroelectronics, have already announced new sites in Europe.

Alphabet's Google violated a software developer's patent rights with its remote-streaming technology and must pay $338.7 million in damages, a federal jury in Waco, Texas decided on Friday. From a report: The jury found that Google's Chromecast and other devices infringe patents owned by Touchstream Technologies related to streaming videos from one screen to another. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said on Monday that the company will appeal the verdict and has "always developed technology independently and competed on the merits of our ideas." Touchstream attorney Ryan Dykal said on Monday that Touchstream was pleased with the verdict. New York-based Touchstream, which also does business as Shodogg, said in its 2021 lawsuit that founder David Strober invented technology in 2010 to "move" videos from a small device like a smartphone to a larger device like a television.

Do-it-yourselfers want a piece of the rental-car market. Small-time entrepreneurs are amassing vehicles to rent out through car-sharing services such as Turo and Getaround, or their own websites. From a report: They aim to take on giants including Hertz and Avis Budget -- assuming they can master the difficult logistics of the business. One owner said he had to retrieve a car that was stolen, driven all the way up the West Coast and abandoned at the Canadian border. Another rented out a car that was involved in a shooting. Still another said a customer totaled a Maserati by driving it into a wall.

"It can be tough if you don't know what you're doing," said Jerome Mends-Cole, who rents out more than a dozen Teslas on Turo and his own website in Sacramento, Calif. "People look at it as a get rich quick thing, or a set it and forget it." It usually isn't. The costs of parking, cleaning, insurance and financing can quickly add up. Vehicles need to be picked up, dropped off, maintained and repaired. The expenses can quickly outpace any revenue. Renting cars is the latest iteration of gig work, which has become a robust piece of the American economy. People who started side hustles such as renting out rooms on Airbnb or driving for Uber are now taking on the more elaborate task of maintaining inventories of cars.

The Washington Post's "Tech Friend" newsletter has the latest on Google's "Enhanced Safe Browsing" for Chrome and Gmail, which "monitors the web addresses of sites that you visit and compares them to constantly updated Google databases of suspected scam sites." You'll see a red warning screen if Google believes you're on a website that is, for example, impersonating your bank. You can also check when you're downloading a file to see if Google believes it might be a scam document. In the normal mode without Enhanced Safe Browsing, Google still does many of those same security checks. But the company might miss some of the rapid-fire activity of crooks who can create a fresh bogus website minutes after another one is blocked as a scam.

This enhanced security feature has been around for three years, but Google recently started putting a message in Gmail inboxes suggesting that people turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing.

Security experts told me that it's a good idea to turn on this safety feature but that it comes with trade-offs. The company already knows plenty about you, particularly when you're logged into Gmail, YouTube, Chrome or other Google services. If you turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing, Google may know even more about what sites you're visiting even if you're not signed into a Google account. It also collects bits of visual images from sites you're visiting to scan for hallmarks of scam sites.

Google said it will only use this information to stop bad guys and train its computers to improve security for you and everyone else. You should make the call whether you are willing to give up some of your privacy for extra security protections from common crimes.
Gmail users can toggle the feature on or off at this URL. Google tells users that enabling the feature will provide "faster and more proactive protection against dangerous websites, downloads, and extensions."

The Post's reporter also asked Google why it doesn't just enable the extra security automatically, and "The company told me that because Google is collecting more data in Enhanced Safe Browsing mode, it wants to ask your permission."

The Post adds as an aside that "It's also not your fault that phishing scams are everywhere. Our whole online security system is unsafe and stupid... Our goal should be to slowly replace the broken online security system with newer technologies that ditch our crime-prone password system for different methods of verifying we are who we say we are."

"People are getting increasingly fed up with their car infotainment systems," reports the Verge: According to JD Power's Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study, overall satisfaction among car owners is 845 (on a 1,000-point scale), a decrease of two points from a year ago and three points lower than in 2021. That's the first time in the 28-year history of the study that the consumer research firm registered a consecutive year-over-year decline in owner satisfaction...

Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle's built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car's native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls...

[I]t seems like most people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years... But it seems like people are warming up to native operating systems, as long as they're developed by Google and not the automaker. JD Power found that models that have Android Automotive with Google Automotive's operating system, AAOS, "score higher in the infotainment category than those with no AAOS whatsoever."

But here's where things get kind of weird: AAOS without Google Automotive Services (GAS) receives the lowest scores for infotainment of the three categories. Google Automotive Services refers to all the apps and services that come with the car when Google is built into the car — also known as "Google built-in." Ford, GM, and Volvo have all said they will use GAS for their current and upcoming vehicles... That's surely music to GM's ears, which recently made the controversial decision to block access to CarPlay and Android Auto in its future EV lineup in favor of a native Google infotainment system.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google is rolling out ChromeOS 115 as a bigger-than-usual update with a number of user-facing additions over the coming days. Amidst I/O 2023, Google announced the beta availability of Android App Streaming from your Pixel (4a+) or Xiaomi (12T, 12T Pro, 13, 13 Pro) phone running Android 13 and newer with Cross-Device Services installed. It's now entering stable with ChromeOS 115 so that you can stream apps from your mobile device to your Chromebook. This is framed as letting you "complete quick tasks like replying to a conversation, checking on the status of a rideshare or delivery, and editing your shopping list."

Android apps, which open in a phone-sized window, can be launched via the Phone Hub where you get a row of Recent apps at the bottom of the panel with the ability to browse all compatible "Apps from your phone." Applications can also open when you tap through a messaging notification. When opening PDFs in the Gallery app, ChromeOS 115 adds a signature tool. Appearing next to Draw in the top toolbar, you can add a signature, which is much easier with a touchscreen than a trackpad and save it for future use. You can place it in any document and resize the signature to ensure line fit. Lastly, Google has updated the keyboard Shortcuts app with "new navigation and taxonomy," improved search, and a "refreshed shortcut visualization" that better shows what to press.

Meanwhile, this is unmentioned in the stable release notes, but ChromeOS 115 is testing better windowing options in the beta channel. Hovering over the expand/minimize button in the top-right corner control group will show you a new layout menu. There's Split (half), Partial, Full and Float. That last option is new and makes it so that the window is always on top, just like Picture-in-Picture (PiP) for video. The other options were previously accessed by dragging a window and moving to the left/right side of the screen until an overlay appears. This approach is much more accessible and hopefully sees a wide launch soon. The announcement can be read here.

Astranis, a geostationary communications satellite operator, successfully deployed its "Arcturus" satellite from a Falcon Heavy rocket in May to provide internet connectivity from geostationary space. However, the satellite experienced an unexpected issue with a supplier's component on the solar array drive assembly, affecting its ability to maintain continuous power. Ars Technica reports: "The Astranis engineering team has been doing an incredible job working around the clock to troubleshoot the issue," [Astranis co-founder John Gedmark] said. "We have now reproduced the problem on the ground in a vacuum chamber, zeroed in on the exact source of the failure, and know how to fix it for future spacecraft. Because this failure occurred within the internal workings of a component supplied by an external vendor, we're not in a position to go into the full technical details." The disappointment in Gedmark's update is palpable. "This is a frustrating situation -- the Arcturus spacecraft is in a safe state and fully under our control, the payload and our other Astranis in-house designed components are all working perfectly, and the tanks are fueled for years of on-orbit operation," he said. "But unless something major changes, the mission of providing Internet connectivity in Alaska will be delayed."

Astranis was founded in 2015 to determine whether microsatellites built largely in-house could deliver high-speed Internet from geostationary space at a low price. The launch of Arcturus marked the first demonstration that Astranis' small satellite technology worked in space and could survive the harsh radiation and thermal environment previously dominated by much larger satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Given that this was an effort to test this technology on a shoestring budget, it is perhaps not surprising that the satellite ultimately failed due to some unforeseen problem. The real acid test for Astranis, now, is to ensure that it learns from this failure and that the company's second satellite works in space.

In his update, Gedmark said the company understands how to quickly solve this issue on future spacecraft that are in production. The company is also working toward a solution to provide Internet service in Alaska, via Pacific Dataport, as initially planned with Arcturus. The backup plan, he said, "involves a special, multipurpose satellite that can operate as an on-orbit spare and bridge us to a full replacement satellite. We call this satellite UtilitySat. It can operate anywhere in the world, on multiple frequency bands, with the flexibility of a software-defined satellite. UtilitySat has been in the works for over a year, is in the final stages of integration, and is manifested on our very next launch that will take place at the end of this year."

Telegram is introducing a new Stories feature that is currently only available for Premium subscribers but will be available to all users eventually. 9to5Mac reports: With Telegram Stories, users are able to share photos and videos that disappear after a while. However, Telegram is trying to do more than its competitors. For instance, users can choose whether a Story will expire after 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours. Most apps make Stories disappear after 24 hours. Telegram also lets users create lists with different contacts for each Story. This means that you can share a specific Story with your best friends and another one just for your coworkers. The interface is similar to what you find in other apps that already offer Stories, with a list of available Stories at the top of the list of chats. Also similar to the Stories feature in apps like Instagram and Snapchat, you can send reactions and reply to someone else's Story. However, there's a catch.

While everyone can see Telegram Stories, only those who pay for Telegram Premium can post Stories. "Posting stories is currently available only to subscribers," a message in the app says when non-Premium users try to create a new Story. It's uncertain whether the Stories feature will become free for everyone eventually, but the term "currently" suggests it will. According to Durov, although the Telegram team was initially against the idea of having Stories in the app, the feature was one of the most requested by its users. "Even the skeptics on our team started to appreciate this feature. We can no longer imagine Telegram without it," he said last month.

Cerebras Systems and G42 have introduced the Condor Galaxy project, a network of nine interconnected supercomputers designed for AI model training with a combined performance of 36 FP16 ExaFLOPs. The first supercomputer, CG-1, located in California, offers 4 ExaFLOPs of FP16 performance and 54 million cores, focusing on Large Language Models and Generative AI without the need for complex distributed programming languages. AnandTech reports: CG-2 and CG-3 will be located in the U.S. and will follow in 2024. The remaining systems will be located across the globe and the total cost of the project will be over $900 million. The CG-1 supercomputer, situated in Santa Clara, California, combines 64 Cerebras CS-2 systems into a single user-friendly AI supercomputer, capable of providing 4 ExaFLOPs of dense, systolic FP16 compute for AI training. Based around Cerebras's 2.6 trillion transistor second-generation wafer scale engine processors, the machine is designed specifically for Large Language Models and Generative AI. It supports up to 600 billion parameter models, with configurations that can be expanded to support up to 100 trillion parameter models. Its 54 million AI-optimized compute cores and massivefabric network bandwidth of 388 Tb/s allow for nearly linear performance scaling from 1 to 64 CS-2 systems, according to Cerebras. The CG-1 supercomputer also offers inherent support for long sequence length training (up to 50,000 tokens) and does not require any complex distributed programming languages, which is common in case of GPU clusters.

This supercomputer is provided as a cloud service by Cerebras and G42 and since it is located in the U.S., Cerebras and G42 assert that it will not be used by hostile states. CG-1 is the first of three 4 FP16 ExaFLOP AI supercomputers (CG-1, CG-2, and CG-3) created by Cerebras and G42 in collaboration and located in the U.S. Once connected, these three AI supercomputers will form a 12 FP16 ExaFLOP, 162 million core distributed AI supercomputer, though it remains to be seen how efficient this network will be. In 2024, G42 and Cerebras plan to launch six additional Condor Galaxy supercomputers across the world, which will increase the total compute power to 36 FP16 ExaFLOPs delivered by 576 CS-2 systems. The Condor Galaxy project aims to democratize AI by offering sophisticated AI compute technology in the cloud. "Delivering 4 exaFLOPs of AI compute at FP16, CG-1 dramatically reduces AI training timelines while eliminating the pain of distributed compute," said Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems. "Many cloud companies have announced massive GPU clusters that cost billions of dollars to build, but that are extremely difficult to use. Distributing a single model over thousands of tiny GPUs takes months of time from dozens of people with rare expertise. CG-1 eliminates this challenge. Setting up a generative AI model takes minutes, not months and can be done by a single person. CG-1 is the first of three 4 ExaFLOP AI supercomputers to be deployed across the U.S. Over the next year, together with G42, we plan to expand this deployment and stand up a staggering 36 exaFLOPs of efficient, purpose-built AI compute."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Reddit is publicly extending an olive branch to the moderator community that it largely enraged over recent weeks. In a post on Wednesday, a Reddit employee detailed outreach efforts from the company, including new weekly feedback sessions, that it hopes can help repair ties with the social media platform and over 50,000 volunteer mods that it relies on. But as you might expect, mods remain skeptical. A Reddit admin going by Go_JasonWaterfalls on the site and claiming the title of Reddit VP of community acknowledged the shattered relationship between mods -- who spend thousands of hours providing free labor and have recently engaged in variously disruptive forms of protest over API pricing on the site -- and Reddit -- which has responded to said protests by ousting some protesting moderators from their posts.

"So, we've all had a... time on Reddit lately," Go_JasonWaterfalls wrote. "And I'm here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the 'now what?' conversation." Noting that Reddit's "role is facilitation" and to give mods a platform they "can rely on," including necessary tools and resources, Go_JasonWaterfalls emphasized the need for "consistent, inclusive, and direct connection" with mods before detailing outreach efforts, like Weekly Mod Feedback Sessions. The sessions will take place every Tuesday and Thursday through October and "continue into the future as valuable," the Reddit admin said. Redditors have to fill out a form of interest to participate. Reddit can easily turn away those with inactive accounts or who it views as currently being in violation of Reddit's mod or content policies. Go_JasonWaterfalls said Reddit will share notes from feedback sessions in the r/modnews subreddit. Go_JasonWaterfalls also underscored Reddit's Mod Council and Partner Communities programs, the next monthly meeting for the Accessibility Feedback Group, and upcoming in-person events in the US, Brazil, Canada, England, France, and India.

Mods, meanwhile, traumatized by a tumultuous past couple of months, have very low expectations of Reddit's efforts. Ars spoke with some who have already participated in similar efforts, like feedback sessions or the Mod Council, and claimed mixed results in regard to Reddit making actual moves in response to mod critiques and suggestions. "The Reddit Mod Council in particular has been one where they will yo-yo on whether or not they listen to moderators. Sometimes they do, most times they don't," Alyssa Videlock, a mod for numerous subreddits, including large ones like r/tumblr and r/lgbt, told Ars. Reddit is refusing to give way on virtually any of the mods' demands, which has included things like more accessible API pricing or more time to adjust to the new pricing for apps they value and broader exemption for apps used by users (including mods) with accessibility needs. Reddit's removal of troubling mods has also helped to obliterate Reddit community trust.

Earlier this week, Meta announced it has teamed up with Microsoft to launch Llama 2, its "open-source" large language model (LLM) that uses artificial intelligence to generate text, images, and code. In an opinion piece for The Register, long-time ZDNet contributor and technology analyst, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writes: "Meta is simply open source washing an open but ultimately proprietary LLM." From the report: As Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, said, it's "not an OSI approved license but a significant release of Open Technology ... This is a step to moving AI from the hands of the few to the many, democratizing technology and building trust in its use and future through transparency." And for many developers, that may be enough. [...] But the devil is in the details when it comes to open source. And there, Meta, with its Llama 2 Community License Agreement, falls on its face. As The Register noted earlier, the community agreement forbids the use of Llama 2 to train other language models; and if the technology is used in an app or service with more than 700 million monthly users, a special license is required from Meta. Stefano Maffulli, the OSI's executive director, explained: "While I'm happy that Meta is pushing the bar of available access to powerful AI systems, I'm concerned about the confusion by some who celebrate LLaMa 2 as being open source: if it were, it wouldn't have any restrictions on commercial use (points 5 and 6 of the Open Source Definition). As it is, the terms Meta has applied only allow some commercial use. The keyword is some."

Maffulli then dove in deeper. "Open source means that developers and users are able to decide for themselves how and where to use the technology without the need to engage with another party; they have sovereignty over the technology they use. When read superficially, Llama's license says, 'You can't use this if you're Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Bytedance, Alibaba, or your startup grows as big.' It may sound like a reasonable clause, but it also implicitly says, 'You need to ask us for permission to create a tool that may solve world hunger' or anything big like that." Stephen O'Grady, open source licensing expert and RedMonk co-founder, explained it like this: "Imagine if Linux was open source unless you worked at Facebook." Exactly. Maffulli concluded: "That's why open source has never put restrictions on the field of use: you can't know beforehand what can happen in the future, good or bad."

The OSI isn't the only open-source-savvy group that's minding the Llama 2 license. Karen Sadler, lawyer and executive director at the Software Freedom Conservancy, dug into the license's language and found that "the Additional Commercial Terms in section 2 of the license agreement, which is a limitation on the number of users, makes it non-free and not open source." To Sadler, "it looks like Meta is trying to push a license that has some trappings of an open source license but, in fact, has the opposite result. Additionally, the Acceptable Use Policy, which the license requires adherence to, lists prohibited behaviors that are very expansively written and could be very subjectively applied -- if you send out a mass email, could it be considered spam? If there's reasonably critical material published, would it be considered defamatory?" Last, but far from least, she "didn't notice any public drafting or comment process for this license, which is necessary for any serious effort to introduce a new license."

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is back at work. The multibillionaire has been visiting the tech giant's Mountain View, Calif., offices in recent months generally three to four days a week, working alongside researchers as they push to develop the company's next large artificial-intelligence system. WSJ: Brin participated in meetings about AI at Google's offices late last year, but the frequency and intensity of his involvement has picked up, said people familiar with the matter. His new stance is a notable change from the relatively hands-off approach he adopted after stepping down from an executive role at parent company Alphabet in 2019.

He has worked closely with a group of researchers building Google's long-awaited AI model Gemini. They have discussed technical matters such as "loss curves," a way of measuring an AI program's performance over time, and Brin has convened weekly discussions of new AI research with Google employees. He also has intervened in personnel matters, such as the hiring of sought-after researchers, the people said. Brin's increased presence at Google reflects the pivotal moment in AI and his longstanding interest in the technology, which Google pioneered but was slower than rivals to turn into new products, said current and former employees.

Reddit is now in charge of r/malefashionadvice, which for a time was the biggest subreddit still closed in protest of the platform's API pricing changes. From a report: The subreddit is now open, meaning Reddit users can browse content in the community once again, though in a restricted mode, meaning only certain users can make new posts. As we reported last week, the moderators of r/malefashionadvice, a subreddit with than 5 million subscribers, had taken the community private and were pushing its users toward Discord and Substack instead. At the time, the moderators expected to be removed after receiving a message from a Reddit admin (employee), ModCodeofConduct, telling them they would be replaced if they didn't reopen.

Top AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta Platforms have made voluntary commitments to the White House to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to help make the technology safer, the Biden administration said on Friday. From a report: The companies -- which also include Anthropic, Inflection, Amazon.com and OpenAI partner Microsoft -- pledged to thoroughly test systems before releasing them and share information about how to reduce risks and invest in cybersecurity.

The move is seen as a win for the Biden administration's effort to regulate the technology which has experienced a boom in investment and consumer popularity. Since generative AI, which uses data to create new content like ChatGPT's human-sounding prose, became wildly popular this year, lawmakers around the world began considering how to mitigate the dangers of the emerging technology to national security and the economy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's legacy telephone network may have nearly 200,000 miles of lead-covered cables, according to an estimate by AT&T submitted in a court filing. "Based on its records, AT&T estimates that lead-clad cables represent less than 10 percent of its copper footprint of roughly two million sheath miles of cable, the overwhelming majority of which remains in active service," AT&T wrote in a court filing yesterday in US District Court for the Eastern District of California. "More than two thirds of its lead-clad cabling is either buried or in conduit, followed by aerial cable, and with a very small portion running underwater. There are varying costs of installation, maintenance, and removal by cable type (aerial, buried, buried in conduit, underwater)."

Reacting to the court filing, financial analyst firm Raymond James & Associates wrote in a research note, "AT&T is telling us that the total exposure is 200,000 route miles or less." With about two-thirds of the lead cables either buried or installed inside conduit, "We believe the implication for AT&T's data is that the route miles that should be addressed most immediately is about 3.3 percent (or less)," the analyst firm wrote. AT&T's new court filing came in a case filed against AT&T subsidiary Pacific Bell by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) in January 2021. The sportfishing group sued AT&T over cables that are allegedly "damaged and discharging lead into Lake Tahoe."

The two underwater cables run along the bottom of the western side of Lake Tahoe for a total of eight miles. AT&T "contends that it stopped using the Cables in or around the 1980s or earlier, that the Easements therefore have terminated, and that Defendant no longer owns the Cables," according to a November 2021 settlement. AT&T agreed in that settlement to remove the cables but now says it is at an "impasse" with the CSPA regarding removal. "In this matter, AT&T has always maintained that its lead-clad telecommunications cables pose no danger to those who work and play in the waters of Lake Tahoe, but in 2021, AT&T agreed to remove them simply to avoid the expense of litigation," an AT&T lawyer at the firm Paul Hastings wrote yesterday in a letter to the plaintiff that was attached to the court filing. [...]

AT&T's stance that it won't remove the Lake Tahoe cables any time soon is apparently a surprise to the plaintiff. The CSPA said in a court filing last week that in a Zoom meeting on July 10, "AT&T confirmed that it is prepared to commence the removal process on September 6, 2023, as long as the new permit request that AT&T submitted to State Parks in May is approved by State Park." AT&T's filing said the company never "confirmed" that it is prepared to start the cable removal process on September 6. The CSPA argues that the lead-covered cables "have leached, are leaching, and will continue to leach lead into the waters of Lake Tahoe, and that such leaching may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health or the environment." Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an investigative report that found evidence of more than 2,000 lead-covered telephone cables installed across the U.S. Teleco stock prices plummeted as a result, since the remediation could cost the telecom industry $60 billion.

While members of Congress are putting pressure on telecom companies to act, AT&T does appear to be taking new actions as a result of the investigation. "AT&T is working with union partners to add a voluntary testing program for any employee who works with or has worked with lead-clad cables," which "expands on AT&T's previous practice of providing blood-lead testing for technicians involved in lead-clad cable removal," the company said in its letter to the plaintiff yesterday. AT&T said it is also conducting new testing and site visits at certain locations.

AT&T's stock slid to a 30-year low following the news.

According to NBC News, New York City is using surveillance software with artificial intelligence to track people evading fares in its subway stations. From the report: The system was in use in seven subway stations in May, according to a report on fare evasion published online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York City's public transportation. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will expand by "approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follow," the report says. The report also found that the MTA lost $690 million to fare evasion in 2022. Joana Flores, an MTA spokesperson, said the AI system doesn't flag fare evaders to New York police, but she declined to comment on whether that policy could change.

Tim Minton, the MTA's communications director, said the system tracks fare evasion to figure out how much money the subway isn't collecting. "We're using it essentially as a counting tool," Minton said. "The objective is to determine how many people are evading the fare and how are they doing it." Minton said the videos are stored on the MTA's servers and are kept "for a limited period." New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office announced last year that the city's transit systems had more than 10,000 surveillance cameras.