Amazon is rolling out pay-by-palm technology at some Whole Foods grocery stores near its headquarters to make paying quicker and more convenient. The technology, called Amazon One, lets shoppers scan the palm of their hand and connect it to a credit card or Amazon account. After the initial set up, which Amazon says takes less than a minute, shoppers can scan their hand at the register to pay for groceries without having to open their wallets. Amazon first launched the technology late last year and at the time said the technology could be used at stadiums, office buildings and other retailers. So far, Amazon hasn’t announced any takers. It has been put into use in several of its cashier-less stores and Amazon said it has signed up thousands of users, but didn’t provide a specific number. Privacy experts have warned against the use by companies of biometric data, such as face or palm scans, because of the risk of it being hacked and stolen. Amazon said it keeps the palm images in a secure part of its cloud and doesn’t store the information on the Amazon One device. The company said shoppers can also ask for their information to be deleted at any time. A Whole Foods store in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle started using the technology on Wednesday. Seven additional Whole Foods locations in the area will have it installed in the coming months. Amazon declined to say if or when other locations might get it. There are about 500 Whole Foods stores across the country. (AP)

The head of the U.N. food agency warned after a visit to Yemen that his underfunded organization may be forced to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations in a desperate bid to stave off widespread famine in coming months, describing conditions in the war-stricken nation as “hell.” The World Food Program needs at least $815 million in Yemen aid over the next six months, but has only $300 million, the agency’s executive director, David Beasley, told The Associated Press in an interview. He said the agency would need another $1.9 billion to meet targets for the year. Beasley visited Yemen earlier this week, including the capital of Sanaa which is under the control of Iran-backed Houthi rebels. He said that at a child malnutrition ward in a Sanaa hospital he saw children wasting away from lack of food. Many, he said, were on the brink of death from entirely preventable and treatable causes, and they were the lucky ones who were receiving medical care. He said the world needs to wake up to how bad things have gotten in Yemen, particularly for the country’s youngest, some of whom he had seen in hospital beds in the Sanaa hospital. “In a children’s wing or ward of a hospital, you know you normally hear crying, and laughter. There’s no crying, there’s no laughter, there’s dead silence,” he said late Tuesday, speaking to the AP by video conference from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he had just landed from Yemen. “I went from room to room, and literally, children that in any other place in the world would be fine, they’d might get a little sick but they’d get recovered, but not here.” “This is hell,” he said. “It’s the worst place on earth. And it’s entirely man-made.” The U.N. has warned that 16 million people in Yemen — or about half the population — could face serious food insecurity. Tens of thousands of people already live in famine-like conditions, in what aid organizations have called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Some 400,000 children are in need of immediate assistance to save their lives from deadly malnutrition. Worsening fuel shortages could throw millions more into deep poverty. Since the outbreak of Yemen’s civil war six years ago, U.N.-led aid efforts have been chronically underfunded. This year’s global fundraising drive came up short as well — more so than in previous years — because aid dollars have been shrinking as a fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. A pledging conference last month raised a little more than half from the international community of what was needed to continue food aid services for the next year. Yemen, already the Arab world’s poorest country, has been caught in a grinding war since 2014 when the Houthis descended from their northern enclave and took over Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee. In the spring of 2015, a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition began a destructive air campaign to dislodge the Houthis while imposing a land, sea and air embargo on Yemen. Throughout the conflict, humanitarian agencies have faced obstacles in getting aid to those who need it most, particularly in Houthi-controlled territories; obstruction, distrust and fighting have played a role. Beasley said his organization has made gains on these fronts particularly in access and accountability with

Dubai’s airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, can already feel surreal, with its cavernous duty-free stores, artificial palm trees, gleaming terminals, water cascades and near-Arctic levels of air conditioning. Now, the key east-west transit hub is rolling out another addition from the realm of science fiction — an iris-scanner that verifies one’s identity and eliminates the need for any human interaction when entering or leaving the country. It’s the latest artificial intelligence program the United Arab Emirates has launched amid the surging coronavirus pandemic, contact-less technology the government promotes as helping to stem the spread of the virus. But the efforts also have renewed questions about mass surveillance in the federation of seven sheikhdoms, which experts believe has among the highest per capita concentrations of surveillance cameras in the world. Dubai’s airport started offering the program to all passengers last month. On Sunday, travelers stepped up to an iris scanner after checking in, gave it a good look and breezed through passport control within seconds. Gone were the days of paper tickets or unwieldy phone apps. In recent years, airports across the world have accelerated their use of timesaving facial recognition technology to move passengers to their flights. But Dubai’s iris scan improves on the more commonplace automated gates seen elsewhere, authorities said, connecting the iris data to the country’s facial recognition databases so the passenger needs no identifying documents or boarding pass. The unusual partnership between long-haul carrier Emirates, owned by a Dubai sovereign wealth fund, and the Dubai immigration office integrates the data and carries travelers from check-in to boarding in one fell swoop, they added. “The future is coming,” said Major Gen. Obaid Mehayer Bin Suroor, deputy director of the General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs. “Now, all the procedures have become ‘smart,’ around five to six seconds.” But like all facial recognition technology, the program adds to fears of vanishing privacy in the country, which has faced international criticism for targeting journalists and human rights activists. According to Emirates’ biometric privacy statement, the airline links passengers’ faces with other personally identifying data, including passport and flight information, retaining it for “as long as it is reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.” The agreement offered few details about how the data will be used and stored, beyond saying that while the company didn’t make copies of passengers’ faces, other personal data “can be processed in other Emirates’ systems.” Bin Suroor stressed that Dubai’s immigration office “completely protects” passengers’ personal data so that “no third party can see it.” But without more information about how data will be used or stored, biometric technology raises the possibility of misuse, experts say. “Any kind of surveillance technology raises red flags, regardless of what kind of country it’s in,” said Jonathan Frankle, a doctoral student in artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ”But in a democratic country, if the surveillance technology is used transparently, at least there’s an opportunity to have a public conversation about it.” Iris scans, requiring people to stare into a camera as though they’re offering a fingerprint, have become more widespread worldwide in recent years as questions have arisen over the accuracy of facial recognition technology. Iris biometrics are considered more reliable than surveillance cameras that scan people’s faces

A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users. U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illlinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who submitted claims will be affected. Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation. “It will put at least $345 into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” he wrote, calling it “a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy.” Jay Edelson, a Chicago attorney who filed the lawsuit, told the Chicago Tribune that the checks could be in the mail within two months unless the ruling is appealed. “We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” Facebook, which is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement. The lawsuit accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois privacy law by failing to get consent before using facial-recognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users to create and store faces digitally. The state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act allowed consumers to sue companies that didn’t get permission before harvesting data such as faces and fingerprints. The case eventually wound up as a class-action lawsuit in California. Facebook has since changed its photo-tagging system. (AP)

The U.N. special investigator on religious freedom urged countries to repeal laws undermining the right of minorities to worship and hold beliefs, pointing as examples to China’s detention of Uighurs, 21 countries that criminalize apostasy, and sweeping surveillance of Christians in North Korea and Muslims in Thailand. Ahmed Shaheed warned that “the failure to eliminate discrimination, combined with political marginalization and nationalist attacks on identities, can propel trajectories of violence and even atrocity crimes.” He called on governments to “repeal all laws that undermine the exercise of the human rights to freedom of religion or belief,” adopt comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and act to empower minorities to claim all their rights to religion and beliefs. The former foreign minister of the Maldives said in a report to the General Assembly circulated Tuesday that data suggests the prevalence of laws, policies and government actions that restrict freedom of religion or belief “increased from 2007 to 2017.” Shaheed, who has been the special rapporteur for four years, said communications since 2015 illustrate that governments “employ a range of extralegal measures that violate freedom of religion or belief, which also serve to delegitimize and stigmatize certain religious or belief groups.” These measures include restricting the establishment of places of worship or forcing them to close, restricting the appointment of faith leaders and persecuting them, and restricting the celebration of holidays and ceremonies and the teaching of religion or beliefs, he said. Shaheed said as many as 21 countries criminalize apostasy, the renunciation of religion, “including 12 countries – Afghanistan, Brunei, the Islamic Republic of Iran Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen – in which apostasy is in principle punishable by death.” Shaheed also highlighted reports of the disproportionate use of terrorist offenses against “religious or belief minorities.” In almost every region of the world, “religious minorities appear to be at particular risk of being designated `terrorist groups’ and of having members arrested under `extremism’ or `illegal activity’ charges,” he said. In Tajikistan, Shaheed said, “peaceful religious actors, mostly Muslims, have been detained under the `Fight against Extremism’ law for engaging in activities such as promoting religious education or distributing religious literature.” In Moldova, he said, the emblems of the Falun Gong spiritual movement are included in the state registry of “Extremist Materials.” And a Nigerian court ruled in 2019 that activities by Shiite Muslims amounted to “acts of terrorism and illegality” and ordered the government to ban their association, he said. The special rapporteur said numerous state authorities have arrested, detained, and sometimes held incommunicado and sentenced members of religious minorities on undefined changes such as intent to “disturb political, economic or social structures”, to “disrupt state sovereignty” or to “overthrow the government”. “China has sought to justify its coercive detention of over a million Muslim Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in state-run `reeducation’ camps as part of `de-extremism regulations,’” Shaheed said. He said “behavioral indicators of religious extremism” that warrant detention under such rules “include public displays of Islam and Uighur culture, such as young men wearing beards, women wearing face veils and persons owning goods with a star and crescent.” Shaheed said the “counter-extremism” campaign against the Uighurs “is illustrative of broader ill-treatment by China of minority religion or belief communities

Amazon has introduced new palm recognition technology in a pair of Seattle stores and sees a broader potential audience in stadiums, offices and elsewhere. Customers at the stores near Amazon’s campus in Washington can flash a palm for entry and to buy goods. The company chose palm recognition, according to Dilip Kumar, vice president of Physical Retail & Technology, because it’s more private than other biometric technology, and a person would be required to purposefully flash a palm at the Amazon One device to engage. “And it’s contactless, which we think customers will appreciate, especially in current times,” Kumar wrote in a blog post Tuesday. The company expects to roll out Amazon One as an option in other Amazon stores in the coming months, which could mean Whole Foods Market grocery stores. But Amazon believes the technology is applicable elsewhere. “In most retail environments, Amazon One could become an alternate payment or loyalty card option with a device at the checkout counter next to a traditional point of sale system,” Kumar wrote. “Or, for entering a location like a stadium or badging into work, Amazon One could be part of an existing entry point to make accessing the location quicker and easier.” People can sign up for an Amazon One account with a mobile phone number and credit card. An Amazon account isn’t necessary. (AP)

The United States began withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Tuesday, taking a step forward on its peace deal with the Taliban while also praising Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s promise to start releasing Taliban prisoners after he had delayed for over a week. The U.S.-Taliban deal signed Feb. 29 was touted as Washington’s effort to end 18 years of war in Afghanistan. The next crucial step was to be intra-Afghan talks in which all factions including the Taliban would negotiate a road map for their country’s future. But Ghani and his main political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, were each sworn in as president in separate ceremonies Monday. Abdallah and the elections complaints commission had charged fraud in last year’s vote. The dueling inaugurations have thrown plans for talks with the Taliban into chaos, although Ghani said Tuesday that he’d start putting together a negotiating team. The disarray on the Afghan government side is indicative of the uphill task facing Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad as he tries to get Afghanistan’s bickering leadership to come together. In an early Tuesday tweet, Khalilzad said he hoped the two leaders can “come to an agreement on an inclusive and broadly accepted government. We will continue to assist.” U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan Sonny Leggett said in a statement Tuesday the military had begun its “conditions-based reduction of forces to 8,600 over 135 days.” Currently the U.S. has about 13,000 soldiers in Afghanistan — 8,000 of whom are involved in training and advising Afghanistan’s National Security Forces, while about 5,000 are involved in anti-terror operations and militarily supporting the Afghan army when they are requested. Ghani had been dragging his feet on releasing some 5,000 Taliban prisoners, something agreed to in the U.S.-Taliban deal. Ghani promised Monday to announce a decree to free the prisoners after the U.S. and a number of foreign dignitaries appeared to back his claim to the presidency by sending their representatives to his inauguration. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a statement Monday saying, “We also welcome President Ghani’s announcement that he will issue a decree March 10 on Taliban prisoner release.” Taliban officials said late Monday that a flurry of biometric identifications were being conducted on Taliban prisoners, hinting at a mass release, according to prisoners currently in lockup. The Taliban officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media. Sohail Shaheen the Taliban’s spokesman in Doha where the insurgent group maintains an office, tweeted Tuesday the names of the 5,000 prisoners are with an “American delegation and the list cannot be manipulated,” without elaborating. In his tweet, Shaheen said any prisoners handed over will be verified before being accepted. The Associated Press contacted a Taliban prisoner in Afghanistan’s Pul-e-Charkhi Jail on the outskirts of Kabul who said four Taliban had been released Monday and another three Tuesday. The seven had completed their sentence, said Maulvi Niaz Mohammad in a telephone interview. They were not part of the 5,000 on the Taliban prisoner list, he said. Mohammad, who had also been interviewed by The AP in the prison in December, is in telephone contact with the Taliban’s Prisoners Commission, which is headed by Maulvi Nooruddin Turani, a former Taliban justice minister and a violent enforcer of the Taliban’s strict code

The White House is considering dramatically expanding its much-litigated travel ban to additional countries amid a renewed election-year focus on immigration by President Donald Trump, according to six people familiar with the deliberations. A document outlining the plans — timed to coincide with the third anniversary of Trump’s January 2017 executive order — has been circulating the White House. But the countries that would be affected if it moves forward are blacked out, according to two of the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the measure has yet to be finalized. It’s unclear exactly how many countries would be included in the expansion if it proceeds, but two of the people said that seven countries — a majority of them Muslim — would be added to the list. The most recent iteration of the ban includes restrictions on five majority-Muslim nations: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as Venezuela and North Korea. A different person said the expansion could include several countries that were covered in the first iteration of Trump’s ban, but later removed amid rounds of contentious litigation. Iraq, Sudan and Chad, for instance, had originally been affected by the order, which the Supreme Court upheld in a 5-4 vote after the administration released a watered-down version intended to withstand legal scrutiny. Trump, who had floated a banning all Muslims from entering the country during his 2016 campaign, criticized his Justice Department for the changes, tweeting that DOJ “should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” The countries on the proposed expansion list include allies that fall short on certain security measures. The additional restrictions were proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials following a review of security protocols and “identity management” for about 200 countries, according to the person. White House House spokesman Hogan Gidley declined to confirm the plan, but praised the travel ban for making the country safer. “The Travel Ban has been very successful in protecting our Country and raising the security baseline around the world,” he said in a statement. “While there are no new announcements at this time, common-sense and national security both dictate that if a country wants to fully participate in U.S. immigration programs, they should also comply with all security and counter-terrorism measures — because we do not want to import terrorism or any other national security threat into the United States.” Several of the people said they expected the announcement to be timed to coincide with the third anniversary of Trump’s first, explosive travel ban, which was announced without warning on Jan. 27, 2017 — days after Trump took office. That order sparked an uproar, with massive protests across the nation and chaos at airports where passengers were detained. The current ban suspends immigrant and non-immigrant visas to applicants from the affected countries, but it allows exceptions, including for students and those who have established “significant contacts” in the U.S.. And it represents a significant softening from Trump’s initial order, which had suspended travel from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days, blocked refugee admissions for 120 days and suspended travel from Syria. That order was immediately blocked by the courts, prompting a months-long effort by

The Pentagon on Tuesday ordered a broad review of vetting procedures for international students who participate in training on U.S. military installations and demanded the process be strengthened, in direct reaction to last week’s deadly shooting at a Pensacola Navy base by a Saudi aviation student. The memo signed by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist also suspends flight and other operational training for all Saudi Arabian students in U.S. military programs. It follows a decision by the U.S. Navy to halt flight training for more than 300 Saudi Arabian students at the Pensacola Naval Air Station and two other bases in Florida. The FBI confirmed Tuesday that the 21-year-old Saudi Air Force officer who killed three U.S. sailors and injured eight other people at the Pensacola base on Friday legally bought the 9mm Glock pistol he used. Investigators are digging into whether 2nd Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani acted alone, amid reports he hosted a party earlier last week where he and others watched videos of mass shootings. The incident has raised questions about how well international military students are screened before they attend training at American bases. Norquist’s memo says the review of the vetting must be completed in 10 days, and the flight restrictions will continue throughout the review and until they are lifted by senior leaders. ″Äs we reaffirm our commitment to these critical military partnerships, so must we assess the efficacy of our security procedures in light of the tragic loss of life on December 6,” the memo says. “We will make every effort to ensure the safety of all personnel and their families on U.S. military installations.” U.S. officials said the flight restrictions were not triggered because there are indications of any broader problems or conspiracy fears related to Saudi students or the shooting. They said it was more because the shooting suggested some possible vetting problems associated with Saudi Arabia that will be reviewed. Norquist in the memo directed the defense undersecretary for intelligence to “take immediate steps to strengthen personnel vetting” for international students and to review “policies and procedures for screening foreign students and granting access to our bases.” He said the U.S. is working closely with Saudi officials in the response to the shooting. The Pentagon has said that about 850 Saudi students are currently in U.S. military training programs. U.S. officials told reporters on Tuesday that they aren’t sure how many of those would see some type of flight or other restriction, but many will. Overall there are about 5,000 international students in U.S. programs, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details about the review and the memo. Currently international military students go through screening by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. mainly runs background and biometric checks on the students to determine if they are security risks. The Navy’s more limited flight training restriction for Saudi students was ordered Monday night, according to Commander Clay Doss, a Navy spokesman. He said said classroom training is starting again this week, and flight training for other U.S. and international students will resume. The Navy’s flight restriction affected 140 students at Pensacola Naval Air Station, where the shooting occurred, and 35 at nearby Whiting Field. Another 128 students at Naval Air Station Mayport, on

Amazon has considered adding facial recognition technology to its Ring doorbell cameras, according to a letter to a U.S. senator defending its video-sharing partnerships with police. The company told Sen. Ed Markey that facial recognition is a “contemplated, but unreleased feature” of its home security cameras but that there are no plans to coordinate that feature with its law enforcement partnerships. Markey wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in September raising privacy and civil liberty concerns about Ring’s video-sharing agreements with police departments across the country. The company encourages police to tap into Ring’s Neighbors app, a forum for residents to share videos of suspicious activity captured by their home security cameras. The Massachusetts Democrat also expressed alarm that Ring may be pursuing face-scanning technology after a patent application showed the company is exploring a system that could flag certain people as suspicious and automatically alert police. Markey released Amazon’s responses Tuesday. Amazon’s initial response to Markey said Ring doesn’t currently offer facial recognition. Then Markey sent another letter to Bezos asking why it’s mentioned in Ring’s privacy policy. In a Nov. 1 follow-up, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, said that the company frequently innovates based on customer demand and that facial recognition is an increasingly common feature in cameras made by competitors such as Google’s Nest division. “If our customers want these features in Ring security cameras, we will only release these features with thoughtful design including privacy, security, and user control,” Huseman wrote. Markey’s questions about facial recognition were part of broader concerns that some lawmakers and civil liberties advocates have about Ring and its police partnerships. Amazon sought to address those concerns in its letters to Markey, emphasizing that camera owners have a choice about whether to share videos. The company noted that police aren’t allowed to seek recordings that are longer than 12 hours in duration or that cover a geographical area that is too specific or broad. But Amazon also said it doesn’t require law enforcement to delete a user’s video footage after a certain period. Nor would it entertain Markey’s request that it commit to never selling users’ biometric information, saying only that it doesn’t do so now. Markey said Tuesday that Amazon is not doing enough to ensure that its products don’t run afoul of civil liberties. “Connected doorbells are well on their way to becoming a mainstay of American households, and the lack of privacy and civil rights protections for innocent residents is nothing short of chilling,” he said in a statement. “If you’re an adult walking your dog or a child playing on the sidewalk, you shouldn’t have to worry that Ring’s products are amassing footage of you and that law enforcement may hold that footage indefinitely or share that footage with any third parties,” he added. More than 600 police departments have signed up to Ring’s network since last year and many say it is becoming a useful crime-fighting tool. Among them is the police chief of Markey’s hometown of Malden, Massachusetts. Chief Kevin Molis said he is Markey’s neighbor and has known him since the 1970s but disagrees with him about Ring. “We consider it a valuable tool for public safety,” Molis said in an interview. “Is it a bad thing that private citizens, in order

The Trump administration is planning to expand the collection of DNA from migrants who cross U.S. borders, and to include the information in a massive criminal database operated by the FBI. The effort is separate from and much broader than the rapid DNA testing done on families at the U.S.-Mexico border to help detect adults falsely posing as parents. Not much else is known yet about the increased testing, including its purpose and whether it would apply to children crossing alone or to asylum seekers. Two senior Homeland Security officials, speaking Wednesday to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing effort, said the Department of Justice was crafting new regulations and details were being discussed in a working group, but it’s not known when it would be implemented. The collection comes after a huge increase in the number of people crossing the border, mostly Central American families. Officials have since said the numbers went down following crackdowns, changes on asylum and agreements with Central American countries, but border officers and agents have voiced concern over the potential for criminals crossing while resources were stretched. The practice would allow the government to amass a trove of biometric data on migrants, raising major privacy concerns and questions on whether such data should be compelled even when a person is not suspected of a crime other than crossing the border illegally. “It’s not surprising, given this administration’s fixation on villainizing folks at the border, but it reaches beyond them,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Vera Eidelman. DNA also contains identifying information on their families, too. Eidelman said it changes the purpose of DNA collection from one of criminal investigation to population surveillance. A top Border Patrol official recently warned that expanding DNA collection at the border could hurt the orderly processing of migrants. During a deposition in a case involving families separated at the border, Brian Hastings, chief of the Border Patrol’s law enforcement directorate, was asked by a judge whether DNA would be a good tool for identifying families. “Even once such policies and procedures were put in place, Border Patrol Agents are not currently trained on DNA collection measures, health and safety precautions, or the appropriate handling of DNA samples for processing,” he said. DNA collection is non-invasive, and done mostly through a cheek swab to collect saliva, or piece of hair, but proper collection and sample storing require training. It’s not clear how many officers will be trained in collection. Right now, migrants who cross the border illegally are fingerprinted, and those fingerprints are sent to federal databases accessible by state and local law enforcement agencies. DNA can be taken if a person has been arrested on federal charges _ and crossing the border between ports of entry is considered a federal crime. Law enforcement agencies can submit samples to the FBI from suspects who are arrested or convicted of state or federal crimes and non-U.S. citizens who are being detained by the government. The FBI’s national DNA index contained over 17 million profiles from arrestees and other offenders, as of August. Some police departments collect samples from people who are never arrested or convicted of crimes, without a warrant, though the person is supposed to voluntarily provide a sample in those cases and not be coerced

Your smartphone is your confidante, your hand-held connection to the world — and one of your biggest vulnerabilities. Scammers can take advantage of day-to-day tasks that seem innocuous, like checking a bank balance or charging a phone at a public USB port, to exploit personal information for their profit. To keep that data safe, start by understanding the threats you face. Your phone has three main areas of vulnerability: its hardware, its software and your phone number. Each carries a risk, and there are steps you can take to mitigate them. HARDWARE VULNERABILITY A four-digit passcode alone isn’t enough to secure your phone’s hardware from intruders. One weakness comes from the charging port. Think twice before plugging into a public USB jack for a quick charge at a cafe or airport. “Any time you’re using a mobile port, you can be vulnerable to viruses or malware if you’re sharing it with other people who are plugging in their devices,” says Lisa Schifferle, ID theft program manager at the Federal Trade Commission. Using a public charging port at an airport is like “finding a toothbrush on the side of the road and deciding to stick it in your mouth” Caleb Barlow, vice president of X-Force Threat Intelligence at IBM Security, recently told Forbes . Hackers can modify these ports to install malevolent software, aka malware, on your phone. Once installed, it can transfer your phone’s data to hackers. The hacked USB ports can also directly suck up your phone’s information. To avoid the risk, use your USB cord with your own charging block that can plug into a standard electrical outlet, or use an external battery pack. For daily security, go beyond the four-digit passcode if possible, says Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at the cybersecurity company McAfee. “Passcodes aren’t as effective as biometrics, like fingerprint readers or facial recognition software, because people can do shoulder surfing to see your passcode and get into your phone” if they steal it. SOFTWARE AND NETWORK RISKS Scammers can target your personal information using unsecured wireless networks and software vulnerabilities. NETWORK RISKS: Be wary of public Wi-Fi networks. “We advise against using public Wi-Fi, but if you’re going to use it, avoid logging in to sensitive accounts,” says Allen Spence, director of product leadership at IDShield, an identity theft protection company. To protect yourself from inadvertently using insecure Wi-Fi networks, adjust your phone settings to avoid auto-connecting to Wi-Fi. SOFTWARE: Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in phone software. Schifferle of the FTC suggests consumers routinely check for and download software updates for their phones, because updates often include security patches. PHONE NUMBER VULNERABILITIES There are two common ways that scammers target your phone number: robocall scams and phone number theft. ROBOCALLS: U.S. consumers fielded nearly 48 billion robocalls in 2018, according to an estimate from robocall blocking service YouMail. That was a 57% increase from 2017. A common scam comes from supposed representatives of the Social Security Administration requesting you give your personal information or your benefits will be cut. If you get a call from a number you don’t recognize, don’t answer. That’s the best way to ensure you don’t get caught up in a phone scam. And know that government agencies like Social Security and the IRS won’t call you out of

The limpet mines used to attack a Japanese-owned oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz last week bore “a striking resemblance” to similar mines displayed by Iran, a U.S. Navy explosives expert said Wednesday, stopping short of directly blaming Tehran for the assault. Iran has denied being involved in the attack last Thursday that hit the Japanese tanker Kokuka Courageous and also the Norwegian-owned Front Altair. The comments by Cmdr. Sean Kido came as the Navy showed reporters pieces of debris and a magnet they say Iran’s Revolutionary Guard left behind when they spirited away an unexploded limpet mine after the June 13 attack in the Gulf of Oman. Iran has also not acknowledged taking the mine. Kido also stressed that the damage done to the Kokuka Courageous was “not consistent with an external flying object hitting the ship,” despite the ship’s owner blaming “flying objects” for the damage in the attack. Meanwhile, a rocket hit an oil-drilling site in Iraq’s southern Basra province early on Wednesday, striking inside a compound housing energy giant Exxon Mobil and other foreign oil companies and wounding three local workers, one seriously, Iraqi officials said. The attack on the oil tankers came against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran that take root in President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers a year ago. Iran recently has quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium and threatened to boost its enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels, trying to pressure Europe for new terms to the 2015 deal. In recent weeks, the U.S. has sped an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and deployed additional troops to the tens of thousands already here. Mysterious attacks also have targeted oil tankers as Iranian-allied Houthi rebels launched bomb-laden drones into Saudi Arabia. All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict, some 40 years after Tehran’s Islamic Revolution. The U.S. Navy briefed foreign journalists on Wednesday at a 5th Fleet base near Fujairah, an Emirati port city some 210 kilometers (130 miles) northeast of the capital, Abu Dhabi. There, they showed journalists debris recovered from the Kokuka Courageous, which they described as including aluminum and composite metals. They also showed a magnet they described as being left behind by the Revolutionary Guard — one of six apparently used to stick the unexploded limpet mine to the ship’s hull. Sailors said it took two of them and a crowbar to pry it off the ship. Those pieces put together have U.S. sailors suspecting the limpet mine came from Iran. They showed a picture previously shared among weapons experts of a limpet mine on display in Iran, which they said resembled the one they suspected was used on the ship. That picture showed a conical mine, some 42 kilograms (90 pounds) in weight, on display with a sign next to it identifying it as being produced by a research company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. “The limpet mine that was used does bear a striking resemblance to that which has been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades,” Kido said. “There are distinguishing features.” Kido declined to elaborate. Iran’s mission to the U.N. declined to comment, referring reporters instead to remarks

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday that photos of travelers and license plates collected at the nation’s borders have been exposed in a malicious cyberattack in what a leading congressman called a “major privacy breach.” The federal agency did not name the subcontractor whose computer network was hacked but the announcement followed news that a Tennessee-based company that bills itself as the sole provider of stationary license plate readers at U.S. borders had been compromised. A congressional staffer whose office was notified by the agency said the breach affected fewer than 100,000 people. The staffer was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and spoke on condition that the staffer not be further identified. It was not clear how many of those affected were U.S. citizens. The U.K. computer security website The Register, which said the hacker responsible alerted it to the breach in late May, identified the company as Perceptics. A spokesman for the company did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment. CBP said none of the data had surfaced on the internet or Dark Web. The Register said the hacker provided it with a list of files exfiltrated from the Perceptics corporate network and said a company spokesperson had confirmed the hack. “Initial information indicates that the subcontractor violated mandatory security and privacy protocols outlined in their contract,” CBP said in a statement. The agency said it learned of the data breach May 31. It said the subcontractor had transferred copies of the images to its company network in violation of government policies and without the agency’s authorization. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, noted with alarm that this is the “second major privacy breach at DHS this year.” “We must ensure we are not expanding the use of biometrics at the expense of the privacy of the American public,” he said in a statement. In March, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general announced that another of its subdivisions, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had wrongly released to a contractor the personal information of 2.3 million survivors of devastating 2017 hurricanes and wildfires, potentially exposing those affected to identity fraud and theft. Thompson said he planned hearings next month on the department’s use of biometric information, which is on the rise, affects millions and is occurring with little congressional oversight. Perceptics, of Farragut, Tennessee, bills itself as the sole provider of license-plate readers “for passenger vehicle primary inspection lanes at all land border ports of entry in the United States, Canada and at the most critical lanes in Mexico.” It says it has secured “thousands of border checkpoints” and says its products automate over 200 hundred million vehicle inspections annually. Perceptic technology is also used in electronic toll collection and roadway monitoring. Civil liberties groups including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have expressed alarm at the general lack of regulation of license plate-reading cameras and burgeoning databases maintained by government agencies including CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI. The critics say the technology has great potential to be abused for surveillance and location-tracking and there are limited restrictions on the dissemination of biometric data, including fingerprints and face scans. It is shared with state and local law enforcement and

Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: “gait recognition” software that uses people’s body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras. Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, “gait recognition” is part of a push across China to develop artificial-intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concern about how far the technology will go. Huang Yongzhen, the CEO of Watrix, said that its system can identify people from up to 50 meters (165 feet) away, even with their back turned or face covered. This can fill a gap in facial recognition, which needs close-up, high-resolution images of a person’s face to work. “You don’t need people’s cooperation for us to be able to recognize their identity,” Huang said in an interview in his Beijing office. “Gait analysis can’t be fooled by simply limping, walking with splayed feet or hunching over, because we’re analyzing all the features of an entire body.” Watrix announced last month that it had raised 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) to accelerate the development and sale of its gait recognition technology, according to Chinese media reports. Chinese police are using facial recognition to identify people in crowds and nab jaywalkers, and are developing an integrated national system of surveillance camera data. Not everyone is comfortable with gait recognition’s use. Security officials in China’s far-western province of Xinjiang, a region whose Muslim population is already subject to intense surveillance and control, have expressed interest in the software. Shi Shusi, a Chinese columnist and commentator, says it’s unsurprising that the technology is catching on in China faster than the rest of the world because of Beijing’s emphasis on social control. “Using biometric recognition to maintain social stability and manage society is an unstoppable trend,” he said. “It’s great business.” The technology isn’t new. Scientists in Japan, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency have been researching gait recognition for over a decade, trying different ways to overcome skepticism that people could be recognized by the way they walk. Professors from Osaka University have worked with Japan’s National Police Agency to use gait recognition software on a pilot basis since 2013. But few have tried to commercialize gait recognition. Israel-based FST Biometrics shut down earlier this year amid company infighting after encountering technical difficulties with its products, according to former advisory board member Gabriel Tal. “It’s more complex than other biometrics, computationally,” said Mark Nixon, a leading expert on gait recognition at the University of Southampton in Britain. “It takes bigger computers to do gait because you need a sequence of images rather than a single image.” Watrix’s software extracts a person’s silhouette from video and analyzes the silhouette’s movement to create a model of the way the person walks. It isn’t capable of identifying people in real-time yet. Users must upload video into the program, which takes about 10 minutes to search through an hour of video. It doesn’t require special cameras — the software can use footage from surveillance cameras to analyze gait. Huang, a former researcher, said he left academia to co-found Watrix in 2016 after seeing how promising the technology had become. The company was incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Though the software isn’t as good

When you’re at the checkout line this holiday season, you could juggle your bags and dig into your purse or billfold for your credit or debit card. Or you could use that phone you’re already clutching, or that new smartwatch strapped to your wrist. Many stores now accept mobile wallets, a technology that lets customers make payments via smartphone or watch. Mobile wallets come in different digital forms. There are device specific platforms, such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, which are compatible with Apple and Samsung devices, respectively. Google Pay works with multiple platforms, including Android devices. There are also merchant apps, such as those from Starbucks and Walmart, that have mobile wallet capabilities but can be used only at specific stores. About one-third of smartphone owners who access mobile wallets use those downloaded from specific retailers, says Karen Augustine, a manager of primary data services at Mercator Advisory Group, a payments and consulting research firm. Still, many consumers are sticking with their cards due to concerns about safety or the familiarity of good old plastic. But if you’re ready to give mobile wallets a try, here’s what you need to know to get started. WHERE MOBILE WALLETS WORK BEST. Shoppers who don’t want to carry physical wallets and cards — or who are scared of losing a card — may find mobile wallets helpful. Many early adopters have been young adults who wear smartwatches or carry phones nearly everywhere and are willing to try new forms of payment, Augustine says. Those who want an easier way to track store rewards might also benefit from mobile wallets. A mobile wallet can keep track of rewards program information, making it easier to get credit for qualifying purchases. Merchants and credit card issuers might also offer promotional bonus rewards for mobile wallet transactions. HOW MOBILE WALLETS WORK. To start, you’ll need to load your bank information onto your preferred mobile wallet device. That generally means entering a credit card or debit card number and security code, and accepting the terms and conditions in the mobile app. When it’s time to make a payment, show your device at the checkout line. You typically complete the transaction by placing the device near the terminal and scanning a barcode or using a biometric reader that may, for example, scan your fingerprint to sign off on the purchase. MOBILE WALLET ADOPTION HAS STALLED. Despite the ease of using mobile wallets, less than half of all smartphone owners use the technology, and adoption has not grown over the past three years, according to Augustine. One problem may be that some don’t consider it to be much more convenient than using a regular credit or debit card, she says. Concerns about safeguards are another issue. Many consumers are more worried about the security of mobile wallet payments than traditional card payments, says Ryan Grogman, senior vice president and practice lead at Boston Retail Partners, a retail consulting company. But mobile wallets do have some security advantages over regular credit and debit cards. HOW BANK INFORMATION IS KEPT SECURE. Mobile wallets rely on near-field communication, or NFC, which uses a chip in the mobile device to wirelessly communicate with the merchant’s payment terminal. The devices communicate using special short-term codes to verify customers’ identities and don’t reveal actual

It’s now possible to check in automatically at Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport using facial recognition technology, part of an ambitious rollout of facial recognition systems in China that has raised privacy concerns as Beijing pushes to become a global leader in the field. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport unveiled self-service kiosks for flight and baggage check-in, security clearance and boarding powered by facial recognition technology, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Similar efforts are underway at airports in Beijing and Nanyang city, in central China’s Henan province. Many airports in China already use facial recognition to help speed security checks, but Shanghai’s system, which debuted Monday, is being billed as the first to be fully automated. “It is the first time in China to achieve self-service for the whole check-in process,” said Zhang Zheng, general manager of the ground services department for Spring Airlines, the first airline to adopt the system at Hongqiao airport. Currently, only Chinese identity card holders can use the technology. Spring Airlines said Tuesday that passengers had embraced automated check-in, with 87 percent of 5,017 people who took Spring flights on Monday using the self-service kiosks, which can cut down check-in times to less than a minute and a half. Across greater China, facial recognition is finding its way into daily life. Mainland police have used facial recognition systems to identify people of interest in crowds and nab jaywalkers, and are working to develop an integrated national system of surveillance camera data. Chinese media are filled with reports of ever-expanding applications: A KFC outlet in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, where it’s possible to pay using facial recognition technology; a school that uses facial recognition cameras to monitor students’ reactions in class; and hundreds of ATMs in Macau equipped with facial recognition devices to curb money laundering. But increased convenience may come at a cost in a country with few rules on how the government can use biometric data. “Authorities are using biometric and artificial intelligence to record and track people for social control purposes,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “We are concerned about the increasing integration and use of facial recognition technologies throughout the country because it provides more and more data points for the authorities to track people.” (AP)

An Iraqi man accused of killing for the Islamic State entered the U.S. as a refugee after claiming to be a victim of terrorism, in a case drawing attention amid the Trump administration’s criticism of the resettlement program’s vetting process. Omar Abdulsattar Ameen, 45, was arrested in California on Wednesday and will be extradited to Iraq under a treaty with that nation, U.S. officials said. He made his first appearance in federal court in Sacramento after his arrest at an apartment building in the state capital. Ameen left Iraq and fled in 2012 to Turkey, where he applied to be accepted as a refugee to the U.S., according to court documents. He was granted that status in June 2014. That same month, prosecutors say he returned to Iraq, where he killed a police officer in the town of Rawah after it fell to the Islamic State. Five months later, Ameen traveled to the United States to be resettled as a refugee. Ameen was arrested by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force based on a warrant issued in May by an Iraqi federal court in Baghdad. Ameen could face execution for the “organized killing by an armed group,” according to Iraqi documents filed in U.S. federal court. Benjamin Galloway, one of Ameen’s public defenders, said he had only 10 minutes to meet with his client prior to his initial court appearance, and attorneys hadn’t decided whether to contest that Ameen is the man wanted by Iraqi authorities. Ameen did not disclose his membership in two terrorist groups when he later applied for a green card in the United States, officials said. The Trump administration has sharply criticized the Obama-era resettlement program for not doing enough to keep out terrorists. The State Department said additional checks have since been implemented. “The U.S. government identified and implemented additional security screening procedures to enable departments and agencies to more thoroughly review refugee applicants to identify potential threats to public safety and national security, with additional vetting for certain nationals of certain high-risk countries,” the State Department said in a statement. Seamus Hughes, of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said most IS cases in the United States have involved U.S.-born citizens and that the case should be considered rare but illustrates holes in the system. “There was clearly a number of tripwires that didn’t go off in this vetting process,” he said. According to resettlement agencies in the United States, the U.S. vetting process is one of the world’s toughest that has allowed in 3 million refugees since 1975 with not one arrested for carrying out a lethal terror attack on U.S. soil. Most applicants spend at least three years being interviewed, undergoing biometric checks, medical exams, and filling out paperwork. Cases are screened by the Department of Defense, FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies. After they are resettled, refugees continue to undergo security checks in the United States for five years or more. The Trump administration added requirements, including longer background checks and additional screenings for females and males between 14 and 50 from certain countries, including Iraq. It also drastically reduced the annual ceiling of refugee arrivals to the U.S. from 110,000 to 45,000. Nayla Rush at the Center for Immigration Studies said nothing will make the program 100

A facial recognition system will be used across an Olympics for the first time as Tokyo organizers work to keep security tight and efficient at dozens of venues during the 2020 Games. The NeoFace technology developed by NEC Corp. will be customized to monitor every accredited person — including athletes, officials, staff and media — at more than 40 venues, games villages and media centers, Olympic and company officials said Tuesday. Local organizers said Tokyo will be the first Olympic host to introduce the face recognition technology at all venues. The system is expected to effectively eliminate entry with forged IDs, reduce congestion at accredited waiting lines and reduce athletes’ stress under hot weather. Tsuyoshi Iwashita, Tokyo 2020 executive director of security, said venues that are spread within and outside of the capital would be a big burden in achieving high levels of security. “By introducing the face recognition system, we hope to achieve high levels of safety, efficiency and smooth operation at security check points before entry,” he said, adding that the system would contribute to less stressful environment for athletes. Iwashita said a test last year showed gate checks using the facial recognition was more than twice the pace of the conventional system using X-ray with visual siting by security guards. The facial images of every accredited person for the Olympics and Paralympics will be collected after the approval process and stored in a database to be used to verify identities at accreditation check points. NEC says its biometric identification technology is used at airports and elsewhere in 70 countries, including Japan. (AP)

The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy activists are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to “easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone.” The tool, called Rekognition, is already being used by at least one agency — the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon — to check photographs of unidentified suspects against a database of mug shots from the county jail, which is a common use of such technology around the country. But privacy advocates have been concerned about expanding the use of facial recognition to body cameras worn by officers or safety and traffic cameras that monitor public areas, allowing police to identify and track people in real time. The tech giant’s entry into the market could vastly accelerate such developments, the privacy advocates fear, with potentially dire consequences for minorities who are already arrested at disproportionate rates, immigrants who may be in the country illegally or political protesters. “People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government,” the groups wrote in a letter to Amazon on Tuesday. “Facial recognition in American communities threatens this freedom.” Amazon released Rekognition in late 2016, and the sheriff’s office in Washington County, west of Portland, became one of its first law enforcement agency customers. A year later, deputies were using it about 20 times per day — for example, to identify burglary suspects in store surveillance footage. Last month, the agency adopted policies governing its use, noting that officers in the field can use real-time face recognition to identify suspects who are unwilling or unable to provide their own ID, or if someone’s life is in danger. “We are not mass-collecting. We are not putting a camera out on a street corner,” said Deputy Jeff Talbot, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. “We want our local community to be aware of what we’re doing, how we’re using it to solve crimes — what it is and, just as importantly, what it is not.” It cost the sheriff’s office just $400 to load 305,000 booking photos into the system and $6 per month in fees to continue the service, according to an email obtained by the ACLU under a public records request. Amazon Web Services did not answer emailed questions about how many law enforcement agencies are using Rekognition, but in a written statement the company said it requires all of its customers to comply with the law and to be responsible in the use of its products. The statement said some agencies have used the program to find abducted people, and amusement parks have used it to find lost children. British broadcaster Sky News used Rekognition to help viewers identify celebrities at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last weekend. Last year, the Orlando, Florida, Police Department announced it would begin a pilot program relying on Amazon’s technology to “use existing City resources to provide real-time detection and notification of persons-of-interest, further increasing public safety.” Orlando has a network of public safety cameras, and in a presentation posted to YouTube this month , Ranju Das, who leads Amazon Rekognition, said Amazon would receive feeds from the cameras, search them against photos of people

Mobile wallets can make paying by credit or debit card seamless: Tap your phone at checkout and you’re on your way. But mobile wallets are just the beginning. Payment networks and manufacturers are building payment functions into more devices — expanding your options as well as freeing up your hands. You could find yourself buying gas from the dashboard of your car, groceries from your refrigerator door or dinner by flashing a smile. And you won’t even need your phone with you to make purchases on the go. MORE DEVICES ADD PAYMENT CAPABILITY Payment options already available or on the horizon include: — Wearables. Connected “smart” accessories such as watches, bands and rings travel lighter than a phone. To use, the wearer holds a wrist or hand up to a contactless payment terminal. Visa tested these devices at the 2016 Rio Olympics to demonstrate possibilities, says Mark Jamison, global head of innovation and design at Visa. The market will determine, he says, if fashion designers want to “embed payments into a ring or any other device.” One company privately testing similar tech is Token, whose smart ring — which performs a variety of functions, from opening doors to paying for purchases — has a waiting list. In 2017, payment capabilities branched out from Apple and Android smartwatches to some Fitbit and Garmin fitness devices, meaning more people could leave their phone behind while working out. By the end of this year, Visa expects merchants to have tap-to-pay capability at 50 percent of U.S. locations where face-to-face transactions take place. — Virtual assistants. When voice payments are enabled on virtual assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home, you can multitask and take care of “errands” in the moment with verbal commands. CONNECTED DEVICES WILL BE THE NORM Consider the number of mobile applications with saved payment information on your mobile device. In the future, you could free up some data and save a little battery life by using other connected devices: — Cars. Visa and Mastercard are working with manufacturers to embed options in car models. Manufacturers are also testing ways to pay for gas, groceries, takeout, metered parking and other things from screens on vehicle dashboards. “It’s still early, but we are focused on bringing that to life this year, to have the ability for you, as the driver, to not just order from one type of merchant,” says Stephane Wyper, senior vice president of new commerce partnerships and commercialization at Mastercard. — Appliances. Appliances will get smarter in the future. A glimpse of what’s possible: Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerator, which lets you order groceries from the Groceries by Mastercard app; Whirlpool’s Smart Dishwasher, which, when synced with an Amazon account, can estimate when you’re low on detergent and order it automatically. — Your body. Going totally device-free could also become an option. Biometric payments make it possible to pay by voice, face, iris scan or fingerprint. It’s not a big stretch from the biometric authentication currently used by some phones or applications. “The technology itself has been around for a while, but consumers were skeptical of it,” Jamison says. They’ve since become accustomed to authenticating using a fingerprint via phone, and their preference has shifted from user ID and password to biometrics, he says. In January 2018, CaliBurger restaurants

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt’s concern with his safety came at a steep cost to taxpayers as his swollen security detail blew through overtime budgets and at times diverted officers away from investigating environmental crimes. Altogether, the agency spent millions of dollars for a 20-member full-time detail that is more than three times the size of his predecessor’s part-time security contingent. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox cited “unprecedented” threats against Pruitt and his family as justification for extraordinary security expenses such as first-class airfare to keep him separate from most passengers — a perk generally not available to federal employees. But Pruitt apparently did not consider that upgrade vital to his safety when taxpayers weren’t footing the bill for his ticket. An EPA official with direct knowledge of Pruitt’s security spending said the EPA chief flew coach on personal trips back to his home state of Oklahoma. The EPA official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. New details in Pruitt’s expansive spending for security and travel emerged from agency sources and documents reviewed by The Associated Press. They come as the embattled EPA leader fends off allegations of profligate spending and ethical missteps that have imperiled his job. President Donald Trump offered a full-throated defense of Pruitt in a tweet Saturday night, saying the EPA chief is “doing a great job” and downplaying the ethical questions swirling around Pruitt. He called the security spending “somewhat more” than Pruitt’s predecessor and said Pruitt had received death threats “because of his bold actions at EPA.” Shortly after arriving in Washington, Pruitt demoted the career staff member heading his security detail and replaced him with EPA Senior Special Agent Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, a former Secret Service agent who operates a private security company. The EPA official knowledgeable about Pruitt’s security spending says Perrotta oversaw a rapid expansion of the EPA chief’s security detail to accommodate guarding him day and night, even on family vacations and when Pruitt was home in Oklahoma. Perrotta also signed off on new procedures that let Pruitt fly first-class on commercial airliners, with the security chief typically sitting next to him with other security staff farther back in the plane. Pruitt’s premium status gave him and his security chief access to VIP airport lounges. The EPA official said there are legitimate concerns about Pruitt’s safety, given public opposition to his rollbacks of anti-pollution measures. But Pruitt’s ambitious domestic and international travel led to rapidly escalating costs, with the security detail racking up so much overtime that many hit annual salary caps of about $160,000. The demands of providing 24-hour coverage even meant taking some investigators away from field work, such as when Pruitt traveled to California for a family vacation. The EPA official said total security costs approached $3 million when pay is added to travel expenses. Wilcox said Pruitt has faced an unprecedented number of death threats against him and his family and “Americans should all agree that members of the President’s cabinet should be kept safe from these violent threats.” A nationwide search of state and federal court records by the AP found no case where anyone has been arrested or charged with threatening Pruitt. EPA’s press office did not respond Friday to provide details of any specific threats or arrests. Pruitt has said

With a handshake and a presidential kiss on the cheek, Hope Hicks bid farewell to the White House, the press-shy communications director taking a rare moment in the spotlight on her final day in Donald Trump’s administration. The Thursday exit of the president’s most trusted aide, coming one day after yet another Cabinet departure, highlights continuing uncertainty among Trump aides and White House staff about who might be the next to go. Hicks departed the administration on her own terms and was given a gracious goodbye by Trump outside the Oval Office in view of reporters. That stands in stark contrast to the White House treatment of David Shulkin, the Veterans Affairs secretary who was fired amid ethics questions and replaced by a White House physician who has no experience running a bureaucracy or working with veterans. As Trump allies defended the choice of Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, scrutiny quickly shifted to a number of other Cabinet members facing ethics questions and with strained relationships with the president, as well as a White House chief of staff who has found his influence diminished. Trump aides and outside advisers suggested that other changes weren’t imminent, but no one could say how long that would last. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” said deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters when asked on Air Force One if Trump now had his ideal Cabinet. White House officials are apprehensive about Hicks’ departure, given her unrivaled position in the president’s orbit. Despite her title as communications director, Hicks was more accurately described by White House officials as Trump’s right-hand-woman and media gatekeeper, providing needed doses of affirmation to the president and able to deliver bad news to him with few repercussions. The internal jockeying to replace her — if Trump even chooses to do so — has featured backstabbing and planted news stories that, in turn, bash the leading candidates: Mercedes Schlapp, the White House strategic communications director, and Tony Sayegh, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Treasury Department. Many close to the White House, however, expect senior adviser Kellyanne Conway or press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to assume the role, at least temporarily. Sanders has grown close to the president since taking over the press secretary’s job after the resignation of Sean Spicer last summer — and has been spending more time in the Oval Office lately. The job of communications director — which involves developing and executing the administration’s long-term messaging strategy — has never been a particularly important one to the president. Aides joke he is his own communications director, who upends carefully laid plans with a tweet or digression. Trump, never disciplined, has taken to freelancing more of late, as he moves to surround himself with aides less likely to try to rein him in. A speech outside Cleveland on Thursday meant to be about infrastructure instead felt like a campaign rally. And he has broken free of more of the restraints placed upon him by chief of staff John Kelly. Trump hired John Bolton as national security adviser last week over Kelly’s objections and didn’t include his chief of staff in the Oval Office meeting in which the job offer was extended. And Kelly, who frequently listens in on the president’s calls, was not on the

The Interior Department is spending nearly $139,000 to upgrade three sets of double doors in the office of Secretary Ryan Zinke. Zinke was not aware of the contract for the work prior to a request about it from The Associated Press, spokeswoman Heather Swift said. The project was planned by career facilities and security officials as part of the decade-long modernization of the historic building erected in 1936 a few blocks from the White House, she said. “The secretary was not aware of this contract but agrees that this is a lot of money for demo, install, materials and labor,” Swift said Thursday in an emailed statement. “Between regulations that require historic preservation and outdated government procurement rules, the costs for everything from pencils to printing to doors is astronomical. This is a perfect example of why the secretary believes we need to reform procurement processes.” The current door from a hallway to the secretary’s sixth-floor office does not lock, so a security upgrade is needed, Swift said. An order for the $138,670 job at the Interior Department was listed on an online government procurement database as being completed in November, amended with the note “Secretary’s Door” to explain what the payment was for. Swift said the dates on the online invoice are incorrect and that the doors have not yet been fixed. Design work on the project was approved last month and installation is expected this summer. Records show the Maryland contractor hired to do the work, Conquest Solutions LLC, has done several renovation projects at federal buildings. A man who answered the phone at the company Thursday hung up when a reporter asked about Zinke’s office. An Interior Department official familiar with the project said the work involves three sets of double doors in the secretary’s office, including two doors that open onto a corner balcony with a spectacular view of the Washington Monument and the National Mall. A third opens to a hallway that features painted portraits of previous Interior secretaries. The official asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the project, which has been planned for nearly two years. Zinke took office in March 2017. The current balcony doors leak “like a sieve” whenever it rains, forcing workers to mop the wooden floor in Zinke’s office, the Interior official said. The new balcony doors will be made of fiberglass specially made by Conquest Solutions and include glass transoms above the doors and fiberglass door frames, the official said. Zinke is among several Trump Cabinet officials recently under scrutiny for their spending. He spent $53,000 on three helicopter trips last year, including one that allowed him to go on a horseback ride with Vice President Mike Pence. “This opens the door to more troubling questions about how Zinke is wasting taxpayer money,” said Shripal Shah, a spokesperson for the Democratic group American Bridge, which first noted the contract. “The secretary must believe he was handed a blank check the day he was confirmed, but the American public won’t tolerate his reckless spending habits.” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September following media reports he spent at least $400,000 in taxpayer funds on private jets for himself and his staff. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott