- The new Motorola Defy 2 rugged phone is all about satellite messaging PhoneArena
- Motorola Defy 2 is an affordable Android smartphone that features two-way satellite communication XDA Developers
- Mobile space race intensifies: New devices with satellite connectivity unveiled Interesting Engineering
- Motorola brings $5-a-month satellite messaging to any phone with new hotspot Ars Technica
- $99 Motorola Defy Satellite Link enables 2-way satellite communications on smartphones through 3GPP NTN technology CNX Software
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Tag Archives: messaging
Wall Street to Pay $1.8 Billion in Fines Over Traders’ Use of Banned Messaging Apps
WASHINGTON—Eleven of the world’s largest banks and brokerages will collectively pay $1.8 billion in fines to resolve regulatory investigations over their employees’ use of messaging applications that broke record-keeping rules, regulators said Tuesday.
The fines, which many of the banks had already disclosed to shareholders, underscore the market regulators’ stern approach to civil enforcement. Fines of $200 million, which many of the banks will pay under the agreements, have typically been seen only in fraud cases or investigations that alleged harm to investors.
But the SEC, in particular, has during the Biden administration pushed for fines that are higher than precedents, saying it wants to levy fines that punish wrongdoing and effectively deter future potential harm. The SEC’s focus on record-keeping is likely to be extended next to money managers, who also have a duty to maintain written communications related to investment advice.
Last month, the SEC alleged that hedge-fund manager Deccan Value Investors LP and its chief investment officer failed to maintain messages sent over
Apple
iMessage and WhatsApp. In some cases, the chief investment officer directed an officer of the company to delete their text messages, the SEC said. The claims were included in a broader enforcement action, which Deccan settled without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the settlements announced Tuesday were likely to top $1 billion and would be announced before the end of September.
Eight of the largest entities, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, agreed to pay $125 million to the SEC and at least $75 million to the CFTC. Jefferies will pay a total of $80 million to the two market regulators, and
Nomura
NMR -1.20%
agreed to pay $100 million. Cantor agreed to pay $16 million.
The SEC said it found “pervasive off-channel communications.” In some cases, supervisors at the banks were aware of and even encouraged employees to use unauthorized messaging apps instead of communicating over company email or other approved platforms.
“Today’s actions—both in terms of the firms involved and the size of the penalties ordered—underscore the importance of recordkeeping requirements: they’re sacrosanct. If there are allegations of wrongdoing or misconduct, we must be able to examine a firm’s books and records to determine what happened,” said SEC Enforcement Director
Gurbir Grewal.
Bank of America, which faced the highest fine from the CFTC, had a “widespread and long-standing use of unapproved methods to engage in business-related communications,” according to the CFTC’s settlement order. One trader wrote in a 2020 message to a colleague: “We use WhatsApp all the time, but we delete convos regularly,” according to the CFTC.
One head of a trading desk at Bank of America told subordinates to delete messages from their personal devices and to communicate through the encrypted messaging app Signal, the CFTC said. The head of that trading desk resigned this year, although the bank was aware of his conduct in 2021, the CFTC said.
At Nomura, one trader deleted messages on his personal device in 2019 after being told the CFTC wanted them for an investigation, the agency said. The trader made false statements to the CFTC about his compliance with the records request, the regulator said.
Broker-dealers have to follow strict record-keeping rules intended to ensure regulators can access documents for oversight purposes. The firms settling with the SEC and CFTC admitted their employees’ conduct violated those regulations.
JPMorgan Chase
& Co.’s brokerage arm was the first to settle with the two market regulators over its failure to maintain required electronic records. JPMorgan paid $200 million last year and admitted some employees used WhatsApp and other messaging tools to do business, which also broke the bank’s own policies.
Regulators discovered that some JPMorgan communications, which should have been turned over for separate enforcement investigations, weren’t collected because they were sent on employees’ personal devices or apps that the bank didn’t supervise.
Write to Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Apple unveils iPhone 14 with emergency satellite messaging, Ultra Watch
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Sept 7 (Reuters) – Apple Inc (AAPL.O) introduced new iPhone 14 models capable of using satellites to send emergency messages and an adventure-focused Ultra Watch for sports like diving and triathlons.
The sports and outdoor-focused products will test whether Apple’s relatively affluent customer base will keep spending in the face of rising inflation.
Prices of the high-end iPhone 14s are the same as last year’s iPhone 13 models. But Apple dropped its cheapest option, the iPhone mini, meaning the cheapest model now costs $100 more than last year.
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The iPhone 14 will start at $799 and the iPhone Plus at $899 and be available for preorder starting Sept. 9. The iPhone Pro will cost $999 and the iPhone Pro Max $1,099 and be available Sept. 16.
Apple said its satellite SOS will work with emergency responders. It also said that in some situations, users will be able to use its FindMy app to share their location via satellite when they have no other connectivity.
Globalstar said in a filing that it will be the satellite operator for Apple’s emergency SOS service. Globalstar’s stock rose 16% on Wednesday after the announcement of the Apple deal. The stock had gained almost 70% from mid-June to Tuesday’s close, following speculation of working with Apple. read more
Other companies are working on similar functions. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said last month it is working with T-Mobile (TMUS.O) to use its Starlink satellites to connect phones directly to the internet.
Apple’s iPhone 14 Plus model will have a larger screen like Apple’s iPhone Pro models but an A15 processor chip like the previous iPhone 13.
The Cupertino, California-based company also showed a trio of new Apple Watches, including a new Watch Ultra model aimed at extreme sports and diving and designed to challenge sportswatch specialists such as Garmin (GRMN.BN) and Polar.
“Apple is competing for a consumer segment that already has high loyalty towards their existing products and vendors, and it will need to prove itself over time,” said Runar Bjorhovde, an analyst at Canalys.
The Ultra has a bigger battery to last through events like triathlons and better waterproofing and temperature resistance to operate in outdoor environments, as well as better GPS tracking for sports.
The new Watches include an upgraded budget model called the SE and a Series 8 Watch with crash detection and low-power mode for 36 hours of battery life.
The Series 8 with cellular will start at $499 and the SE will start at $299 with cellular. The Ultra, which includes cellular in its base model, will start at $799 and be available Sept. 23.
Apple said the new Series 8 watch has a temperature sensor that will work in conjunction with its previously released cycle tracking app to retroactively detect ovulation. The company emphasized the privacy approach of its cycle tracking. Privacy and reproductive health data has become a focus for tech companies in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.
Apple said it does not have the key to decrypt health data such as cycle tracking.
Apple also touted that its second-generation AirPods Pro will double the amount of noise cancellation over the original version.
But while accessories like the Apple Watch have driven incremental sales from Apple’s existing user base, the iPhone remains the bedrock of its business with 52.4% of sales in its most recent fiscal year.
Apple’s stock was up 0.8% after the presentation, lagging the S&P 500’s gain of 1.8% for the session.
Apple did not give any hints or a preview of its mixed-reality headset on Wednesday. The device is expected to have cameras that pass-through view of the outside world to the wearer while overlaying digital objects on the physical world. Analysts do not expect the device to go on sale until next year at the earliest.
A rival headset called Project Cambria is in the works from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O), which is spending billions of dollars on the project.
(This story corrects first paragraph to messages, not calls)
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Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
New Google site begs Apple for mercy in messaging war
Enlarge / Just a few of the many Google messaging logos. Can you name them all?
Ron Amadeo
Google has been unable to field a stable, competitive messaging platform for years and has thoroughly lost the messaging war to products with a long-term strategy. At least some divisions inside the company are waking up to how damaging this is to Google as a company, and now Google’s latest strategy is to… beg its competition for mercy? Google—which has launched 13 different messaging apps since iMessage launched in 2011—now says, “It’s time for Apple to fix texting.”
Google launched a new website called “Get the Message”—a public pressure campaign with a call to “tweet at @Apple to #GetTheMessage and fix texting.” Google hopes public pressure will get Apple to adopt RCS, a minor upgrade to the SMS standard that Apple uses for non-iMessage users. Google has been pushing this strategy since the beginning of the year, but coming from the company with the world’s most dysfunctional messaging strategy, it just comes across as a company tired of reaping what it has been sowing.
Worldwide, iMessage isn’t that popular (people tend to like Whatsapp), but in the US, iMessage is enough of a cultural phenomenon to have Billboard Top 100 songs written about how much it sucks to have a green (SMS) iMessage bubble. One of Apple’s biggest competitors—especially for online services—is Google, and Google’s inability to compete with iMessage has contributed a great deal to the current situation. Google apparently feels iMessage’s dominance is damaging to its brand, so now it’s asking Apple, nicely, to please stop beating it so badly.
Google’s site says, “It’s not about the color of the bubbles. It’s the blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and typing indicators, no texting over Wi-Fi, and more. These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.”
A 14-year-old standard is “modern,” right?
Some of Google’s claims on this website don’t make much sense. Google says, “Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead.” RCS isn’t a modern standard either—it’s from 2008—and, despite a few middling updates since then, hasn’t kept up with the times.
RCS has hung around so long and is still so poorly implemented because it was created by the carriers (through the GSMA) as a carrier-centric messaging standard. Carriers did this in the heyday of pay-per-message SMS, when carrier messaging was a real revenue stream. Now that carrier messaging is commoditized though, the carriers in control of RCS don’t have an incentive to care about RCS. RCS is a zombie spec.
In Google’s defense, SMS is from 1986, so RCS is more modern than that. This is probably more of a sign that you should never work with the GSMA if you don’t have to, though. If Google and Apple ever teamed up to make a messaging duopoly, they would not need the carriers or their ancient messaging standard.
Google’s proprietary fork of RCS
Being from 2008 means RCS lacks much of what you would want from a modern messaging standard. First of all, as a standard, RCS is carrier messaging, so messages are delivered to a single carrier phone number, rather than multiple devices via the Internet, like how you would expect a modern service to operate. As a standard, there’s no encryption. Google tried to glom features onto the aging RCS spec, but if you consider those part of the RCS sales pitch, which Google does, now it’s more like you selling “Google’s proprietary fork of RCS.” Google would really like it if Apple built its proprietary RCS fork into iMessage.
Google’s version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there’s no way for a third-party to use Google’s RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there’s no public RCS API and no plans to build one. Google has an RCS API already, but only Samsung is allowed to use it because Samsung signed some kind of partnership deal.
If you want to implement RCS, you’ll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google. Google bought Jibe, the leading RCS server provider, in 2015. Today it has a whole sales pitch about how Google Jibe can “help carriers quickly scale RCS services, iterate in short cycles, and benefit from improvements immediately.” So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn’t just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it’s also about running Apple’s messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.
Debate Over Monkeypox Messaging Divides N.Y.C. Health Department
The spread of monkeypox has ignited a debate within the New York City Health Department over whether the agency should encourage gay men to reduce their number of sexual partners during this summer’s outbreak.
Inside the department, officials are battling over public messaging as the number of monkeypox cases has nearly tripled in the last week, nearly all of them among men who have sex with men. A few epidemiologists say the city should be encouraging gay men to temporarily change their sexual behavior while the disease spreads, while other officials argue that approach would stigmatize gay men and would backfire.
The internal divisions peaked when the health department issued an advisory last week suggesting that having sex while infected with monkeypox could be made safer if people avoided kissing and covered their sores. Several officials at the agency were outraged, saying the agency was giving misleading and even dangerous health advice, according to several epidemiologists within the department and a review of internal emails.
The advice on safer sex was not medically sound, said Dr. Don Weiss, the director of surveillance for the department’s Bureau of Communicable Disease, in an interview. He believes the department should advise those at risk of monkeypox to temporarily reduce their number of partners, saying, “We’re not telling people what they have to do to be safe.”
His concerns are shared by some of his colleagues, emails and interviews show, indicating growing frustration and pessimism within the ranks of the health department as the window for controlling New York City’s monkeypox epidemic — the largest such outbreak in the United States — quickly closes.
Monkeypox has been spreading globally since early May. In New York City, where nearly all monkeypox patients are gay or bisexual men, there were 618 documented cases of monkeypox in the city as of Monday, though Dr. Weiss said that the true number of infections was far higher, because testing has been limited.
The strategy favored by Dr. Weiss, who has long played a frontline role in the department’s response to disease outbreaks, has received little traction within the department.
In fact, the agency in a statement Monday argued against such an approach. “For decades, the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community has had their sex lives dissected, prescribed, and proscribed in myriad ways, mostly by heterosexual and cis people,” the statement said.
The city’s response to monkeypox is grounded in the science and history of “how poorly abstinence-only guidance has historically performed,” the statement said, “with this disgraceful legacy in mind.”
The field of public health has long struggled with how best and even to what degree public health officials should tell people to change their sexual behavior in times of outbreak.
What to Know About the Monkeypox Virus
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What is monkeypox? Monkeypox is a virus endemic in parts of Central and West Africa. It is similar to smallpox, but less severe. It was discovered in 1958, after outbreaks occurred in monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The debate is influenced by the early years of H.I.V./AIDS, when terror and stigma ran high. The stakes are far lower with monkeypox, given that no one in the United States has yet died from the disease, treatments and vaccines exist, and for many the illness appears to pass relatively quickly.
Still, some epidemiologists say an aggressive response now — while transmission is predominantly limited to gay and bisexual men — could prevent the virus from becoming endemic in New York or reaching a broader swath of the population.
Some public health experts say that many gay men are likely to reject advice that could be seen as discouraging or stigmatizing gay sex. These experts say that such advice shifts blame onto gay men for the outbreak and could lead them to view public health authorities with distrust.
“Telling people not to have sex or not to have multiple sex partners or not to have anonymous sex is just a no-go, and it’s not going to work,” said a longtime AIDS activist, Charles King, who is chief executive of Housing Works, which provides housing and social services to the homeless and those affected by H.I.V.
“People are still going to have sex, and they’re going to have it even if it comes with great risk,” he said.
But there may be a middle ground, some experts said, noting that urging people to temporarily reduce their number of sexual partners or avoid sex parties where they might have multiple partners is not the same as a message of abstinence or monogamy.
“Name the risk factors and behaviors and give people options,” said Dr. Dustin Duncan, a epidemiologist of infectious diseases among sexual and gender minority groups at Columbia University.
He offered an example: telling people they could reduce their risk of getting monkeypox by “having one consistent casual partner as opposed to multiple people” seemed a reasonable message at the moment, he said.
Dr. Weiss said that asking people to change their sexual behavior — even if just for a month or so — was the most potent weapon available right now for reducing monkeypox transmission. Vaccine supply is limited and had been initially doled out via hard-to-get appointments during daytime hours at a few clinics, though mass vaccination sites have opened in recent days.
He has at times suggested the Department should promote short-term abstinence, a relatively fringe position. At other times he has suggested the department should warn gay men to refrain from anonymous sex.
Dr. Weiss said his recommendations have been largely ignored by the department’s senior leadership, who seem “paralyzed by fear of stigmatizing this disease,” he wrote in an email to colleagues this June.
“If we had an outbreak associated with bowling, would we not warn people to stop bowling?” he wrote.
So far, the health department’s reluctance to publicly encourage people to change their sexual behavior, unless they are actively infected with monkeypox, mirrors the broader messaging about the outbreak by the federal government.
The department’s advice, posted on its website, does note that “Having sex or other intimate contact with multiple or anonymous people (such as those met through social media, dating apps, or at parties) can increase your risk of exposures.”
At an online “town hall” event last week about monkeypox, the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, said the department’s goal is to be “sex positive.”
“We want to in no way stigmatize sex at all,” Dr. Vasan said. “We want to be very clear there are certain activities and one of them is intimate sexual contact that places you at higher risk in certain settings.”
Other health experts, have, like Dr. Weiss, publicly called for a temporary change in sexual behavior. At an online briefing last week by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Dr. Lilian Abbo, associate chief medical officer for infectious diseases at Jackson Health System in Miami, urged people to use condoms and said that having unprotected sex with multiple partners is “actually exponentially increasing the spread.”
“We all can take part preventing the continued spread, and that’s important that everyone takes a bit of ownership and understands that you can put others at risk,” she said.
Dr. Weiss, who has held the same job for 22 years, investigating and responding to new outbreaks for the Bureau of Communicable Disease, said he felt obliged to speak out publicly because he felt the department’s public statements were at times irresponsible. He pointed to the news release issued on Friday containing several prevention tips for “those who choose to have sex while sick.”
It stated that covering up monkeypox sores with clothes or bandages while having sex “may help reduce — but not eliminate” the risk of transmission. The release also said “for those who choose to have sex while sick, it is best to avoid kissing and other face-to-face contact.”
Dr. Weiss said it was “ludicrous” to suggest these steps would meaningfully reduce the risk.
The Health Department’s guidance to the public has often highlighted nonsexual routes of potential transmission, such as hugging or contact with bedding. While those are certainly possible routes of transmission, the result — Dr. Weiss said — was to make people overly concerned about casual physical contact and not sufficiently aware that most monkeypox infections in New York appeared to be transmitted through sex.
Dr. Weiss said he has supervised a team of epidemiologists who reviewed many of the city’s monkeypox cases. In most, patients have had lesions on the penis, anus or in the rectum, suggesting, he said, that the disease is spreading mainly through sexual contact.
He also said that reports of asymptomatic spread and the presence of the virus DNA in semen should have resulted in the department’s recasting their public advice.
“I know I sound like a Bible-thumping preacher,” Dr. Weiss wrote recently to a group of epidemiologists in a Department of Health email chain.
But, he has argued, “If we don’t act soon, it may be the point of no return.”
Sharon Otterman contributed reporting.
Biden’s press office plagued by negative coverage, messaging gaffes as media signals ‘honeymoon is over’
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The White House has been plagued in recent weeks with negative reports about President Biden’s press office coinciding with a series of messaging gaffes, and mainstream news organizations typically friendly to Biden have taken notice.
“It has been most interesting to see the establishment media try to adjust its coverage of the Biden administration. Mainstream media helped run cover for Biden in the 2020 campaign and for the early months of his administration,” DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall told Fox News Digital.
“But the media narrative that Biden was a unifier and that any national problems were just Trump leftovers just had to disintegrate in the face of cold reality,” McCall said. “Even the left-of-center media have had to grudgingly acknowledge that the Biden administration is struggling.”
McCall believes media credibility is “already quite dismal” and continued promotion of Biden has become unworkable when public opinion polling indicates that Americans see the administration’s problems.
NBC, WAPO, CNN DROP DAMNING REPORTS ON WH TURMOIL, SUGGEST ISSUES PLAGUING BIDEN WEREN’T CAUSED BY HIS ADMIN
“In a sense, the mainstream media is just now figuring out what the public has known for months,” he said.
The White House has been plagued with drama in recent weeks as negative reports about President Biden’s press office coincided with a series of messaging gaffes.
((AP Photo/Susan Walsh))
New White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has frequently stumbled since taking over the podium last month when Jen Psaki left the administration. When grilled about a questionable claim made by the president during a speech to graduating Navy midshipmen last month, Jean-Pierre claimed she “did not hear” the part of the speech and declined to defend Biden’s claim that he was appointed to the academy in 1965, the same year he graduated from the University of Delaware.
“I can’t speak to it right now,” Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre has also developed a reputation for reading scripted answers from her notebook that conflict with Biden’s statements. Many reporters have already grown frustrated with Jean-Pierre, and NBC News reporter Kelly O’Donnell essentially told the press secretary how to do her job during a heated exchange last week on who briefed Biden on the baby formula crisis.
“To say there is no specific person is not a satisfactory answer. When you have senior assistants to the president, there’s a paper trail, I’m sure, about briefings to the president. There is a domestic policy council. There’s a chief of staff. At some point we need to know who would have been the most likely person to talk to him,” O’Donnell said.
Jean-Pierre continued to dodge the question and the NBC News reporter fired back, “It just looks like it’s evasive” to not have senior White House aides come forward and admit they briefed the president on the baby formula shortage.
“We’re also trying to understand the information flow in this White House, and it’s important for us to get that answer, which is where we’re going to keep asking it until we get that answer,” O’Donnell said.
BIDEN WHITE HOUSE AVOIDS OVAL OFFICE FOR PRESS EVENTS IN PART BECAUSE IT HAS NO TELEPROMPTER: REPORT
New White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has frequently stumbled since taking over the podium last month from Jen Psaki.
(AP)
Jean-Pierre declined to identify anyone who discussed the issue with Biden despite the plea from O’Donnell. But O’Donnell isn’t the only reporter to appear annoyed by the new press secretary in her short time on the job, as Washington Post reporter Tyler Pager and CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe have had similar exchanges with Jean-Pierre in recent memory.
Others who feel Jean-Pierre is off to a rocky start have pointed to an exchange she had last month with Fox News’ Peter Doocy about a tweet Biden made suggesting higher taxes on wealthy corporations is the answer to combat inflation.
McCall admits “trying to put a happy face on so many administration problems” is a difficult task for Jean-Pierre, but she’s “coming off as overmatched while trying to rationalize policy failures.”
“Saying ‘I did not see that part of the speech’ or ‘I can’t speak to that’ just won’t cut it in front of a press corps that might finally be awakening to its responsibility to thoroughly scrutinize the Biden White House,” McCall said.
The Biden administration is beginning to brace for a potentially brutal midterm election cycle as Republicans are expected to retake the House and potentially the Senate, but messaging from the White House has been widely criticized in recent weeks. Biden’s staffers have attempted to blame soaring inflation and gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, pushing a “Putin’s Price Hike” narrative despite how both were becoming issues for the Biden administration months before the global conflict.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: 10 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEW WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
Biden also recently unveiled a new insult for Republicans, referring to them as “ultra-MAGA,” an alteration to former President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. The slogan wasn’t particularly popular among Democrats, and some Republicans have embraced the moniker – particularly when Biden referred to Trump as “The Great MAGA King.”
“The Five” co-hosts Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters took turns roasting Biden for the botched messaging.
“You can’t burn someone with ‘king’ in the nickname,” Watters said. “It’s like calling me King Fox. OK, I’ll take it.”
“Biden has such difficulty communicating that even his nicknames, his smears, are ineffective,” co-host Geraldo Rivera added.
Meanwhile, the White House initially claimed the new moniker was created by the president, but the Washington Post since revealed it was the result of a six-month liberal-funded focus group project.
Biden was hit with a plethora of damning reports last week alone that shed light on turmoil erupting in the White House, followed by a Politico piece Sunday night about White House fears that Jimmy Carter comparisons to Biden will “stick.”
McCall finds it “interesting” that some recent media reports regarding the problems in the Biden administration focus on Biden’s concern for messaging, “as though poor policy decisions can be covered up with rhetorical misdirection and sleight of hand.”
“Some of the media apologists also try to point out that Biden’s problems are because of factors beyond the president’s control. That, of course, is true to some extent, but the president is not just a victim of circumstances and shouldn’t be portrayed as a helpless figurehead. It would seem that such a portrayal as Biden as a victim of circumstance would weaken him even more in the public sphere,” McCall said.
NBC News released a report about the turmoil in the Biden White House.
(Fox News)
NBC News kicked off the negative stories early Tuesday morning following the long Memorial Day weekend with a report headlined, “Inside a Biden White House adrift,” telling readers, “Amid a rolling series of calamities and sinking approval ratings, the president’s feeling lately is that he just can’t catch a break — and that angst is rippling through his party.”
NBC News began its report by noting that Biden has pressed aides to do a better job with messaging.
“Faced with a worsening political predicament, President Joe Biden is pressing aides for a more compelling message and a sharper strategy while bristling at how they’ve tried to stifle the plain-speaking persona that has long been one of his most potent assets,” NBC News wrote. “Biden is rattled by his sinking approval ratings and is looking to regain voters’ confidence that he can provide the sure-handed leadership he promised during the campaign, people close to the president say.”
BIDEN GOES MORE THAN 100 DAYS WITHOUT MAINSTREAM MEDIA INTERVIEW: ‘HIS HANDLERS ARE PETRIFIED’
The report lists the crises that have “piled up” to make “the Biden White House look flat-footed” from soaring inflation, high gas prices, a spike in COVID cases, to the mass shootings that have taken place in recent weeks, writing how “Democratic leaders are at a loss about how he can revive his prospects by November” as Republicans are expected to ride a red wave in the midterm elections. NBC News even suggested a potential White House shakeup may occur as rumors of Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain may leave the administration after the midterms and Biden adviser Anita Dunn may rise as his successor.
CNN’s Jake Tapper also used the “flat-footed” term on Sunday while questioning Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo about looking caught off-guard by the inflation and formula crises.
“We’re talking about two critical issues here that directly affect the American people where they live. Where the Biden administration looks like it was caught flat-footed – inflation and baby formula, not to mention the record gas prices, which were hurt by the war in Ukraine, no doubt, but that’s not the only reason why they’re so high,” Tapper said on “State of the Union.”
The Politico piece on Sunday also painted Biden as frustrated and the West Wing as beset by internal finger-pointing over his poor polling numbers.
Hours after NBC News’ report was published, the Washington Post published a piece headlined, “White House scrambles on inflation after Biden complains to aides,” that claimed Biden “fumes privately that [the] administration isn’t doing enough to show concern on high prices.”
“The White House launched a new push Tuesday to contain the political damage caused by inflation after President Biden complained for weeks to aides that his administration was not doing enough to publicly explain the fastest price increases in roughly four decades,” the Post framed its report that appeared to largely give Biden a pass on inflation but admitted the president is “struggling to show that at least he understands that Americans are suffering and is doing what he can.”
Then on Thursday, CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere followed suit with a piece on “deeper dysfunction among White House aides.” The CNN report began by noting White House staffers monitor which media outlets cover the president, particularly which TV networks carry his speeches live, “realizing a number of times that the answer was none.” One anonymous aide told CNN, “You are thinking… why are we doing this?”
JOURNALISTS SKEPTICAL OF BIDEN’S ‘ULTRA-MAGA’ LABEL FOR GOP, SPARKS COMPARISON TO ‘PUTIN’S PRICE HIKE’
The report also pointed to a “dysfunction calcified among aides who largely started working together only through Zoom screens and still struggle to get in rhythm” at the White House.
“They’re still finding it hard to grasp how much their political standing has changed over the last year, and there’s a divide between most of the White House staff and the inner circle who have been around Biden for longer than most of the rest of that staff has been alive,” Dovere reported.
A recent CNN headline on dysfunction within the Biden White House.
CNN alleged Biden is “still trying to calibrate himself to the office” despite being president for over 16 months as he “can’t see a way to address” crises “while also being the looser, happier, more sympathetic, lovingly Onion-parody inspiring, aviator-wearing, vanilla chip cone-licking guy — an image that was the core of why he got elected in the first place.”
One aide told CNN’s reporter, “[Biden] has to speak to very serious things… and you can’t do that getting ice cream.”
Dovere then swiped at Biden and his team by writing, “The President is a 79-year-old man who still thinks in terms of newspaper front pages and primetime TV programs, surrounded by not-quite-as-senior aides in senior positions with the same late 1990s media diet. Lifelong habits don’t tend to fade when people get to their desks in the West Wing.”
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CNN’s Brian Stelter led his newsletter on Thursday with a breakdown of Dovere’s piece. Stelter also noted that Puck’s Tara Palmeri wrote “the knives are out for Chief of Staff Ron Klain,” prompting one long-time media industry watchdog to remark to Fox News Digital that “the anti-Klain attacks have gotten blatant.”
The problems coming out of the White House come as Pentagon spokesman John Kirby is set to join Biden’s communications team in a senior role as the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn and David Rutz contributed to this report.
Google wants a single video messaging app, will merge Google Meet and Duo
Enlarge / Someday, Google’s messaging lineup will look like this (assuming Google can stop launching competing products).
Ron Amadeo
The long-rumored Google Duo and Google Meet merger is actually happening. Google officially confirmed the move on Wednesday, explaining in a blog post that the goal is to create a “single video communications service” and that the Duo brand will go away in favor of Google Meet.
While the Google Duo brand is dying, it sounds like the Duo codebase will live on as the basis for the new Google Meet. Google says that “existing video calling features from Duo are here to stay” and that “in the coming weeks, we’re adding all the Google Meet features to the Duo app, so users can easily schedule a video meeting at a time that works for everyone, or continue using video calling to instantly connect with a person or group. Later this year, we’ll rename the Duo app to Google Meet, our single video communications service across Google that is available to everyone at no cost.”
The move comes after Google unified its communication teams under Google Workspace VP and GM Javier Soltero (the author of Google’s blog post) in 2020. Google has not clarified which products are being unified, but it should mean that Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Messages, Google Duo, and Google Voice will all live under one roof.
Here’s a quick recap of the long history of Google communication apps: Google Duo launched in 2016 as a standalone video chat app with a “companion” messaging app called “Google Allo.” Google had just failed in its attempt to buy WhatsApp two years earlier (Facebook made the $22 billion acquisition instead), so it fired up its photocopiers for Google Allo, which was a straight-up WhatsApp clone. It used SMS-based phone number identification instead of a Google account, and it was restricted to one device at a time, following the very non-Googley way that WhatsApp works.
Launching two communication apps at the same time seemed strange, but the idea was that Google could pitch Duo as a companion to WhatsApp as well as Allo. Normally, a company would be expected to include video chat capabilities in its new messaging app—like Hangouts or Facebook Messenger or (eventually) WhatsApp. Presumably, though, Google knew it could not compete with the WhatsApp juggernaut in chat, so a standalone video app was made, with a Whatsapp clone to go with it. WhatsApp users can stay on WhatsApp for chat, but they can add this Duo app to their arsenal.
With millions still unboosted against COVID, public health experts face tricky messaging around potential 4th shot
When the first coronavirus vaccines were shipped out across the country more than a year ago, millions of Americans waited eagerly for their turn to get a shot, hoping that it would lead to a return to normal.
In the spring of 2021, after every adult became eligible for the vaccine, over 2 million people a day were getting their first dose. However, in recent months, with most of those willing to get their shots now inoculated, vaccination rates have plummeted.
The number of Americans who are receiving their first COVID-19 vaccine now stands at a pandemic low, with fewer than 80,000 Americans initiating vaccination each day. Further, since December, the rate of people getting boosted has also fallen significantly, dropping from 1 million booster shots administered a day to less than 140,000.
“Dropping of local vaccine mandates and the end of the omicron surge are likely contributing to a stalling out in first time vaccines and boosters,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “Unfortunately, at this point, there are not many tools left in the toolbox to encourage people to be up to date.”
Although there are certainly fewer unvaccinated than vaccinated people in the U.S., tens of millions of Americans remain unvaccinated and unboosted. Across the country, more than 58 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated, while 87.6 million Americans — about half of those currently eligible to be boosted — have yet to receive their supplemental dose.
Amid the declining interest, some scientists and health officials say it is possible Americans could need an additional booster this fall, or seasonal boosters in the future, to address waning vaccine immunity or new coronavirus variants.
“The potential future requirement for an additional boost or a fourth shot for mRNA or a third shot for J&J is being very carefully monitored in real time, and recommendations, if needed, will be updated according to the data as it evolves,” White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci during a press briefing last month.
The experts interviewed by ABC News are concerned about how to convey that message while maintaining trust as well as how additional doses might further exacerbate inequities in access and care around the country.
Since the fall, immunocompromised Americans have already had the option to receive a fourth mRNA dose. However, for the general public, the benefit of additional doses still is not clear.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV last week, Fauci said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is studying data on a “month-by-month basis,” and should durability rates continue to fall, officials will have to decide whether to begin offering a fourth dose, particularly to those at higher risk, such as the elderly.
However, even if data emerges indicating the need for a fourth dose, convincing Americans to get another shot may present a new set of challenges.
“I think we can expect to see less uptake of fourth doses than we saw of third doses,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, told ABC News. “A change in the messaging around the goal of the vaccination program would help a lot.”
Some people point erroneously to the increase in breakthrough infections as a reason to not get vaccinated, she said.
Thus, experts say, it is important for public health experts to emphasize the benefit of vaccination, and how dramatically reducing the risk of developing severe illness or dying if infected.
In December, a period of omicron dominance, unvaccinated people were 14 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to people who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson shot or two shots of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Health experts also caution that if a fourth dose is eventually needed, it will be important for health officials to outline what the purpose of an additional dose would be.
“Are we trying to prevent all infections, or are we trying to prevent severe disease?” Doron asked. “Public messaging that is honest about the waning effectiveness for infection and focuses on a need for additional doses only when effectiveness against severe disease has waned, and only for those populations in whom that has happened, might help restore trust and increase vaccine uptake.”
Evidence exhibiting protection against severe illness and death, will ultimately be paramount, Brownstein added.
“Clinical data, combined with real-word evidence, must show that additional shots provide critical protection against severe illness and death,” he said.
Experts are particularly concerned about the continued growing racial disparity in the current booster drive, and the impact such gaps in uptake could have on populations that are already at increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes.
Black and brown Americans are currently lagging in the booster effort, with only 39.5% of eligible Hispanic/Latino Americans boosted, and 43.8% of eligible Black Americans boosted. Asian Americans lead every race/ethnicity group, with 58.9% of the eligible population boosted.
“Vaccine rollouts have highlighted critical inequities in access and education, leading to concerning differences in vaccination rates across race and ethnicity,” Brownstein explained.
If additional shots are needed in the future, experts worry about deepening inequities.
“A fourth shot strategy is likely to only further inequities in protection unless accompanied with direct efforts to bring the entire population up to date,” Brownstein added.
As health officials plan for the months and years ahead, Doron suggested there are several potential ways to proceed, including switching to an annual vaccination should a seasonal pattern with COVID-19 emerge or waiting for continued signs of waning effectiveness and recommending a fourth dose then, particularly to those at high risk.
“Any determination that additional booster doses are needed will be based on data available to the agency,” a representative from the FDA told ABC News in a statement.
Regardless of how officials decide to move forward, experts say it will be essential to convince Americans of the importance and benefits of vaccines, and thus, that low COVID-19 vaccination rates could not only undermine recovery prospects, but potentially also lead to another surge of infections in the advent of a new variant.
“The case for a fourth shot needs to be incredibly compelling, if we expect the American public to get on board,” Brownstein said. “The focus should continue to be on primary care providers and frontline health care workers to continue to educate the public on the value of vaccines.”
After ruining Android messaging, Google says iMessage is too powerful
Google took to Twitter this weekend to complain that iMessage is just too darn influential with today’s kids. The company was responding to a Wall Street Journal report detailing the lock-in and social pressure Apple’s walled garden is creating among US teens. iMessage brands texts from iPhone users with a blue background and gives them additional features, while texts from Android phones are branded green and only have the base SMS feature set. According to the article, “Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones.” Google apparently feels this is a problem.
“iMessage should not benefit from bullying,” the official Android Twitter account wrote. “Texting should bring us together, and the solution exists. Let’s fix this as one industry.” Google SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer chimed in too, saying “Apple’s iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy. Using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing. The standards exist today to fix this.”
The “solution” Google is pushing here is RCS, or Rich Communication Services, a GSMA standard from 2008 that has slowly gained traction as an upgrade to SMS. RCS adds typing indicators, user presence, and better image sharing to carrier messaging. It is a 14-year-old carrier standard though, so it lacks many things you would want from a modern messaging service, like end-to-end encryption and support for nonphone devices. Google tries to band-aid over the aging standard with its “Google Messaging” client, but the result is a lot of clunky solutions which aren’t as good as a modern messaging service.
Since RCS replaces SMS, Google has been on a campaign to get the industry to make the upgrade. After years of protesting, the US carriers are all onboard, and there is some uptake among the international carriers, too. The biggest holdout is Apple, which only supports SMS though iMessage.
Enlarge / Apple’s green-versus-blue bubble explainer from its website.
Apple
Apple hasn’t ever publicly shot down the idea of adding RCS to iMessage, but thanks to documents revealed in the Epic v. Apple case, we know the company views iMessage lock-in as a valuable weapon. Bringing RCS to iMessage and making communication easier with Android users would only help to weaken Apple’s walled garden, and the company has said it doesn’t want that.
In the US, iPhones are more popular with young adults than ever. As the Wall Street Journal notes, “Among U.S. consumers, 40% use iPhones, but among those aged 18 to 24, more than 70% are iPhone users.” It credits Apple’s lock-in with apps like iMessage for this success.
Reaping what you sow
Google clearly views iMessage’s popularity as a problem, and the company is hoping this public-shaming campaign will get Apple to change its mind on RCS. Having Google give other companies advice on a messaging strategy is a laughable idea though, since Google probably has the least credibility of any tech company when it comes to messaging services. If the company really wants to do something about iMessage, it should try competing with it.
As we recently detailed in a 25,000-word article, Google’s messaging history is one of constant product startups and shutdowns. Thanks to a lack of product focus or any kind of top-down mandate from Google’s CEO, no division is really “in charge” of messaging. As a consequence, the company has released 13 halfhearted messaging products since iMessage launched in 2011. If Google has anyone to blame for the iMessage’s dominance, it should start with itself, since it has continually sabotaged and abandoned its own plans to make an iMessage competitor.
Messaging is important, and even if it isn’t directly monetizable, a dominant messaging app has real, tangible benefits for an ecosystem. The rest of the industry understood this years ago. Facebook paid $22 billion to buy WhatsApp in 2014 and took the app from 450 million users to 2 billion users. Along with Facebook Messenger, Facebook has two dominant messaging platforms today, especially internationally. Salesforce paid $27 billion for Slack in 2020, and Tencent’s WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, is pulling in 1.2 billion users and yearly revenues of $5.5 billion. Snapchat is up to a $67 billion market cap, and Telegram is getting $40 billion valuations from investors. Google keeps trying ideas in this market, but it never makes an investment that is anywhere close to the competition.
CDC director turns to media consultant as Covid-19 messaging frustrations mount
For months, Walensky has met privately with prominent Democratic media consultant Mandy Grunwald to improve her communication skills and continues to do so, according to a person familiar with the previously unreported sessions. On Friday, Walensky will hold the CDC’s first independent media briefing since the summer after deciding abruptly this week that she wanted to take questions “head on,” according to a person familiar with her decision to hold the briefing.
“We’re in an unprecedented time with the speed of Omicron cases rising, and we are working really hard to get information to the American public, and balancing that with the reality that we’re all living with,” Walenksy said.
“This is hard, and I am committed to continue to improve as we learn more about the science and to communicate that with all of you.”
Since assuming her role, Walensky has worked to improve her internal communications and sought to cultivate a better messaging approach, according to officials. Yet there remains dissatisfaction among both administration aides and outside public health experts in some of the ways the CDC has communicated its decisions as the pandemic enters what officials view as a new phase.
At the same time, between Walensky circumventing some of the CDC’s rigorous vetting processes for new guidelines and the public criticism, morale at the public health agency is sinking.
When asked if there is a credibility problem at the CDC Friday on NBC’s “Today,” Walensky said the agency moves with the science.
“We at the CDC are 12,000 people working 24/7 following the science, with ever-evolving nature, in the midst of a really fast-moving pandemic,” she said during one of a number of interviews ahead of the briefing. “And we are doing so, putting our head down, to keep America safe. We will continue to update. We will continue to improve how we communicate to the American public. This is fast-moving science.”
CNN has reached out to the CDC for comment. The White House declined to comment, pointing toward a statement on Wednesday from White House press secretary Jen Psaki. Asked if Biden has confidence in Walensky, Psaki told reporters, “He has confidence in the scientific expertise, the medical expertise of the team at the CDC. And he believes the American people had a desire, a need for us to address this pandemic, led by data and science. And that’s what he’s going to continue to rely on.”
Frustration over changing guidance
The latest messaging setback happened last month when the CDC cut its recommended isolation period for those with Covid-19 to five days, and recommended people who tested positive should continue to wear a mask in public for five additional days. Confusion ensued, with some outside experts urging the CDC to add a recommendation for a rapid antigen test at the end of the first five days.
Behind the scenes, other federal public health officials also questioned the decision not to include testing. Both Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President’s top medical adviser on Covid-19, and US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy publicly made clear clarifications were coming.
Amid the public backlash, Walensky sought to reassure fellow senior federal health officials, telling Fauci and Murthy that the lack of a testing requirement in the isolation guidance was not motivated by the nationwide testing shortage, one person familiar with the discussions said.
Instead, she insisted that rapid antigen tests were simply not a sufficiently reliable indicator of contagiousness and noted to her colleagues that the US Food and Drug Administration had not approved the tests for that purpose.
She told CNN, “We actually don’t know how our rapid tests perform and how well they predict whether you’re transmissible during the end of disease.”
The explanation didn’t sit well with FDA officials, who — despite having issued a vague statement at about the same time about sensitivity of rapid antigen tests toward Omicron that lacked specific details — were concerned her comments could sow doubt in the reliability of rapid tests.
“When you are leading an agency like that, the gravity of your words is so much heavier than when you’re just commenting on it,” an administration official later told CNN.
Eschewing traditional CDC processes
After working on the guidance with her circle of advisers, Walensky called an emergency meeting of the officials leading the CDC’s Covid-19 Incident Management System on the eve of the release of the new guidance to inform them of the coming guidance, according to the CDC scientist.
“She’s dispensing with this consultative process that we’ve always had in place that sort of allowed us to make sure that our science was good,” the scientist said.
Officials in the meeting were told not to share the new guidance with state health officials on a weekly call the next day, which took place just hours before the CDC released a statement announcing the changes.
“The lack of engagement and consultation on that (new guidance) obviously contributed to a lot of the outrage,” the scientist said.
After Walenksy spent a week steadfastly defending the agency’s decision not to include a recommendation for a rapid test after five days, the CDC changed course, telling people with access to rapid tests to continue to isolate if they decided to take a test and received a positive result. But the new guidance did not explicitly recommend people should take a test.
“It became very clear that people were interested in using the rapid tests — though not authorized for this purpose — for this purpose after their end of isolation period. And because there was an interest in using them for this reason, we then provided guidance on how they should be used,” Walensky told CNN during a coronavirus briefing on Wednesday.
The latest update also urged people who emerge from the shortened five-day isolation to avoid travel for five more days and not to eat at restaurants.
Those updates only emerged after Walensky and her team tasked CDC experts with turning the press statement announcing the changes into formal public health guidance, a process that would typically happen ahead of a news release.
The CDC’s back and forth on testing after five days of isolation did not go over well in the medical community.
“Nearly two years into this pandemic, with omicron cases surging across the country, the American people should be able to count on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for timely, accurate, clear guidance to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities. Instead, the new recommendations on quarantine and isolation are not only confusing, but are risking further spread of the virus,” the American Medical Association said in a statement.
‘They’re overthinking their messaging’
In some ways, the disconnect with the CDC is a perpetual one between an inherently political operation and one driven by public health experts.
Current and former senior administration officials said the White House has been frustrated with the CDC over its messaging of public health guidelines, even as they acknowledge the decisions the agency makes have sound backing. Meanwhile, some scientists at the CDC feel like the new guidance Walensky is implementing is being insufficiently guided by the science and is overly taking into account political and economic considerations.
Still, the White House has aimed to stick to its hands-off approach to the CDC, seeking to draw a distinction with the previous administration and avoid any impression they are influencing public health measures driven by government scientists.
“I think they’re being way too careful and they’re overthinking their messaging,” a former senior Biden administration official said of the CDC. “They’re smart people and they’re guilty of just being a little bit in a bubble and overthinking things.”
While the CDC’s latest guidance on isolation amounts to the clearest example of the agency’s public messaging woes, former officials said previous CDC messaging — including on masks — have been a source of friction with and frustration within the White House.
“They make insular decisions with the agency — or even within a small group within the agency — and then wait until the last minute to tell everyone it’s coming, so they rush it out without getting reasonable feedback from people who could help address real issues,” one administration official told CNN, referencing other federal health agencies.
In May, Walensky said fully vaccinated people could stop wearing masks indoors, only to reverse course a few months later when new information showed even those with all the recommended shots could still transmit the virus.
The White House was also forced to explain Walensky’s comments in February that teachers did not need to be fully vaccinated for schools to reopen; a day later, Psaki said Walensky was speaking in her “personal capacity.”
White House officials have been loathe to blame Walensky directly, pointing instead to longstanding institutional issues at the CDC and an overly cautious approach among scientists there, which they believe leads to overly complicated or incomplete public health guidance.
“The White House being frustrated with the CDC is like there being sand on a beach,” this former official said. “It’s an age-old thing.”