August 15, 2024: Data Breach Exposes 2.9B Personal Records, Journalists Leak Conversation With Project 2025 Author, Columbia University President Steps Down, and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Thursday, August 15th, and this is your final news rundown of the week. I'll spare you my usual pre-episode reminder, but if you've been around a while, you know what to do. And without further ado, we can get into today's stories, starting with a

data breach. This story actually dates back to April, but there was sort of a new event last week that adds to it. So back in April, a hacker known as USDOD claimed to be selling 2.9 billion records containing personal information of people in the United States, the UK, and Canada. The data consisted of social security numbers, names, addresses, all obtained from a database belonging to an entity known as National Public Data.

National Public Data, or NPD, is in the business of collecting data on people from various parts of the web and then reselling that data to use in background checks for private investigators, etc., etc. But since the April breach and since USDOD tried selling this data for $3.5 million dollars,

various hackers have started releasing partial copies of the data, with each leak sharing a different number of records and sometimes different data. But then, last week on August 6th, a new hacker entered the scene, Fennis. And he or she leaked the most complete version of the stolen data for Fennis,

free on a hacking forum called Breach. Now, why would a hacker release data for free and not try to sell it? I don't know, but it's raised questions about the accuracy and completeness of the data.

Fennis, who was the one who leaked it last week, said the data breach was actually not conducted by USDOD, but by a hacker known as SXUL. So was it a new breach of NPD's database? That's the question. Bleeping Computer, which is a cybersecurity and technology news website, said it can't confirm if the leak contains data for every person in the United States, but that numerous people have confirmed it includes either their

legitimate information or their family members' legitimate information. Bleeping Computer also says that every record consists of a person's name, mailing address, and social security number. Some records also contain other names associated with a person.

Now, a couple of things to note. One, each person has multiple records, one for each address that they are known to have lived. So this means that the data breach didn't necessarily impact almost 3 billion people, as the numbers imply, but rather that there were almost 3 billion records accessed.

Two, NPD is actually facing multiple lawsuits for not adequately protecting people's data because this is not the first time NPD's database has been breached. And three, to try to protect your data, you can always look into these data removal services, which help remove your personal information on the internet. Always be extra cautious about emails, phone calls, or texts from unknown sources asking for personal information. Monitor your accounts. And then, of course, you can always invest in an identity theft program.

protection service, it won't necessarily protect your data from being hacked, but you'll at least be notified of these data breaches when they occur for, you know, those breaches that may involve your information. In fact, in this case, NPD wasn't even the one that informs the public about the breach. Rather, people found out about it through their identity theft protection services. So these services can just be helpful in that regard.

Moving on, Columbia University's president, Manoush Shafiq, has officially stepped down. The news of her departure comes months after on-campus protests broke out over the war between Israel and Hamas, and just a couple of weeks before the university's fall semester is set to begin. Shafiq, an Egyptian-born economist and former official at the World Bank, has faced a

alongside other university presidents for her handling of the on-campus encampments as well as the on-campus protests. Around the time of the encampments, she also faced criticism for allowing arrests on campus

and also for her testimony to the House Education Committee over the university's handling of anti-Semitism. In her letter, Shafiq wrote in part, quote, I write with sadness to tell you that I am stepping down as president of Columbia University, effective August 14th, 2024. I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that, working together, we have made progress in a number of important areas.

However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family as it has for others in our community. I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic responsibility

principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion. It has been distressing for the community, for me as president, and on a personal level to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse. As President Lincoln said, quote, a house divided against itself cannot stand, end quote. We must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community. I remain optimistic that differences can be overcome through the honest and

honest exchange of views, truly listening, and always by treating each other with dignity and respect. End quote.

In some legal news, a lawsuit filed at the end of July is asking a court to ban the most popular police body cams from all political events related to the 2024 presidential election cycle. Why? Because inside these cameras is a chip made by a Chinese company called Quicktel. And the plaintiff in the case, government GPT, says that these Chinese chips allow for potential Chinese espionage.

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona and reads in part, quote, quote,

End quote. Now, the maker of the body cams is Axon, the country's largest supplier of police body cams. But it's not the body cams themselves that the plaintiff says is the issue. Instead, the plaintiff says it's the chip inside the cameras.

However, Quechtel's head of communications, Phil Rawcliffe, says that the company's chips do not collect any data and do not pose a risk to national security. He said, quote,

Since the initial filing of the lawsuit, the plaintiff filed an emergency motion to expedite this case ahead of the upcoming DNC. And today, the judge agreed to hold a status conference, which will happen this coming Tuesday. And then at that status conference, the judge will schedule a hearing on the plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction.

Notably, the judge wrote in her order, which scheduled the status conference, quote, there has been no evidence presented of an actual known threat, but the court will handle this on an expedited basis, end quote. And the reason that that line is important is because in order to successfully obtain a preliminary injunction, which is what the plaintiff wants in this case, a plaintiff has to show four things. And one of

those things is a likelihood of success on the merits of the case. So what the judge is essentially saying here is that the plaintiff hasn't really offered any evidence at this point that would result in a win. And therefore, what that tells us is there's not a huge likelihood that the judge grants this request for a preliminary injunction at this point, meaning there's not a huge likelihood that these body cameras will be banned, at least not anytime soon.

Switching gears a little bit, Meta has officially discontinued what it called its transparency tool called CrowdTangle.

Crowd Tangle will be replaced by a new tool called Meta Content Library. We'll talk about both and what this means. So Crowd Tangle was a social media analysis platform that allowed you to do various things like dive into the origins of data, see what's trending, what type of content was catching on with your audience, how your content was performing as compared to your competitors.

and how your content was performing over time. But also CrowdTangle was used by many researchers and journalists to monitor disinformation on social media, specifically when it came to political speech. So a lot of news organizations and foundations organizations aren't happy with Meta's decision to discontinue CrowdTangle because obviously we're in an election year and the

they would like to keep a close eye on it if they can. In fact, leading up to Meta's decision, more than 50,000 people had signed letters and petitions asking Meta to keep CrowdTangle or at least keep it through the election, but Meta said no.

To give you a little bit of a backstory on CrowdTangle, it was created in 2011 by two guys. And at the time, it was offered to digital publishers like CNN, Vox, and BuzzFeed. Five years later, in 2016, Facebook bought it and let researchers and other media partners use it for free. And this was the first time that a major social network provided this free tool to the public to monitor trends on social media in real time.

And over the years, researchers and media organizations did just that and they really enjoyed it. But now that CrowdTangle is gone, Meta says it will be replacing it with a new tool called Meta Content Library.

The difference, or at least the main difference that we're seeing right now, is that CrowdTangle was originally available to everyone, but over the last few years it did stop accepting new users. Meta Content Library, though, will only be available to, quote, "...qualified academic or non-profit institutions who are pursuing scientific or public interest research."

And then those who wish to have access to this new tool will have to apply. Critics, though, and researchers who previously used CrowdTangle say that this new tool is not yet sufficient. It has just 1% of the features that CrowdTangle had, and it hardly fills the gaping hole left by CrowdTangle's shutdown.

As for Meta, the only message provided at this point is one posted to their website which reads, quote,

Meta Content Library and Content Library API provide useful, high-quality data to researchers. Meta Content Library was designed to help us meet new regulatory requirements for data sharing and transparency while meeting Meta's rigorous privacy and security standards."

And in some other news, a recorded conversation between an author of Project 2025, Russell Vogt, and two men pretending to be relatives of a conservative donor is making news today. The two men that recorded the conversation worked for a British journalism non-profit,

and secretly recorded this conversation, which took place last month. Note though, that the actual video posted by the British nonprofit is about Project 2025 as a whole and sort of getting behind the scenes. The video is actually titled Undercover in Project 2025. But as one of the aspects of this undercover project, the two men sat down with Russell Vogt, and that's the part of the video that's making news because it was this, uh,

conversation had in private, but secretly recorded. So to give you a little bit of background on this nonprofit, it's called Center for Climate Reporting, and it describes itself as a not-for-profit investigative journalism organization focused on climate change. Its website reads, quote, "...through bold cross-border investigative reporting, our mission is to uncover how these actors build and wield political power to hold them accountable."

Other projects the organization has worked on are titled Undercover and Saudi Arabia's secretive program to keep the world burning oil, Inside the Campaign that put an oil boss in charge of a climate summit, and obviously most recently, Undercover Project 21.

Basically, the goal of the project was to see what's behind the doors of Project 2025 meetings. However, because the main story coming from this video surrounds the conversation with Russell Vogt, let's talk about it. Just so we're all familiar with Vogt, he was formerly the director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump administration, and since then has become the founder and president of the Center for Renewing America, which is a

which has a stated mission of renewing a consensus of America as a nation under God. He's also one of the many authors of Project 2025, specifically writing Chapter 2, which is about the restructuring of the executive office of the

So one thing is for sure and important to note going into this story, both sides, that being Vote and the non-profit organization, definitely have their own agendas in this situation and the agendas could not be more at odds with one another.

During their meeting, Vogt talks about his plans for the next conservative administration, which mimics the text of Project 2025. So things like doing away with the Department of Education, rehabilitating Christian nationalism, the need for mass deportations, blocking funding for Planned Parenthood, and crushing the quote unquote deep state. He also said he expects Trump to disavow Project 2025 many more times and distance himself from the

project, but that he's not worried about it. He said Trump has visited the organization, not sure whether he's referring to the Heritage Foundation or Votes' own organization, but he did say Trump has visited. He also said Trump has raised money for the organization and blessed the organization and that Trump is supportive of what the organization does.

Now, all of this is put together in a nine minute YouTube video, which I do have linked for you in the sources section. So feel free to check that out. You can find it in each podcast episode description. But I just wanted to cover this story because I've already seen some misleading headlines thrown around and I would anticipate more. So now you have a little bit more context.

And now we can finish with some quick hitters. A vice presidential debate has been set for October 1st and will be hosted by CBS News. Both Governor Tim Walz and Senator J.D. Vance have agreed to participate. Trump's attorneys, by way of a letter sent to Judge Marchand, have requested that Trump's sentencing in his hush money case be delayed until after the election. Currently, his sentencing is set for September 18th.

The Google Threat Analysis Group said Iranian-linked hackers called APT42 targeted, quote, the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen individuals affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump, end quote. Google's team said these attempts were made in May and June, but that these same attempts were made in the 2020 election.

And finally, the last quick hitter, just clearing up some misleading reporting. The Washington Post reported yesterday that independent candidate RFK Jr. sought a meeting with Harris to discuss a potential cabinet role in her administration and possibly dropping out to endorse her. The article also mentioned a meeting between Kennedy and Trump, which we know did happen. So here's what we know as far as Kennedy reaching out to Harris. Kennedy said,

did request a meeting with Harris. However, he wrote on X Today, quote, I have no plans to endorse Kamala Harris for president. I do have a plan to defeat her, end quote. Kennedy's VP, Nicole Shanahan, similarly wrote on X, quote, confirming we are not in talks with Harris. Speaking personally, they're a lost cause, literally, end quote. Kennedy has said many times that he will continue to talk to both sides because he believes that is the way to heal the divide.

That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great weekend and I will talk to you on Monday.