Apple shared customer data with US government in a record-high 90% of cases, even as Trump administration complains it's not doing enough

TALES OF THE SECURITY STATE;
 A P3 BY ANY OTHER NAME

tsonnemaker@businessinsider.com (Tyler Sonnemaker), Business Insider•January 17, 2020

Donald Trump Tim Cook AP

Apple announced in a report Friday that it received a record-high 3,619 requests from the US government for users' account information in the first half of 2019, up 36% from the previous six-month period.

Apple said it complied with 90% of those requests, which generally asked for customers' iTunes or iCloud account details and occasionally their iCloud data.

Apple's report comes amid its battle with the US government over privacy, which was reignited this week after it refused an FBI request to unlock a mass shooter's iPhones.

The report paints a stark contrast to the government's efforts to paint Apple as unhelpful in assisting law enforcement's' investigations.

BIG DATA IS BIG BROTHER 
Apple released its biannual transparency report on Friday, which included details about the number and type of government and private party requests for customer information that the company received globally.

Apple said it received 3,619 "account requests" from the US government in the first half of 2019, nearly a 36% jump from the six months prior and more than previous periods (the report is available as far back as 2013).

Account requests, sent when law enforcement officials suspect illegal activity, typically seek "details of customers' iTunes or iCloud accounts, such as a name and address" and occasionally, "iCloud content, such as stored photos, email, iOS device backups, contacts or calendars," the company said.

For 90% of those requests, Apple provided the government with at least some information about the account in question, up from 88% during the previous period. Apple also said the requests encompassed more than 15,301 customer accounts, another record high.

The report comes amid a heated standoff between Apple and the Trump administration over privacy and public safety, which was reignited this week after the company refused to help the FBI unlock a mass shooter's iPhones.




BARR IS A BACKDOOR MAN, WANTS TO END ENCRYPTION 
Trump's attorney general, William Barr, has repeatedly accused Apple and other tech companies of not doing enough to assist law enforcement in investigations. Specifically, Barr has expressed frustration with Apple's unwillingness to create a "backdoor" that would allow officials to access encrypted information stored on customers' devices.

However, Apple's transparency report suggests that, overall, it has been overwhelmingly responsive to government requests for information. In this latest case, even some FBI officials have reportedly taken Apple's side, saying that Apple has provided "ample assistance."

Apple has defended its use of encryption, saying in a statement to Business Insider: "Law enforcement has access to more data than ever before in history, so Americans do not have to choose between weakening encryption and solving investigations. We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users' data."

The debate between Apple and the government has renewed concerns among privacy advocates that creating backdoors would undermine public safety, while security experts argue that the government already has the ability to access encrypted devices without Apple's help.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Modi’s Party Earned More Last Year Than All Its Rivals Combined

Archana Chaudhary, Bloomberg•January 17, 2020


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Modi’s Party Earned More Last Year Than All Its Rivals Combined



(Bloomberg) -- India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party more than doubled its income to $339 million in the financial year ended March 2019 ahead of federal elections, which is more than twice that of its five major rivals put together.

About two-thirds of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s income, or 14.50 billion rupees ($204 million), came from opaque financing instruments called electoral bonds. These bonds allow individuals as well as corporations -- including those partly owned by foreign entities -- to fund political parties anonymously, according to a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms, which cited the latest data from the Election Commission of India.

The BJP swept to a second term in office in May 2019, winning more than 300 seats out of 545 in India’s Lok Sabha or lower house of Parliament, giving Modi a powerful mandate.

The BJP’s largest rival, the Indian National Congress, reported 41.7% of its total income of 9.18 billion rupees came from electoral bonds, the report said. The only other national party to report income from electoral bonds was the All India Trinamool Congress, which received half its revenue of 1.92 billion rupees through the instrument.


Although the ruling BJP’s income jumped to 24.10 billion rupees from 10.27 billion rupees in 2017-18, its political competitors reported higher percentage hikes. The main opposition Congress party earned four-and-a-half times more in the financial year before the national elections. The biggest jump in income, 40-fold, was reported by the Trinamool Congress, which dominates West Bengal, a state that is due to go to the polls early 2021. India’s largest left party the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the only national grouping to report a fall in income by 3.7% compared with 2017-18, according to the report.

Gopal Krishna Agarwal, BJP’s spokesman for economic issues, and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Congress’ spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Sharp Rise

Indian political parties have shown a sharp rise in income after the government introduced electoral bonds in 2017-18. Although the BJP has consistently accounted for the highest income in Indian politics, its declared revenues have soared in 2018-19 by 148% from 9.70 billion rupees in 2014-15, the year Modi first came to power. The Congress, which had seen its income drop after 2014-15 when it lost power, reported a rise in income after the anonymous donations system of electoral bonds was introduced.

Despite the name, the bonds bear little resemblance to the promissory notes investors are familiar with where buyers are paid interest. Anyone can buy an electoral bond at the government-owned State Bank of India. They are then delivered to a political party, which can exchange them for cash. They don’t carry the name of the donor and are exempt from tax.

BJP’s former finance minister Arun Jaitley, who first announced plans for the electoral bonds in 2017, had argued they would improve transparency because they are banking instruments and every political party has to disclose how much it received. Prior to this, Indian political parties received most of their donations in cash.

India’s campaign finance overhaul began in 2017, when Parliament approved an amendment that made it easier for companies to donate to political parties, including removing a cap on corporate donations -- the maximum used to be 7.5% of a company’s average net income over three years. Requirements for companies to disclose how much they donated and to which party were also eliminated.

The latest income declarations are part of the audited income tax filings submitted to the independent Election Commission of India.


©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Political Turmoil to Be ‘New Normal’ for 2020, Risk Firm Says

Iain Marlow and Hannah Dormido,Bloomberg•January 15, 2020



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Political Turmoil to Be ‘New Normal’ for 2020, Risk Firm Says

(Bloomberg) -- The violent protests and political upheaval that marked 2019 and challenged governments from Hong Kong to Chile is set to stay and is now the “new normal,” according to a global risk firm.

Verisk Maplecroft, which advises corporate clients on political risk around the world, said in a new report released Thursday that it predicts “continued turmoil in 2020” as administrations around the world continue to be surprised by demonstrators and ill-prepared to address the underlying social grievances that spur them.

“We all need to buckle up for 2020,” said Miha Hribernik, the Singapore-based head of Asia risk insight for Verisk Maplecroft. “The rage that caught many governments off-guard last year isn’t going anywhere and we’d all better adapt.”

Many governments were caught by surprise by the scale and ferocity of the protests and ended up attempting to crackdown on the movements, deploying what human rights group have said were arbitrary arrests and indiscriminate violence. That response has ended up further radicalizing protesters and provoking more violent demonstrations, Verisk Maplecroft said in its Political Risk Outlook 2020.

Rising Unrest

Of the countries seeing significantly more angry protests than usual, some of the steepest increases on firm’s unrest index were in Chile and Hong Kong. Chile rose from 91st place to 6th on the index as simmering social strife transformed Latin America’s richest and most stable nation into a focal point of chaotic protests that caused some $2 billion of property damages and killed more than two dozen people.

Hong Kong similarly rose from 117th to 26th after seven months of pro-democracy street protests, the firm said. Although prompted by a since-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, Verisk Maplecroft added that the “root cause of discontent has been the rollback of civil and political rights since 1997.”

India and Iraq, which have both seen determined protests recently, ranked much lower on the list of worsening hot spots because they began last year with heightened levels of unrest. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi now faces the most significant challenge to his rule since being first being elected in 2014, as protesters take to the streets criticizing his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for its anti-Muslim policies.


Many governments have “reacted with a combination of repression and limited concessions” which achieved little because resilient protest movements have adapted rapidly to police tactics, Hribernik said.

“During 2019, governments worldwidescrambled to find an effective response to protests,” he said. “We don’t see much changing during 2020, and January has so far borne this out -- protesters have continued to turn out in their thousands in Iran, Iraq, India, Chile, Hong Kong and Lebanon -- to name just a few places.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Hannah Dormido in Hong Kong at hdormido@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Muneeza Naqvi

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

How a Chilean dog ended up as a face of the New York City subway protests

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, Associate Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, University of California San Diego

A man holds a sign with an image of Negro Matapacos, in Santiago, Chile.
MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images

A black Chilean dog wearing a red bandana made his mark during the New York City subway protests beginning in November 2019.

The protests were ignited by videos documenting police assaults on black and brown youth in the subways. For example, in one, an officer punches a 15-year-old unarmed African American teenager in the face.

Stickers bearing the dog’s image jumping a turnstile appeared on subway walls and trains. They also surfaced in social media illustrations announcing his arrival in New York City.

Who is this dog – and how did he end up in New York City protests?

His name is Negro Matapacos. The dog attained celebrity status for uniting with the protesters during the 2011 uprising in Chile for education reform, facing the police alongside the students.

I have studied animals’ consciousness, as well as connections between violence against nonwhite people and violence against other species.

I see Negro Matapacos’ legacy as providing a dramatic contrast to the use of dogs to suppress dissent. In my view, as someone who takes animal agency seriously, he joined the front lines voluntarily to defend the protesters against the police.
Rise to fame

Negro Matapacos first became famous for protecting students from police brutality in Santiago, Chile in 2011.


He lived most of his life on Santiago’s streets. In 2009, a resident of the university district, Maria Campos, invited Negro Matapacos into her home. He thrived under her care, but was determined to remain independent. Though he slept at Campos’ house, she honored his choice to move freely about Santiago.

Negro Matapacos began spending time on the university campuses in Campos’ neighborhood. Along with a population of free-roaming dogs, he developed friendships with the students.

In 2011, the students organized marches demanding free, quality public education. Riot police used tear gas and water cannons against them.

Campos reported that on protest mornings, Matapacos waited desperately to be let out. She said a prayer, traced a cross on his forehead and kissed him on the snout before opening the door. He then raced in the direction of the demonstrations.

Negro Matapacos – a name the dog received as he attained notoriety – literally translates to “Black Cop Killer.” In Latin America, it is not uncommon to use an animal’s color as their name. “Matapacos” has a specific local meaning, referencing the infamous brutality of the Chilean police. Negro Matapacos never killed anyone, but snarled, lunged and barked when the police threatened and assaulted the protesters.
Going international

Negro Matapacos died of natural causes in 2017, surrounded by caregivers. However, he continues to represent indignation against oppression.

In October 2019, massive protests erupted in Chile, sparked by a 4% subway fare increase. The demonstrators want socioeconomic equality and free education and health care. They oppose the right-wing president, Sebastián Piñera.

Negro Matapacos’ image has appeared throughout the protests, gracing banners, posters, decals, murals and papier mâché and metal sculptures.

The Chilean demonstrators’ hashtag, #EvasiónMassiva, references subway fare evasion. Stickers appearing in New York City depict a smiling Negro Matapacos jumping a turnstile atop the word “evade.”

In addition to New York City, Negro Matapacos’ image is featured in a mural in Malinarco, Mexico.

At Shibuya Station in Tokyo, a red bandana much like the one Negro Matapacos wore adorns Hachiko’s statue. Hachiko is a famous dog who awaited his guardian’s return from work long after his death.

An enduring image

These far-flung images of Negro Matapacos reflect the universality of his social justice message.

In a documentary about him, sociologist Jaime Rodriguez observed that the Chilean demonstrations beginning in 2011 responded to the absence of a social safety net. Chile’s free-roaming dogs epitomize exposure to harm: “There is nothing more precarious than a dog in the street,” Rodriguez said.

One student protester speculated to director Víctor Ramírez about why dogs like Negro Matapacos joined the students. He speaks to the shared vulnerability of free-roaming dogs and students to institutional violence.

Another protester references Matapacos’ yearning for recognition, which he got from the students: “We are marching for the things we need, and the dogs unite themselves to our cause. They unite themselves with us because they need our love and affection.”

[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. ]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
When Trump calls someone a dog, he’s tapping into ugly history

Countries to watch in 2020, from Chile to Afghanistan: 5 essential reads

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

From the Conversation 

THIS IS NOT THE ONLY PROTEST DOG DOCUMENTED AS JOINING PROTESTERS 

AGAINST THE POLICE, AN INHERENT TRAIT OF DISTRUST OF UNIFORMS FROM MEMORY OF ABUSE

'Alarm' over climate change rising among Americans, survey shows

By Ellen Wulfhorst, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Reuters•January 16, 2020

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The share of Americans "alarmed" over climate change has hit a new high, research showed on Thursday, spurred in part by growing media coverage and by Democratic presidential contenders paying attention to the issue.

A majority of Americans now say they are "concerned" or "alarmed" about climate change, with those "alarmed" increasing almost threefold in the last five years, according to research by Yale University.

Fueling that concern has been the prominence of the issue among Democratic candidates seeking their party's nomination to try to unseat Republican President Donald Trump in November, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

For Democrats, "this is one of the top voting priorities among their base, and that has never been true in American political history before," Leiserowitz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Each of the Democratic candidates - now numbering a dozen - has called for concerted action to address global warming and for the United States to remain in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The Trump administration is in the process of pulling the United States - one of the world's biggest emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases - out of the agreement adopted by nearly 200 nations with the aim of limiting global warming.

Climate change is likely to drop from political headlines once the Democratic nominee is chosen later this year and faces off with Trump, however, because it will be just one of many ways in which the candidates differ, Leiserowitz predicted.

Yale's research on attitudes about climate change sorts respondents into six categories - from "alarmed" to "dismissive", a grouping for those who do not think global warming is taking places or that it is caused by human action.

The latest results, from November 2019, found the "alarmed" segment at a high of 31%. The "dismissive" and "doubtful" categories stood at 10% each.

The data has been collected from an average of about 1,250 online respondents twice a year since October 2014 by Yale and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Growing concerns about climate change also were fueled by a report on dire global warming risks facing oceans and ice issued by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year, Leiserowitz said.

Growing media attention as more news organizations cover the topic has played a role as well in changing attitudes, he said.

In addition, more Americans are starting to directly experience climate change impacts - from wildfires to floods or other extreme weather - or have seen them on television, he said.

For a growing number of Americans, "this isn't far away in time and space anymore. This is here and now and it's real." (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Laurie Goering

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Chilean university admissions tests hit by fresh protests

By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda,Reuters•January 6, 2020



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Chilean university admissions tests hit by fresh protests
Protests against Chile's government in Valparaiso

By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - University entrance exams to be taken by 300,000 students around Chile were disrupted in some cities on Monday by fresh protests over inequality and elitism, with some students blocking access to test sites and burning exam papers.

The authorities suspended the university selection test - known locally as the PSU - in 64 of more than 700 exam centers around the country, citing in a statement the safety of students, staff and exam materials.

The test had been suspended twice since November amid widespread social unrest in Chile that has left more than 27 people dead, thousands injured and thousands more arrested.

With the unrest dwindling to a handful of smaller protests each week, the test had been rescheduled to this week, only to face calls for a boycott by student union groups that claim the admissions system privileges those who attend better schools, in better areas and have better resources to prepare for it.

"We will continue to fight against market education and for a country where poor and working-class children can study without competition or segregation," the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (ACES) said in a statement on Twitter.

Students protested outside exam centers in cities around the country, including Santiago, the capital, the coastal city of Valparaiso and Calama to the north. Students carried banners calling for a more equitable education system.

In some cases, students blocked access to the sites, disrupted the exams, vandalized classroom furniture and burned exam papers. Eighty-one people were detained for damage and public disorder, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Education undersecretary Juan Vargas said those affected by the suspensions would be able to complete the test later.

"That group of young people who have been affected ... will have a solution, an alternative, to take the PSU," he told reporters in Santiago.

In recent years protests by Chilean students over the country's highly privatized education system have made global headlines and brought pledges of reform including making higher education free of charge, improving quality and widening access to more people.

Since October, Chile has been rocked by broader protests that started over a hike in public transport fares and broadened to include calls for better pensions, healthcare and education.




(Reporting by Natalia Ramos; writing by Aislinn Laing; Editing by Leslie Adler)

View reactions (2)

Crossing continents to cover protests

Reuters•January 7, 2020

 Crossing continents to cover protests

FILE PHOTO: A man reacts in front of Haitian National Police (PNH) officers during clashes with protesters marching to demand the resignation of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, in the streets of Petion Ville, Port-au-Princ

BEIRUT (Reuters) - One moment, photographer Andres Martinez Casares was out on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, dodging teargas canisters as crowds called for the resignation of President Jovenel Moise and his government.

The next, he was in Beirut which was packed with protesters chanting for the political elite to be ousted.

Journalists have to live with sharp transitions as they move from story to story. Martinez Casares had to travel 10,500 km (6,500 miles), in just over a day, from the unrest in the heart of the Caribbean to mass protests in the Middle East.

The photographer - who had been working in Haiti since 2010 - had been asked to fly from Port-au-Prince to Guadeloupe to Paris and then Beirut to join the local team who had been covering the Lebanese demonstrations for weeks.

Reuters has a string of international bureaus well placed to report on developments on their patch, but on particularly long-running stories, they welcome reinforcements.

"Part of the job is to be a quick responder," said the 37-year-old from Leon, Spain.

"On my first day in a new place, I always like to be with somebody who is familiar with the situation and can help me to understand it on the ground."

Picture editors Cynthia Karam and Maria Semerdjian brought him up to speed on the latest developments in Beirut and showed him the main locations.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

From then on it was a question of following an adaptable set of rules of engagement - wearing the right protective gear, checking for exit routes, watching the behaviour of security forces and protesters.

"I've always tried to work with somebody that I can trust, a motorcycle taxi driver in Haiti, for example, or other colleagues - keeping an eye on them and vice versa in case there is a problem so we can assist each other.

"And when I’m taking pictures, it's about being respectful, responsible and accurate, not exaggerating or minimizing, and being honest and fair."

It's also about telling the story of individuals caught up in political unrest.

The last pictures he took in Haiti showed members of the national cycle team training in the backstreets as the protests raged around them.

Among the first he took in Lebanon showed life in the street camps that sprang up during the demonstrations - women chatting on the roof of an abandoned cinema, tents in a downtown square.

Three weeks on, those protests had died down in Beirut.

But just over 13,500 km southwest on another continent, thousands more people were heading out on the streets, many of them calling for the resignation of their own president. Martinez Casares got on another plane, heading for Santiago, Chile.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Evelyn Yang, wife of presidential candidate Andrew Yang, tells CNN she was sexually assaulted by her doctor

Raechal Shewfelt Editor, Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo TV•January 16, 2020


Andrew Yang’s wife Evelyn reveals she was sexually assaulted by her doctor

Evelyn Yang is ready to tell her story.

The wife of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang revealed Thursday to CNN that, while pregnant with her first child in 2012, she was sexually assaulted by her obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia University.

She realizes now that it began when her physician, Dr. Robert Hadden, asked her inappropriate questions during visits.

"There was absolutely no premise for that line of questioning, and it seemed like he just wanted to hear about me talking about sex,” she said. “What I kept sticking to was this: ‘OK, so my doctor is pervy. I have a pervy doctor, but I’m going to focus on having a healthy baby,’ and the idea of changing doctors was overwhelming for me.”

It got worse.

“The examinations became longer, more frequent, and I learned that they were unnecessary most of the time,” Yang said.

Evelyn Yang, wife of presidential candidate Andrew Yang, says she’s a survivor of sexual assault by a doctor who has been accused of abusing dozens of his patients, most of whom were pregnant at the time.https://t.co/5BXCqjAiz7

— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) January 17, 2020

When Yang was seven months pregnant, her doctor did something even more extreme.

“I was in the exam room, and I was dressed and ready to go. Then, at the last minute, he kind of made up an excuse,” she said. “He said something about, ‘I think you might need a C-section,’ and he proceeded to grab me over to him and undress me and examine me internally, ungloved.”

Yang said she knew it was “wrong” as it happened: “I knew I was being assaulted.”

But Yang didn’t run or fight, like she had always thought she would.

“I just kind of froze like a deer in headlights, just frozen. I knew it was happening. I could feel it,” she explained. “I remember trying to fix my eyes on a spot on the wall and just trying to avoid seeing his face as he was assaulting me, just waiting for it to be over.”

She remained silent about the traumatizing incident, not even telling her husband for months afterward. Instead, she found a new doctor.

Hadden’s attorney has denied Yang’s accusations in legal filings, according to CNN.

Yang said she didn’t stop blaming herself for what happened until she received a letter saying Hadden had left his practice. She began searching online and discovered another accusation of sexual assault against him.

That’s when she told her husband — he cried — and decided to find a lawyer. It turned out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was looking into the stories of 17 other women with similar experiences. Yang eventually testified in front of a grand jury, and Hadden was indicted. He ended up agreeing to a plea bargain and entered guilty pleas to one count of forcible touching and one count of third-degree sexual abuse. While he did lose his license, Hadden escaped prison time.

Yang was disappointed, to say the least.

She felt betrayed by the district attorney’s office and by the university, the latter of which had allowed Hadden to return to work after being arrested, when another women accused him of licking her vagina during an examination. The arrest happened six weeks before Yang was assaulted.

“What happened to me should have never happened. He was arrested in his office," Yang said. “I mean at the very least, the bare minimum would be to make sure that what happened to me could have been prevented.”

Yang and 31 other women are now suing the university and its affiliates, for enabling Hadden, as well as Hadden himself.

Hadden denies the accusations in court papers, CNN reports. Columbia has reportedly “contested the suit on procedural grounds.”

Yang decided to tell her story now, she said, because she’s felt a strong connection with the many people she’s met during her husband’s campaign.

“Something about being on the trail and meeting people and seeing the difference that we’ve been making already has moved me to share my own story about it, about sexual assault,” she said.

Candidate Yang supported his wife on social media after she shared her story.
I love my wife very very much.
— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) January 17, 2020

---30---

Chile Shuns Copper Giant Investment as Social Problems Mount

Eduardo Thomson Bloomberg January 6, 2020


(Bloomberg) -- Chile’s government ruled out fresh funds for its strategic copper producer, as it plans to spend $3 billion this year to contain a wave of nationwide protests.

Codelco, as the world’s largest copper producer is known, needs billions of dollars to upgrade its mines but will need to find other sources of financing, according to Finance Minister Ignacio Briones.

“We’re not talking about a capital injection,” Briones said in an interview with Radio Pauta Bloomberg on Monday. “The state has always supported Codelco in such a way that it can access financing via capitalization or international markets.”

The government of President Sebastian Pinera is increasing spending to boost the economy and counteract the impact of more than two months of social unrest that have shuttered shops and delayed investments. Officials are also evaluating the costs of a healthcare overhaul, Briones said.

That has left Codelco to fund a $20 billion investment program on its own, or see output slump as copper grades decline. For a company already weighed down by $19.4 billion of debt, that is a tall order

Codelco, or Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile, has been able to keep its output steady over the past few years, but the ore it’s extracting is of increasingly lower quality, boosting processing costs. Without access to government funds, the company’s debt could soar to $21 billion, former Chief Executive Officer Nelson Pizarro said last year. It stood at $18.4 billion at the end of the third quarter, up from $15.5 billion at the end of 2018.

Credit Downgrade

The nationwide protests began in October over a rise in the price of metro fares before ballooning to include much broader demands. Pinera initially called in troops and established a curfew before reversing course and agreeing to a plebiscite on a new constitution.

Still, his actions were too late to prevent a hit on one of Latin America’s richest economies. Economic activity has contracted for two months in a row, the central bank has warned of an all-out recession and the peso plunged to a record low before policy makers intervened.

Yet Chile’s government is not expecting a sovereign credit rating downgrade, as the country has a relatively low level of debt compared to other countries, Briones said in the interview. The nation’s debt levels should stabilize in 2024 after rising for several years, he said.

Read More: Chile Seeks to Spend its Way Out of Crisis at a Hefty Price

Taxes will rise gradually, though there’s no room to lift them to levels seen in Europe, he said, adding that Chile’s tax system must be simple, fair and pro-investment. The government plans to call a panel of experts to advise on a long-term tax strategy. That body will seek to establish a path for tax collection that’s in line with future economic growth, he said.

(Adds details throughout)

--With assistance from Philip Sanders.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduardo Thomson in Santiago at ethomson1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, ;Walter Brandimarte at wbrandimarte@bloomberg.net, Matthew Malinowski

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Why Latin America’s Bloody Protests Won’t Die Out Anytime Soon

Eduardo Thomson, Ezra Fieser and Stephan Kueffner,
Bloomberg•January 8, 2020



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Why Latin America’s Bloody Protests Won’t Die Out Anytime Soon



(Bloomberg) -- It’s called Italy Plaza, a vast traffic circle in the Chilean capital of Santiago. To the north and east live the country’s ultra-wealthy. One way of describing those out of touch with the rest of the country’s grim reality is to say they’ve “never been below Italy Plaza.”

The spot is ground zero for furious street demonstrations that have turned Chile from Latin America’s richest and stablest nation into a test case of profound social unrest. The area, which demonstrators have renamed Dignity Plaza, is coated in layers of graffiti, with most shops looted and shuttered.

The case of Chile — $2 billion in property damage, 26 dead — has shocked the investor world because it was supposed to be a regional model. But the virus of discontent was already spreading elsewhere, with streets in Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia turning into scenes of pot-banging fire-setting fury.

Numerous factors are at play. Among the most significant are economic inequality, ethnic tensions and police brutality. While the most violent protests have for now dissipated, these forces continue to gnaw away at social cohesion and could once again spark unrest unexpectedly and suddenly. Institutions and the rule of law are fragile and economies are expected to have another tough year.

Here are snapshots of three issues in three countries.

Chile’s Inequality

Every Friday, after David Vargas completes his shift as a technician at a credit-card company in the upscale Santiago neighborhood of Nueva Las Condes he heads to nearby Italy Plaza to join the protests.

Vargas, 38, embodies Chile’s socio-economic divide. He comes from a poor family and works among the well-to-do. And while he once watched the gap shrink, lately he’s seen it stagnate. He was struck when he saw the difference in how the authorities treated his work neighborhood from the one where he lives.

The area around his company “was packed with soldiers,” he said. “They were guarding everything when absolutely nothing had happened. But if you went downtown or to other parts of Santiago, it was pure chaos. They just guarded from Italy Plaza to the rich neighborhoods.”

Vargas’s father, a former factory worker, collects a monthly disability pension of just 80,000 pesos, about $100. His mother cleaned houses.

“I’m protesting mostly because of the pensions and to show solidarity because right now I have privileges that many don’t have,” Vargas said. “I know what it is to live in a poor neighborhood, I know what it is to wait for eight hours at public hospitals for service, I know what it means that the elderly receive extremely low pensions and don’t have enough to live or to buy food.”

A few blocks away is where it all began. In early October at a subway station, students plotted ticket evasions sparked by a fare increase of 30 pesos. They coordinated on social networks and dangled their feet over the tracks to force trains to stop. Things got nasty, fast. Police special forces clashed with the protesters, and groups set dozens of stations on fire.

Stunned, the government declared a state of emergency and a curfew, sending the army to the streets. Protests morphed into the biggest social unrest since at least the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s. They were now against every injustice imaginable: low pensions, school debts, health services, public education, police brutality, women’s rights, even replacing the Pinochet-era constitution, which President Sebastian Pinera has agreed to in an attempt to calm the situation.

The message was clear. The neglected middle class in South America’s richest country was very mad. It was a taste of the frustration of similar populations across the region in recent years.

Paulina Astroza, professor of political science at Chile’s Universidad de Concepcion, said Chile’s economic model worked when commodity prices were soaring but has failed since.

“The issue is distrust of the political class, of the church, even of union and labor leaders,” she said. “There has to be a change in the model for more wealth redistribution or the grotesque inequality and the discontent will continue. If we want to avoid other unrest movements in one, two or even five years, we have to see a redistribution of power.”

Colombia’s Police Brutality

Dilan Cruz wasn’t much for politics. An 18-year-old with a broad smile and a big group of friends, Cruz joined Colombia’s anti-government demonstrations in late November to protest for more funding for education.

“He believed he could get ahead if he could get a chance to study,” said Alexa Beltran, a close friend. He was about to graduate high school and planned to study business administration, she said.

Cruz was killed by riot-control police at one of the demonstrations. His death was a flash point and an example of aggressive police tactics that have inflamed protests in countries across the Andes.

Dozens of demonstrators have been killed and thousands injured by state forces from Bogota to Santiago. The violence has been most prominent in Chile, where thousands have been hurt, including more than 200 who sustained eye injuries from the use of pellet shotguns by authorities, according to human-rights groups.

“There are similarities in the way the police units are behaving,” said Silvia Otero Bahamon, a professor at Universidad del Rosario in Bogota who studies inequality and political violence.

Dictatorship, war and high levels of violence in the past have led to heavily militarized police forces. Abuses are common. Colombians, who lived through decades of armed conflict, have become so accustomed to them that few of the more than 40 killings of demonstrators by anti-riot police in the last two decades have been investigated, Otero Bahamon said.

“Repression of protest by police is common in Colombia,” she said. “That’s why what’s happened with Dilan Cruz has been surprising.”

Cruz’s death sparked fresh protests and anger. Marchers carried signs bearing his likeness and broke out into spontaneous chants of “Dilan didn’t die, he was murdered.” Protest leaders are demanding the government dismantle the national police’s Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron, known by its Spanish acronym ESMAD.

President Ivan Duque has ruled out such a move. Cruz’s death is under investigation by the attorney general’s office.

Sometimes provoked but other times not, ESMAD agents have been seen clubbing protesters, kicking a woman in the face and casually tossing tear gas into peaceful demonstrations.

Cruz came from a broken home; his father died years ago and his mother was in jail. He lived with his older sister in a hardscrabble neighborhood, taking day jobs selling fast food. He’d joined a few peaceful protests in the past, but none of them compared with the demonstrations that shook Colombia starting on Nov. 21, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a broad-based rejection of government policies.

Two days after the protests began, Cruz was on the street. He picked up a teargas canister, threw it at anti-riot police and ran, video footage from cellphones and street cameras shows. An officer shot a projectile, hitting Cruz in the head.

Cruz collapsed in front of an internet cafe on a normally busy commercial street. Two days later, he died in a hospital. His sister Denis attended his graduation ceremony in his place. In a video she posted, she said, “No more violence. Dialogue and love will always be our best weapons.”

Ecuador’s Indigenous Tensions

When President Lenin Moreno announced the end of gasoline and diesel subsidies in October to comply with an International Monetary Fund program, the reaction was so violent that he fled the capital, Quito, and moved the government to the coastal business center of Guayaquil. At the heart of the protests were indigenous tribal groups, among the most affected.

Round-the-clock roadblocks, achieved by felling trees, burning tires and rolling boulders, paralyzed large areas. Some ransacked flower plantations and farms. Others caused $140 million in damage by sabotaging oil production. Looting and street riots culminated in the arson of the Office of the Comptroller General and several deaths, leading Moreno to repeal his decree. The indigenous umbrella group CONAIE called off the demonstrations. The government is back in Quito. But tension remains high.

Jaime Vargas is a 40-year-old indigenous leader who wears a necklace ending in a jaguar’s tooth he said he pulled from a live cat himself, along with a brightly feathered crown typical in swathes of the Amazon where he is from. “People have been carrying a heavy load. Of the violence, there are justifications,” he said.

The indigenous, who make up about 10%-20% of the country’s 17 million inhabitants by various estimates, mirror the marginalized poor across South America. Their cultures are as diverse as their homelands, ranging from sweltering rain forests to icy, windswept mountains capped with receding glaciers. Some came into contact with Western civilization only when the oil industry showed up in the 1960s and 1970s, while most descend from people who fought both invading Incas and Spanish conquistadors hundreds of years ago.

Many have moved to urban areas for education and jobs, only to find both elusive. They live in marginal areas, exposed to crime, drugs and prostitution.

CONAIE leaders, wearing traditional ponchos and felt hats and carrying hardwood spears, have toppled several elected governments in Ecuador in the past. Moreno has responded cautiously while trying to move the economy to more of a market orientation.

Luisa Lozano, the 43-year-old head of CONAIE’s women’s organization — who has already beaten back charges for her role in previous anti-government protests including blocking highways — wears a wide-brimmed black and white hat she says is a symbol of the sun worshiped as a deity before the Spaniards arrived.

“The more repression, the greater the adrenaline to resist,” she said in reference to the October protests and clashes over fuel prices. “The more blood, the stronger the peoples’ reaction. When it comes down to it, people will react because we know everything we’ve achieved has come through struggle after struggle.”

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To contact the authors of this story: Eduardo Thomson in Santiago at ethomson1@bloomberg.netEzra Fieser in Bogota at efieser@bloomberg.netStephan Kueffner in Lima at skueffner1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, Ethan BronnerMelinda Grenier

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