US Sanctions by the Numbers

Spotlight on Cyber Sanctions


By Jason Bartlett and Megan Ophel

MAY 04, 2021

Cyberattacks pose a serious threat to U.S. national security and the integrity of the global commerce and financial system, especially when state-sponsored actors conduct and/or facilitate them. For over a decade, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have targeted U.S. government agencies and employees, financial institutions, business enterprises, and average citizens to exploit U.S. institutions and people. These cyberattacks include, but are not limited to: Chinese government-led cyber espionage attempts to obtain U.S. government secrets and sensitive information crucial to U.S. national security; Russia’s numerous disinformation campaigns to influence election decisions and public opinion; North Korean cyber agents and accomplices hacking cryptocurrency exchanges and distributing ransomware to demand payments for the country’s heavily sanctioned economy; and concerted efforts by Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Iranian cybercriminals to steal COVID-19 vaccine research and data. Given the wide scope of cybercrime targets and logistical difficulty involved with attributing cyberattacks to specific individuals and entities located in various regions across the globe, the U.S. government has struggled to formulate a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.


As illicit actors and hostile foreign governments continue to exploit global cyberspace and new financial technologies, President Joe Biden has elevated the status of cyber threats within U.S. national security considerations to an “urgent initiative,” suggesting an increased use of government measures to curtail this illicit activity. This edition of Sanctions by the Numbers will provide an overview of U.S. cyber-related sanctions authorities from the Obama administration to recent developments under the Biden administration, followed by trends in the deployment of cyber sanctions and snapshots of malicious North Korean and Russian cyber networks that cyber-related sanctions exposed. The objective is to highlight key developments in U.S. cyber sanctions policy, as well as the successes and limitations sanctions offer the U.S. government in identifying and targeting malicious cyber activity that threatens U.S. national security.

The Evolution of U.S. Cyber Sanctions

The U.S. government first incorporated sanctions policy into its cybersecurity strategy in 2012 when Barack Obama’s administration designated Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence under terrorism-related authorities for illicit hacking activities in coordination with Hezbollah. Since then, the Treasury Department has issued a total of 311 cyber-related sanctions with the largest number against Russia (141), Iran (112), and North Korea (18). The watershed moment for cyber sanctions came in November 2014 when the Lazarus Group, a North Korean–sponsored cybercrime organization, hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment. Following this cyberattack, the Obama administration created the first cyber-specific sanctions program in 2015. Pursuant to Executive Order 13694, this authority allows the U.S. government to designate individuals and entities solely on their participation in, and/or facilitation of, malicious cyber activities without needing connections to additional illicit activity covered under other sanctions programs, such as terrorism. However, the Treasury Department didn’t impose sanctions under the original cyber-specific framework until it was amended in 2016, demonstrating that the logistical difficulty of attributing cyberattacks to specific individuals or entities abroad remained a challenge for the U.S. government.

A possible explanation is that state-sponsored cybercriminals often conduct cyberattacks against the United States while located in either hostile foreign jurisdictions with low to non-existent U.S. law enforcement capabilities, such as Russia or China, or regions with poor sanctions compliance and legal framework, such as Southeast Asia. This significantly limits the United States’ ability to attribute and/or punish illicit actors engaging in cybercrime overseas. For example, the Treasury Department wasn’t able to sanction the Lazarus Group for its 2014 cyberattack against Sony Pictures until 2019.


In the aftermath of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Obama issued Executive Order 13757, which amended the cyber-specific sanctions program now known as CYBER2 to include cyber-enabled election interference as a sanctionable activity. This amendment resulted in the sanctioning of nine Russian individuals and entities involved in the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee. Even so, cyber-enabled election interference remains a significant threat to the democratic fabric of the United States. Cyber threats continued to evolve during the Trump administration, which led the U.S. government to expand cyber-related sanctions through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and Executive Order 13848. The former targets Russian-sponsored cybercriminals and the latter expanded sanctions on election interference. In response to the growing cyber threat, the Biden administration has called for a national review of cybersecurity protocols and sanctions programs.

Cyber-related Designations, 2011–2021


During the Trump administration, cyber-related sanctions increased exponentially in response to growing cyber threats from North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia. (Source: Endnote 1)


Although both the Obama and Trump administrations faced rising cyber threats from abroad, their use of cyber-related sanctions varied significantly. Despite creating the first cyber-specific sanctions program, the Obama administration imposed relatively few cyber-related designations, averaging 10 per year between 2012 and 2017. In contrast, the Trump administration averaged 57 cyber-related sanctions per year from 2017 to 2020. This increase may be partly due to a concurrent increase in the frequency and scale of cyberattacks, as some of the major state-sponsored cyberattacks conducted during this timeframe include: the 2017 Equifax hack (China); the 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack (North Korea); the 2017 NotPetya ransomware attack; and the 2020 SolarWinds breach (Russia). While the rate of sanctions designations per year has increased from 15 in 2012 to the highest level yet of 90 in 2020, illicit cyber actors continue to exploit weaknesses in the U.S. government’s ability to anticipate and prevent further cyberattacks. As previously mentioned, the logistical difficulty of attributing cyberattacks to specific actors often delays the rate at which the U.S. government can respond via sanctions, ultimately weakening the deterrence factor of cyber sanctions.


Most recently, the U.S. government discovered two major Chinese- and Russian-led cyberattacks that targeted federal agencies with the goal of obtaining sensitive government information: the Microsoft hack in March 2021 and the year-long SolarWinds breach in 2020. According to Microsoft, the Chinese hacking group Hafnium targeted program vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server, an email and calendar application, through leased virtual private networks (VPNs) in the United States. VPNs allow internet users to create a private network connection that obfuscates their original internet protocol (IP) address. They can be used to access region-restricted websites and entertainment materials, as well as shield one’s physical location when conducting cyberattacks against a target in a foreign country. Although government officials are still investigating the repercussions of this cybersecurity breach, the modified email software is believed to have infected tens of thousands of U.S. businesses, government agencies, and schools. The Russian-led cyberattack against U.S. software company SolarWinds involved a modified software update that granted Russian cybercriminals access to approximately 18,000 private and government computers across several federal agencies, including the Departments of the Treasury, State, and Defense.

These two major cyberattacks demonstrate both Beijing's and Moscow’s growing cyber aggression toward Washington, highlighting an urgent need for greater U.S. cybersecurity measures. In response, the Biden administration attributed the SolarWinds hack to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in a new set of sanctions targeting Russia’s malign foreign activities, addressing both general malicious cyber activities and cyber-enabled election interference. This new executive order extends restrictions on U.S. banks’ dealings with Russian sovereign debt. It also permits the U.S. government to issue status-based sanctions on any Russian company operating in the technology sector, as opposed to conduct-based sanctions, which demonstrates U.S. efforts to stymie further fusion between the private sector and Moscow.

Trends in the Deployment of Cyber-related Sanctions

Although the CYBER2 sanctions program increased the global breadth of U.S. sanctions by authorizing designations solely for participation in, and/or facilitation of, illicit cyber activities, there is a continued use of other sanctions programs to impose cyber-related sanctions. For example, the Treasury has imposed only 19 percent of cyber-related designations targeting Iran under CYBER2. The rest relied primarily on country-specific sanctions programs dating back to the Obama administration, targeting individuals linked to the previously designated Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Similarly, all 18 sanctions on North Korean individuals and entities are pursuant to country-specific programs (DPRK2 and DPRK3), which target actors directly linked to the North Korean government. A possible explanation is that under the auspices of country-specific programs, the Treasury only needs to link individuals and entities to sanctioned government organizations, rather than to a specific cyber-attack—a much easier task given the challenges of attributing specific illicit cyber activities to specific actors. This method of leveraging country-specific sanctions programs to target specific illicit activity is a common practice also seen in human rights– and corruption-related designations. In April 2021, the Biden administration issued 35 new cyber-related sanctions on Russia, with almost all designations pursuant to CYBER2 and country-specific or election interference sanctions programs. Although most of the newly sanctioned entities are linked to previously sanctioned entities under CYBER2, such as the Internet Research Agency, the new country-specific executive order on Russia increases the administration’s ability to sanction companies in the Russian technology sector.

Total Cyber-related Designations under CYBER2 versus Non-CYBER2 2011–2021

Designations pursuant to CYBER2 dominated cyber-related sanctions until 2020, which showed an increase in the use of other sanctions authorities, such as country-specific programs, to target illicit cyber activity. (Source: Endnote 2)

Cyber-related designations are highly concentrated in a handful of countries, with the greatest in Russia (45 percent), Iran (36 percent), and North Korea (6 percent). The Treasury imposed nearly all remaining cyber-related sanctions on individuals and entities located in various other jurisdictions due to their connections to sanctioned Russian, Iranian, and/or North Korean actors. For example, all five designations on Chinese individuals and entities for cybercrimes were because of their involvement with activities conducted by sanctioned Russian or North Korean actors. This includes two Chinese nationals who were designated under the auspices of CYBER2 and DPRK3 for laundering over $100 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency on behalf of North Korea in March 2020. An exception to this pattern is Nigeria where the Treasury sanctioned six Nigerian individuals in 2020 who were involved in email scams and romance fraud against American individuals and businesses—though these were not state-sponsored.

Global Distribution of Cyber-related Sanctions, 2011–2021



To address growing cyber threats from abroad, the Treasury has issued a landslide of cyber-related sanctions, pursuant to both CYBER2 and country-specific programs, predominantly against Russia (141), Iran (112), and North Korea (18). (Source: Endnote 3)


Despite its low number of cyber-related sanctions relative to Russia, Iran, and North Korea, China remains a major cyber threat to the United States. While the Justice Department has indicted over 25 Chinese nationals, including officers in China’s People’s Liberation Army, for various cyber-enabled activities, such as the 2017 Equifax data breach, the Treasury has yet to sanction any Chinese national or entity for illicit cyber activities conducted on behalf of the Chinese government. This stems in part from a repeated high-level agreement between the United States and China to distinguish between cyber espionage conducted for commercial reasons, as opposed to that done for traditional national security reasons. The United States endeavors to prevent escalating tensions with China while keeping the possibility of imposing further costs on the table.

Spotlight on Malicious Cyber Networks: Russia and North Korea

While sanctions may have a limited material effect on individuals and entities, they play an important role in “naming and shaming” actors and the countries that sponsor them by providing information on the connections between governments and illicit actors. The following visualizations of Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designations and U.S. Department of Justice indictments provide a snapshot of the complex networks of Russian and North Korean government-sponsored organizations, businesses, and cybercriminals responsible for major cyberattacks around the world.

Russia’s Federal Security Service Technology Procurement Networks According to OFAC Designations

A significant number of individuals and businesses have been sanctioned for providing the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) with technology and equipment used for malign activities. The new executive order on Russia increases the Treasury’s flexibility in imposing sanctions on private companies in the Russian technology sector. (Source: Endnote 4)


A cluster of cyber-related sanctions on Russia centers on the activities of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the internal security agency of Russia. The Treasury first sanctioned the FSB in December 2016 for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election, and since then, both OFAC and the Department of Justice have designated or indicted more than 50 individuals and entities linked to the FSB. A major area of focus for Treasury sanctions has been the connections between the FSB and businesses providing technological support and surveillance technologies. In 2018 and 2020, the Treasury sanctioned two Russian companies under CYBER2, Divetechnoservices and Okeanos, for providing the FSB with underwater equipment and diving technology, which were allegedly used in efforts to monitor telecommunications data through undersea communications cables. Ultimately, these designations led to additional sanctions on many other Russian companies and individuals who facilitated sanctions evasion on behalf of the Russian government. Recognizing that advanced technologies and equipment can in fact contribute to improved and well-coordinated cyberattacks, the Biden administration included the Russian technology sector in its new executive order in response to Russian malign cyber activities. Under this new authority, the Treasury designated three technology companies connected to the Russian FSB in April 2021, as depicted in the flowchart above.

Russia’s Federal Security Service Connections to Cybercriminals According to OFAC Designations and Department of Justice Indictments


The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has close links with several infamous cybercriminals responsible for major malware programs and cyberattacks on American individuals and businesses. (Source: Endnote 5)


The FSB has also been involved both directly and indirectly in cyberattacks against major U.S. targets, indicating collaboration between Russian government officials and cybercriminals. In March 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two FSB officers for their involvement in the 2014 Yahoo hack, in which the officers paid Alexsey Belan, a previously indicted Latvian hacker, for illicit access to at least 500 million Yahoo accounts, some belonging to Russian journalists and U.S. government officials, in order to monitor their email content. Belan was sanctioned in December 2016, along with Evgeniy Bogachev, a notorious cybercriminal responsible for several major malicious software programs. Bogachev is a member of the Jabber Zeus Crew, a cybercrime organization that counted Maksim Yakubets among its members. Yakubets, indicted for his activities with the Jabber Zeus Crew, would go on to lead Evil Corp, the organization responsible for the Dridex malware, which stole banking credentials in order to drain bank accounts and was responsible for tens of millions of dollars in losses. In a Treasury press release accompanying his designation in 2019, Yakubets was accused of working directly for the FSB since 2017.

North Korea’s Lazarus Group Cybercrime Web According to OFAC Designations



The Lazarus Group is a subunit of North Korea’s primary intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), tasked with leveraging its cyber capabilities to weaponize enemy network vulnerabilities and illicitly procure funds for the Kim Jong Un’s regime. (Source: Endnote 6)


Perhaps the most well-known North Korean–sponsored cybercrime organization is the Lazarus Group. This subunit of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s main intelligence agency, is responsible for myriad cyberattacks targeting foreign financial institutions, agencies, and online networks including, but not limited to: the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack (2014), the Bangladesh Bank cyber heist (2016), the WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack (2017), and numerous spear-phishing and cryptojacking campaigns. However, Pyongyang doesn’t operate alone as it currently commands an estimated 6,000 cybercriminals across the globe, many reportedly operating overseas in China, Russia, India, Belarus, and Malaysia. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted North Korean hacker Park Jin Hyok twice for his involvement in the Sony Pictures hack, Bangladesh Bank cyber heist, and WannaCry ransomware attack through his association with the Lazarus Group. Park previously worked for over a decade at a North Korean government front company in China called the Chosun Expo Joint Venture which is known for its connections to the Reconnaissance General Bureau. North Korea has outsourced a certain degree of its cybercrime to China, including by recruiting two Chinese nationals, indicated in the flowchart above, for professional money laundering services. Although more research is needed to properly ascertain North Korea’s ability to fully monetize stolen crypto funds, its continued success in hacking large sums of cryptocurrencies will likely result in increased attacks against financial institutions and exchanges hosting and/or facilitating digital currency transactions.

Under increased economic sanctions during both the Obama and Trump years, North Korea began to rely heavily on cyber-enabled financial crime to steal and procure funds for its nuclear weapons development program. For example, the Department of Justice unsealed a new indictment in February 2021 that added two defendants, Jon Chang and Kim Il, along with Park in North Korea’s efforts to procure illicit funds through the Lazarus Group from 2014 to 2020. This indictment also detailed the wide range of malicious state-sponsored cyber-enabled financial crime ranging from cyberattacks, heists, and intrusions to spear-phishing campaigns, destructive malware attacks, exfiltration of data, and global money laundering schemes. Sanctions are commonly thought of as a useful tool to target state-sponsored cybercriminals, but the logistical difficulty of attributing cyberattacks to specific individuals or entities abroad remains a challenge for the U.S. government. For instance, the Treasury wasn’t able to sanction Park for his involvement in the Sony Pictures hack and other major cyberattacks until September 2018 due to the opaque nature of state-sponsored covert cyber operations conducted in jurisdictions with little to non-existent U.S. presence and/or law enforcement capabilities.

As seen in the recent hacking attacks against Microsoft and COVID-19 vaccine research and testing facilities, hostile nations continue to successfully conduct disruptive cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, federal employees, average citizens, financial and commercial institutions, and medical facilities. In response, the Biden administration has indicated that it is planning to impose steeper costs on governments responsible for cyberattacks through clandestine actions, affirming that economic sanctions will continue to play an important role in curbing illicit cyber activity. Regardless of their material impact on malicious actors, economic sanctions will continue to serve a useful “naming and shaming” function for the U.S. government to publicize hostile actors and promote greater information sharing among allies through public indictments and statements. Similar to human rights and corruption-related sanctions, the Biden administration will likely continue the ongoing trend of utilizing country-specific sanctions programs to target specific illicit activity otherwise difficult to designate.

Methodology

Designations included in this edition were drawn from the following sanctions programs: CYBER2, TCO, CAATSA-RUSSIA, RUSSIA-EO14024, DPRK2, DPRK3, IRAN-TRA, HRIT-IR, HRIT-SY, IRAN-HR, and ELECTION-EO13848. For non-CYBER2 programs, only cyber-related designations listed in Treasury press releases were included.

ENDNOTES

Historical data from January 2011–April 2021 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. ↩
Historical data from January 2011–April 2021 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. ↩
Historical data from January 2011–April 2021 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. ↩
Organized historical data from January 2014–April 2021 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Lucidchart. ↩
Organized historical data from January 2014–April 2021 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and U.S. Department of Justice on Lucidchart. ↩
Organized historical data from January 2014–April 2021 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.S. Department of Justice on Lucidchart. ↩

COVID is surging in the world’s most vaccinated country. Why?

Houses in the city of Victoria, the capital of Seychelles. Shutterstock

The small archipelago nation of Seychelles, northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, has emerged as the world’s most vaccinated country for COVID-19.

Around 71% of people have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, and 62% have been fully vaccinated. Of these, 57% have received the Sinopharm vaccine, and 43% AstraZeneca.

Despite this, there has been a recent surge in cases, with 37% of new active cases and 20% of hospital cases being fully vaccinated. The country has had to reimpose some restrictions.

How can this be happening? There are several possible explanations:

the herd immunity threshold has not been reached — 62% vaccination is likely not adequate with the vaccines being used


herd immunity is unreachable due to inadequate efficacy of the two vaccines being used


variants that escape vaccine protection are dominant in Seychelles


the B1617 Indian variant is spreading, which appears to be more infectious than other variants


mass failures of the cold-chain logistics needed for transport and storage, which rendered the vaccines ineffective.

What does the country’s experience teach us about variants, vaccine efficacy and herd immunity?

Let’s break this down.

Variants can escape vaccine protection

There are reports of the South African B.1.351 variant circulating in Seychelles. This variant shows the greatest ability to escape vaccine protection of all COVID variants so far.

In South Africa, one study showed AstraZeneca has 0-10% efficacy against this variant, prompting the South African government to stop using that vaccine in February.

The efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine against this variant is unknown, but lab studies show some reduction in protection, based on blood tests, but probably some protection.

However, no comprehensive surveillance exists in the country to know what proportion of cases are due to the South African variant.

The UK variant B117, which is more contagious than the original strain, became the dominant variant in the United States. But the US still achieved a dramatic reduction in COVID-19 cases through vaccination, with most people receiving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Israel, where the UK variant was dominant, also has a very high vaccination rate, having vaccinated nearly 60% of its population with Pfizer. It found 92% effectiveness against any infection including asymptomatic infection, and Israel has seen a large drop in new cases.

The United Kingdom has used a combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. More than 50% of the population have had a single dose and almost 30% are fully vaccinated. The country has also seen a significant decline in case numbers.

But there’s a current surge of cases in northwest England, with most new cases in the city of Bolton being the Indian variant. This variant is also causing outbreaks in Singapore, which had previously controlled the virus well.

Seychelles needs to conduct urgent genome sequencing and surveillance to see what contribution variants of concern are making, and whether the Indian variant is present.

If the South African variant is dominant, the country needs to use a vaccine that works well against it. Many companies are making boosters targeted to this variant, but for now, Pfizer would be an option. In Qatar, local researchers found Pfizer had 75% effectiveness against the South African variant.

Read more: New COVID variants have changed the game, and vaccines will not be enough. We need global 'maximum suppression'

We need to use high-efficacy vaccines to achieve herd immunity

The reported efficacy of Sinopharm is 79% and AstraZeneca is 62-70% from phase 3 clinical trials.

Our research at the Kirby Institute showed that, in New South Wales, Australia, using a vaccine with 90% efficacy against all infection means herd immunity could be achieved if 66% of the population was vaccinated.

However, using lower efficacy vaccines means more people need to be vaccinated. If the vaccine is 60% effective, the proportion needing to be vaccinated rises to 100%.

When you get an efficacy of less than 60%, herd immunity is not achievable.

However, these calculations were done for the regular COVID-19 caused by the D614G variant which dominated in 2020. This has a reproductive number (R0) of 2.5, meaning people infected with the virus on average infect 2.5 others.

But the B117 variant is 43-90% more contagious than D614G, so the R0 may be up to 4.75. This will require higher vaccination rates to control spread.

What’s more, the Indian variant B1617 has been estimated to be at least 50% more contagious than B117, which could take the R0 to over 7, and takes us into uncharted territory.

This could explain the catastrophic situation in India, but also raises the stakes for vaccination, as lower efficacy vaccines will not be able to contain such highly transmissible variants effectively.

Herd immunity is still possible, but depends on the efficacy of the vaccine used and the proportion of people vaccinated.

A UK modelling study found using very low efficacy vaccines would result in the economy barely breaking even over ten years because it would fail to control transmission. On the other hand, using very high efficacy vaccines would result in much better economic outcomes

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More contagious variants mean more people need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Matthias Schrader/AP/AAP

Vaccinating the world is the only way to end the pandemic

As the pandemic continues to worsen in some parts of the world, the risk increases of more dangerous mutations that are vaccine-resistant or too contagious to control with current vaccines.

Keeping up with mutations is like whack-a-mole while the pandemic is raging.

The take-home message for our pandemic exit strategy is that the sooner we get the whole world vaccinated, the sooner we will control emergence of new variants.

MAY 18, 2021

Author

C Raina MacIntyre

Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW
Disclosure statement

C Raina MacIntyre receives funding from NHMRC and MRFF. She has consulted for or been on advisory boards on COVID-19 vaccines for AstraZeneca, Seqirus and Janssen.
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On its first try, China’s Zhurong rover hit a Mars milestone that took NASA decades

China’s Zhurong rover landed safely on Mars on May 15, making China only the third country to successfully land a rover on the red planet.

More impressively still, China is the first Mars-going nation to carry out an orbiting, landing and rovering operation as its first mission.

Planetary scientist Roberto Orosei told Nature China is “doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do”, while astrophysicist Jonathon McDowell described China’s decision to include a rover in its maiden Mars outing as a “very gutsy move”.

Where did it land?

Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and touched down close to the site of previous NASA missions, on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia.

This area of Mars was formed billions of years ago, when a martian meteorite smashed into the planet’s surface. The surrounding area is largely featureless, covered mostly in volcanic material.

Zhurong is not the first rover to explore this region. In 1976, NASA’s Viking 2 lander touched down further north within the Utopia Planitia basin, returning high-resolution images of the martian surface and analysing soil samples.

The Viking 2 lander lacked the ability to investigate any further than its initial landing site. But the Zhurong rover should be well equipped to roam farther afield during its mission.

What will it do?

The mission’s three-month scientific program will begin once the Zhurong rover disembarks from the landing craft and begins its journey across the martian surface. The 240-kilogram, six-wheeled rover is equipped with six individual scientific instruments, and has four large solar panels, giving it the appearance of a “blue butterfly”.

Zhurong’s design, instruments and technology on board Zhurong are comparable to those on board NASA’s twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which touched down in January 2004. Although Zhurong is not at the cutting edge of current space exploration technology, the sheer speed of this program’s development since its initiation in 2006 is awe-inspiring

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A replica of the Zhurong rover, on display in the National Museum, Beijing. Ng Han Guan/AP

Like the many Mars rovers before it, Zhurong will probe this alien planet’s environment, and search for signs of water ice on the surface.

The mission is expected to survey four aspects of its local environment:

topography and geological structure

soil structure and possible presence of water ice

chemical composition, minerals and rock types

physical characteristics of the atmosphere and the rocky surface.

Zhurong will thus help build a more complete geological picture of the red planet’s history. And, in a genuine first for Martian exploration, it is equipped with a magnetometer to measure the planet’s magnetic field. This is an important study that will help address why Mars has lost much of its atmosphere, leaving its landscape so barren.

Read more: As new probes reach Mars, here's what we know so far from trips to the red planet

China’s growing space presence

The Tianwen-1 mission is just one of an impressive list of accomplishments by the China National Space Administration in the past year. Its other feats include launching dozens of Long March rockets, each with multiple payloads, including that of the Chang'e 5 lunar probe, which brought Moon rocks back to Earth for the first time since the end of NASA’s Apollo program in the 1970s.

Last month, China launched the first stage of its Tiangong space station, which next year is set to become the world’s second long-term home for humans in space. The momentous launch didn’t go off without a hitch, however, as debris from the launch vehicle made an uncontrolled re-entry back to Earth, eventually splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

Read more: China's Tiangong space station: what it is, what it's for, and how to see it

Thankfully no one was hurt in that incident, but it is a timely reminder that China’s accelerating pace of space missions and rocket launches need to be carefully managed.

This year of activity has solidified China’s powerful presence in space, and we are only seeing the beginning of its ambitious future. By 2045, China hopes to become a leading space power, as outlined in the 2018 Aerospace Science and Technology Corporations route map.

In the coming years we can look forward to seeing China launch crewed missions to the Tiangong space station, and in the coming decades can expect to see China join other space-faring nations in missions back to the Moon and Mars.

May 18, 2021 4.10pm EDT
Authors

Sara Webb

PhD candidate in Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology
Rebecca Allen

Swinburne Space Office Project Coordinator | Manager Swinburne Astronomy Productions, Swinburne University of Technology
Disclosure statement

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Beyond a technical bug: Biased algorithms and moderation are censoring activists on social media

Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media & Global Network Society and Founding Director of ALiGN Media Lab, Carleton University

 Ghadah Alrasheed, Post-doctoral Fellow, Interim co-Director of ALiGN Media Lab, Carleton University

Following Red Dress Day on May 5, a day aimed to raise awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), Indigenous activists and supporters of the campaign found posts about MMIWG had disappeared from their Instagram accounts.

 In response, Instagram released a tweet saying that this was “a widespread global technical issue not related to any particular topic,” followed by an apology explaining that the platform “experienced a technical bug, which impacted millions of people’s stories, highlights and archives around the world.”

© (Solen Feyissa/Unsplash) Activists, influencers raise alarm after MMIWG content disappears from Instagram on Red Dress Day.

Creators, however, said that not all stories were affected.

And this is not the first time social media platforms have been under scrutiny because of their erroneous censoring of grassroots activists and racial minorities.

Many Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists were similarly frustrated when Facebook flagged their accounts, but didn’t do enough to stop racism and hate speech against Black people on their platform.

So were these really about technical glitches? Or did they result from the platforms’ discriminatory and biased policies and practices? The answer lies somewhere in between.
Towards automated content moderation

Every time an activist’s post is wrongly removed, there are at least three possible scenarios.

First, sometimes the platform deliberately takes down activists’ posts and accounts, usually at request of and/or in co-ordination with the government. This happened when Facebook and Instagram removed posts and accounts of Iranians who expressed support for the Iranian general Qassem Soleiman.

In some countries and disputed territories, such as Kashmir, Crimea, Western Sahara and Palestinian territories, platforms censored activists and journalists to allegedly maintain their market access or to protect themselves from legal liabilities.

Second, a post can be removed through a user-reporting mechanism. To handle unlawful or prohibited communication, social media platforms have indeed primarily relied on users reporting.

Applying community standards developed by the platform, content moderators would then review reported content and determine whether a violation had occurred. If it had, the content would be removed, and, in the case of serious or repeat infringements, the user may be temporarily suspended or permanently banned.

This mechanism is problematic. Due to the sheer volume of reports received on a daily basis, there are simply not enough moderators to review each report adequately. Also, complexities and subtleties of language pose real challenges. Meanwhile, marginalized groups reclaiming abusive terms for public awareness, such as BLM and MMIWG, can be misinterpreted as being abusive.

Further, in flagging content, users tend to rely on partisanship and ideology. User reporting approach is driven by popular opinion of a platform’s users while potentially repressing the right to unpopular speech.

Such approach also emboldens freedom to hate, where users exercise their right to voice their opinions while actively silencing others. A notable example is the removal by Facebook of “Freedom for Palestine,” a multi-artist collaboration posted by Coldplay, after a number of users reported the song as “abusive.”

Third, platforms are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify and remove prohibited content. The idea is that complex algorithms that use natural language processing can flag racist or violent content faster and better than humans possibly can. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media companies are relying more on AI to cover for tens of thousands of human moderators who were sent home. Now, more than ever, algorithms decide what users can and cannot post online.
Algorithmic biases

There’s an inherent belief that AI systems are less biased and can scale better than human beings. In practice, however, they’re easily disposed to error and can impose bias on a colossal systemic scale.

In two 2019 computational linguistic studies, researchers discovered that AI intended to identify hate speech may actually end up amplifying racial bias.

In one study, researchers found that tweets written in African American English commonly spoken by Black Americans are up to twice more likely to be flagged as offensive compared to others. Using a dataset of 155,800 tweets, another study found a similar widespread racial bias against Black speeches.

What’s considered offensive is bound to social context; terms that are slurs when used in some settings may not be in others. Algorithmic systems lack an ability to capture nuances and contextual particularities, which may not be understood by human moderators who test data used to train these algorithms either. This means natural language processing which is often perceived as an objective tool to identify offensive content can amplify the same biases that human beings have.

Algorithmic bias may jeopardize some people who are already at risk by wrongly categorizing them as offensive, criminals or even terrorists. In mid 2020, Facebook deleted at least 35 accounts of Syrian journalists and activists on the pretext of terrorism while in reality, they were campaigning against violence and terrorism.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods Protesters gather in Winnipeg the day after the jury delivered a not-guilty verdict in the second degree murder trial of Raymond Cormier, the man accused of killing Tina Fontaine. MMIWG activists had their posts removed from Instagram on a day to raise awareness.

MMIWG, BLM and the Syrian cases exemplify the dynamic of “algorithms of opression” where algorithms reinforce older oppressive social relations and re-install new modes of racism and discrimination.

While AI is celebrated as autonomous technology that can develop away from human intervention, it is inherently biased. The inequalities that underpin bias already exist in society and influence who gets the opportunity to build algorithms and their databases, and for what purpose. As such, algorithms do not intrinsically provide ways for marginalized people to escape discrimination, but they also reproduce new forms of inequality along social, racial and political lines.

Despite the apparent problems, algorithms are here to stay. There is no silver bullet, but one can take steps to minimize bias. First is to recognize that there’s a problem. Then, making a strong commitment to root out algorithmic biases.

Bias can infiltrate the process anywhere in designing algorithms.

The inclusion of more people from diverse backgrounds within this process — Indigenous, racial minorities, women and other historically marginalized groups — is one of important steps to help mitigate the bias. In the meantime, it is important to push platforms to allow for as much transparency and public oversight as possible.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Merlyna Lim receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Ghadah Alrasheed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Is the 2025 gas boiler ban target achievable for the UK?

Nathan James Van Gambling, Plumbing Heating

 Lecturer and Training Specialist, spoke to ELN

 about the feasibility of a UK-wide ban on boilers

THEY USE WALL MOUNTED HE 

(HIGH EFFICIENCY) BOILERS, 

IN CANADA WE USE FURNACES

WHICH USE EVEN MORE GAS 

THAN MY HOT WATER 

BOILER  CIRCA 1960.

  

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested a global ban on new fossil-fuel boilers could bring countries closer to their 2050 net zero target.

But how far are we from that? Can all new boilers be gas-free in just four years?

Nathan James Van Gambling, Plumbing Heating Lecturer and Training Specialist told ELN: “I suppose it’s a move that most of the people want to hear, isn’t it? But you still have to be a little bit cautious because you will still be allowed to install boilers post-2025. Because they will be manufactured to be retrofitted to be able to then burn 100% hydrogen.”

He added: “For some people, it may sound better than what they actually realise. There’s a lot of urgency around deploying heat pumps. So the government is looking to get 600,000 by 2028 going in every year which is a big ask, I personally hope we will get there but it’s a very very big ask.”

Gas boilers 'to be banned' in four years - the impact on your home

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that from now, there is no place for new coal, oil or gas exploration or supplies

By Emma Munbodh
Chris Harper SEO Writer 

 19 MAY 2021

You may have to change your boiler under new plans (Image: Getty Images)

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Drastic plans being drawn up to tackle the climate crisis could have a major impact on homeowners.

New details of international plans to address environmental issues show gas boilers are in the crosshairs.

Homeowners - and renters alike - are being warned that gas boilers could be banned from 2025 under plans to tackle climate change and help the world achieve its zero-emissions target.

It is part of wider plans that see sale of new petrol and diesel cars around the world end by 2035.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that from now, there is no place for new coal, oil or gas exploration or supplies.

It said no new fossil fuel boilers should be sold from 2025, except where they are compatible with hydrogen.

The IEA said the path to cutting emissions to "net zero" by 2050, which is needed to prevent dangerous temperature rises, is "narrow but still achievable".

‘Last Week Tonight’: John Oliver Rips Gun Laws That “Exalt A White Person’s Fear Over A Black Person’s Life”

© HBO

Brandon Choe 2 days ago

John Oliver kicked off Last Week Tonight by sounding off on the current state of affairs between Israel and Palestine.

The host was noticeably irritated by the diction of the Israeli government and certain American outlets who described Israel’s human rights violations as “evictions” and “property disputes.” Oliver considered them especially misleading.

“It’s like running a headline that says ‘Matt Gaetz Reaches Out To Florida Youth.’ Sure, not inaccurate, but it’s missing some pretty crucial details about the exact nature of that interaction,” Oliver said.

Oliver piled on his criticism of Israel by mocking their claims that the airstrikes were humane because they had given prior warnings.

“For the record, destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime. Regardless of whether you send a courtesy heads-up text,” Oliver said.

He claimed the American government had blood on their hands by being silently complicit in Israel’s violence. Oliver reminded viewers that Biden’s response of “Israel has the right to defend itself” was repeated by presidents before him.

“That line cannot be used to excuse absolutely everything. Multiple children have been killed this week and the US is heavily implicated here … by constantly refusing to criticize the indefensible,” Oliver said.

The HBO Max host noted that though both sides have experienced civilian casualties, the Palestinians have suffered a worse fate. Oliver explained there is one morally acceptable viewpoint on this topic – a sentiment the program often expresses.

“The real tendency in America to ‘both-sides’ this – it’s important to recognize it’s simply not. Both sides are firing rockets, but one side has the most advanced military in the world. But one side is suffering them exponentially,” Oliver said.

Oliver segued to his topic of the week: a gun law active in 30 states called the “stand-your-ground” law. The law stipulates that people are allowed to meet a threat with deadly force if they believe they’re under duress.

The stand-your-ground law was infamously used in the 2012 George Zimmerman case, in which a community watch shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman was successfully exonerated of wrongdoing after lawyers used stand-your-ground in his defense.

Stand-your-ground has since been put into practice in many other states, with the use of the law increasing. This is despite, Oliver said, the vast disparities in who the law does, and does not protect. According to reports from the Urban Institute, white-on-black homicides were deemed justified 281% more times than black-on-white crimes.

This is because these laws take into account perceived fear, which Oliver deemed “objectively subjective.” The law can be used to justify violence in cases where violence wasn’t necessary.

He emphasized, “[stand-your-ground laws] can exalt a white person’s fear over a black person’s life.”

Oliver dug his heels even deeper, adding that these laws do not deter crime. In states where stand-your-ground laws apply, homicides have overall increased almost 11 percent, whereas there was a 2% decrease in homicides in states without stand-your-ground, the show cited.

Oliver concluded, “Stand-your-ground has contributed to a society where vigilantes with guns can decide what is safety, who is a threat, and what the punishment should be. They have turbocharged everything from road rage incidents to pointless disputes over dog weights.”

He pleaded states to not “pass any more stand-your-ground laws and repeal the ones that exist. They are redundant solutions to a made-up problem and they are actively doing harm.”

Joni Mitchell Gives Rare Interview During Clive Davis’ Zoom Gala
Brent Furdyk

Clive Davis held the second part of his virtual pre-Grammy celebration on Saturday night, raising money for the Grammy Museum by conducting a six-hour interview session that included chats with such stars as Elton John, Paul Simon, Dionne Warwick, Berry Gordy, Chris Stapleton, Oprah Winfrey, Donovan, Barry Manilow and Dave Grohl.© Emma McIntyre /VF20/WireImage Joni Mitchell

Also speaking to Davis was Joni Mitchell, who offered a rare interview that touched on her early career and the inspiration behind some of her songs, including her classic "Both Sides Now".

“When I first wrote that, I was very young and I took a lot of teasing. ‘What do you know about life from both sides now?’ So I finally grew into it," the Canadian music icon told Davis, as reported by Rolling Stone

“I was up in a plane,” she told Davis of what inspired the song. “I was reading Henderson the Rain King, and in the book he was up on a plane flying to Africa and he looked down on clouds and he mused that he looked up at clouds, but he’d never looked down on them before. So that was where the germ of the idea for the song came from.”

When Davis asked her when she first began writing songs, she revealed her first composition was an instrumental titled “Robin Walk” when she was just 7, and recalled playing it for her piano teacher. “She hit me across the knuckles with a ruler and said, ‘Why would you want to play by ear when you could have the Masters and your fingers?'” said Mitchell. “She just treated me like a bad child and I quit piano lessons. From then on, I was self-taught.”

Mitchell also revealed that she first began writing her own songs because the 1960s folk music scene had become “so territorial. They would say, 'I play that song in this territory,'" she explained.

RELATED: Brandi Carlile Hypnotizes With Joni Mitchell’s Cover Of ‘A Case Of You’

"People used to say to me, ‘Nobody’s ever going to cover your songs. They’re too personal,'” she continued. “And yet, that’s not true, they’re getting a lot of covers. It’s just humanness that I’m trying to describe. This generation is ready for what I had to say, I guess, and is not so nervous about it.”

Huge crowds gather for pro-Palestinian rally in Mississauga

By Ryan Rocca Global News
Posted May 18, 2021 

View image in full screen

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are seen at Mississauga's Celebration Square on Tuesday. Twitter / @ambuly

Huge crowds gathered for a pro-Palestinian rally in Mississauga Tuesday evening as violence continues in the Middle East.


Protesters said they wanted to bring awareness to what Palestinians are experiencing amid the escalating Israel-Palestine conflict.

“These people are from my country and they’re being murdered or bombarded with bombs and it’s like nobody cares,” said demonstrator Sara Abu Hattab.

“It’s like human rights are thrown out the window once it’s about Palestine.”

READ MORE: Canada calling for ceasefire as Israel-Palestine fighting escalates

Hundreds have died in recent days after Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, launched rockets and Israel unleashed airstrikes.

Gaza’s health ministry says the Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 213 Palestinians, including 61 children, and wounded about 1,500 other Palestinians.

Israel says 12 people have died, including two children, and at least 300 have been wounded.

Tuesday’s rally was held at Celebration Square in central Mississauga and demonstrators also marched on nearby roads.

“This cause is very important to my heart and for once we see protests that are actually making it to the news, that are actually getting out there and people are hearing about it,” Abu Hattab said.

“So for me it’s about awareness and getting the community to know what’s happening.”

READ MORE: Explainer: Are Israel, Hamas committing war crimes in Gaza?

Hamdi Ashour, originally from Gaza, attended the demonstration in Mississauga. He said his family’s home and workplace were recently bombed in Gaza.

“On Thursday — Eid — my family phoned me and said that their workshop and the apartment were bombed,” he said.

“They were called by the Israeli army and were given five minutes to flee the home and then they bombed it to the ground. And the next day they bombed my cousin’s factory which is just used to store granite. So now my family has no home and have no sorts of income at all.”

Given the situation in Gaza, he said he was pleased to see demonstrators out showing support for the Palestinian people.

“I’m worried about COVID and everybody in here, but it shows a strong solidarity,” he said.

View image in full screen

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Celebration Square in Mississauga on Tuesday. Erica Vella / Global News

“If you look around, it’s not just Palestinians. People are from all walks of Earth, whether they’re from different countries, difference races, different colours and they’re all standing because this is inhumane.”

Since the fighting began, the Israeli military has launched hundreds of airstrikes it says are targeting Hamas’ militant infrastructure. Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired more than 3,400 rockets into Israel.

Israel has vowed to press on with its operations.

“We will continue to operate as long as necessary in order to return calm and security to all Israeli citizens,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.

Canada is now calling for a ceasefire. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will work with the international community in a bid to de-escalate the situation “so that there is no more loss of civilian life.”

— With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press

REAL TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS REDUX
A pandemic bright spot: Sales of vinyl records have exploded in Canada

After the annus horribilis that was 2020, it probably came as no surprise to Canadian music lovers that sales of vinyl records took a dive over those 12 months.

\© Getty Images Close-up shot of a pressing machine for vinyl records.

Alan Cross 

When the official year-end numbers were tallied by MRC Data, sales of vinyl in Canada were down by 12.9 per cent in 2020. This was the first decline in vinyl's fortunes since the beginning of the format's resurrection in 2008.

READ MORE: Tired of collecting normal vinyl records? Alan Cross has some abnormal options for you

Some vinyl fans — including me, by the way — were afraid that the era of the LP was once again over. And there was plenty of blame to go around.

COVID-19 had to be a culprit, of course, with lockdowns, closed stores, and music fans stuck at home. Streaming was far more convenient and cheaper. On-demand audio streams increased by 16.1 per cent over 2019 to more than 88 billion.

Consumers continued to shun CDs with sales falling by 48.4 per cent for the year. Vinyl seemed to be caught in the same downdraft.

Fingers were pointed at record labels for charging way too much for new releases. Who in their right mind would charge $35 or more for a single vinyl album? The same album on CD cost less than half that.

Buying patterns were disrupted when the annual Record Store Day in April was postponed and moved to several other dates later in the year.

By late summer, vinyl sales across Canada were trending a whopping 26 per cent below where they were a year earlier. Multiple Record Store Days, Black Friday, and the Christmas season were able to erase more than half that deficit but we still ended up buying less: 899,931units in 2020 vs. 1,033,582 in 2019.

Was it possible that after more than a dozen years of double-digit, year-over-year growth, the market for vinyl was saturated? Where Canadians were tapping out? It sure felt like it.

Video: Vinyl records stage a comeback

At the same time, though, something wasn't quite right.

While Canada lost ground, vinyl sales continued to rocket higher in both the U.S. and the U.K. In fact, when all the money was added up at the end of the year, revenue from vinyl in those two countries was higher than the amount spent on CDs. There were many rapturous year-end articles marvelling at vinyl's continued strength with music fans. In Britain, sales were the highest since the early 1990s. American sales were the best since at least 1991. Why would Canada be so different?

It could be that the biggest problem was with the manufacturing pipeline.

In February 2020, there was a fire at Apollo Masters Corp., the California factory responsible for supplying 80 per cent of the world's need for the lacquer masters required for pressing records. Without this vital component, record pressing plants faced tremendous production delays and even complete shutdowns.

READ MORE: Alan Cross on why there could be tough times ahead for the vinyl record business (from February 2020)

The disaster left only one other factory, a much smaller producer in Japan called MDC, to pick up the pieces. Demand was far greater than MDC could meet. Orders started to back up. Shipments of fresh vinyl were delayed many weeks and sometimes many months. Big-volume territories like the U.S. and the U.K. took priority when it came to getting lacquer masters, leaving Canadian pressing plants and record labels to scramble for what they could get.

Deliveries slowed. Inventories dropped. Sales sputtered and fell. Hands were wrung and spirits drooped. It appeared that was all over but the crying.

Except that it wasn't.

Based on sales stats for the period ending last week, Canadians are gobbling up vinyl again and at a furious rate. MRC Data says that as of the week ending May 6, vinyl sales are up a whopping 62.2 per cent from a year ago. When I first saw that number, it was so big I thought it was a typo. So far this year, 338,529 units have been sold compared with just 208,754 at this point in 2020.

Extrapolating things through the end of the year, vinyl is on track to sell somewhere well beyond 1.2 million units in 2021.

If vinyl prices hold (they will) and CD sales continue to drop (and they're down 13.8 per cent so far this year), Canada could end up in the same class as the U.S. and the U.K., where revenues from vinyl will exceed that of CDs.

Read more: Let’s please stop pretending there’s a ‘cassette resurrection,’ Alan Cross says

What changed? Again, I'm going to say that it has to do with supply chain issues. After the Apollo fire, the entire vinyl industry assessed the situation and moved to adjust.

The Apollo factory is still offline and won't be back anytime soon, if ever. But the fire did bring the industry together in the form of a new organization called the Vinyl Records Manufacturers Association of North America (VRMA) which has vowed not to let something like this ever happen again. Some 50 companies from throughout the supply chain are involved with one of their prime goals being to increase the number of North American lacquer production plants.

Another positive change was the use of direct metal mastering (DMM), a technique used by some companies that involves cutting masters into copper plates instead of lacquer. They have been able to pick up some of the slack.

The net result of these two initiatives is that production has increased, shipments to all territories are up, and people are buying again. Turns out the demand in Canada was still there after all.

It looks like 2020 will turn out to be a mere blip in the history of vinyl in Canada. We can all stand down from DefCon 1.

--
Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.  Alan’s Ongoing History of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play

An audit gave the all-clear. 

Others alleged slavery 

AN AUDIT IS THE BOSSES TOOL

By A. Ananthalakshmi, Liz Lee and Mei Mei Chu

© Reuters/MALAYSIA MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOU Malaysia's Minister of Human Resources M. Saravanan inspects a workers' dormitory, which glove-maker Brightway Holdings confirms is one of its facilities, in Selangor state

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - In December 2020, with coronavirus infections spreading rapidly across factories and workers' dormitories in Malaysia, officials raided latex glove maker Brightway Holdings near Kuala Lumpur. They said they found workers living in shipping containers, under conditions so squalid that human resources minister M. Saravanan later likened them to "modern slavery."

Nineteen months earlier, inspectors from a social-auditing firm - private contractors that help companies monitor environmental, social and other ethical standards in industries from toys to palm oil - had visited the same three facilities. In three reports over 350 pages, they had detailed 61 violations of global ethical standards and checked boxes for 50 violations of Malaysian labour laws.

Even so, the executive summary of each report concluded: "There is no forced, bonded or involuntary prison labour hired in this facility."

Brightway's customers include some of the world's biggest suppliers of personal care and protective equipment. The company's managing director, G. Baskaran, shared the audit reports from 2019 and 2020 with Reuters in April, saying they show that "we did not practice any form of forced labour or modern slavery."

These contrasting conclusions highlight little-known flaws in global efforts to monitor labour conditions. Social audits - independent reports used by global brands to test that their suppliers meet ethical norms – are not always effective in identifying labour risks, and can even obscure them, more than two dozen auditors, oversight bodies, factory workers and labour rights groups told Reuters.

Laws around the world prohibit the use of forced labour, but no rules govern the quality of audits, which are voluntary, audit firms told Reuters. Auditors are usually paid by the firms they are auditing, raising potential conflicts of interest if inspectors feel compelled to give positive reports to retain business. Beyond this, inspectors and Brightway workers told Reuters, companies can manipulate what auditors see on site.

There is no evidence of any impropriety by the auditor Brightway hired, British firm Intertek Group, which declined to comment on Brightway. Intertek said its audits meet stringent operational procedures with rigorous standards, and are themselves subject to regular and thorough independent audits. It did not say by whom.

Neither Saravanan, the Malaysian cabinet minister who criticized Brightway on national TV, nor his ministry responded to requests for further comment.

INVESTIGATION

About a month after the Malaysia raids, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened investigations into Brightway. U.S. Customs is examining forced labour allegations including debt bondage, excessive overtime and poor accommodation, according to a letter the agency sent to Nepal-based independent labour rights activist Andy Hall after he drew the agency's attention to details in the audit report. Reuters reviewed a copy of the letter.

In response, Brightway said U.S. Customs has not asked the company for any details.

U.S. Customs said it does not comment on whether it is investigating specific entities. Companies it looks into submit audit reports during that process, and some reports it has seen have been "insufficient," a Customs official told Reuters.

"Many companies are not willing to get a candid assessment of their forced labour vulnerabilities because of the implications that can have on their reputation, their profitability, and their stockholders," said Ana Hinojosa, an executive director at CBP's trade office, which investigates forced labour allegations.

Two other social auditors who reviewed the Brightway reports for Reuters said some of the findings may indicate forced labour as defined by the International Labour Organization, which has set out 11 indicators that point to "the possible existence of a forced labour case." The relevant findings in the Brightway reports were: excessive working hours, high recruitment fees paid by workers to agents, and unsafe living and working conditions.

Labour activist Hall said the Brightway reports' conclusions were "completely misleading" because they overlooked evidence contained in the reports themselves. Customers who only read executive summaries would miss such evidence, he said.

WHAT THE AUDITOR SAW

Malaysia is a manufacturing hub for everything from palm oil to iPhone components. Firms there employ migrants from countries including Bangladesh and Nepal and have faced the highest number of U.S. sanctions over forced labour allegations after China. In the last two years, U.S. Customs has excluded purchases from four Malaysian companies after finding what it called reasonable evidence of forced labour.

The Brightway raid came as the United States had barred another glove maker, Top Glove, over forced labour allegations. Top Glove said in April it had resolved the issues that led to the ban, but the sanctions remain in place and U.S. authorities seized two shipments of the company's gloves this month.

At the time of the Brightway raid, Malaysian authorities were inspecting companies across the country to try to ensure worker accommodation did not become a vector for COVID-19 infection, and to avert further claims they abused workers.

As part of efforts to get the bans revoked, Malaysian companies have given millions of dollars to workers to repay recruitment fees that the workers have paid to middlemen. These fees can be onerous, forcing workers into debt.

In the Brightway case, recruitment fees were among problems inspectors had highlighted in the body of the reports. All 78 workers interviewed at the three facilities told inspectors they had paid recruitment fees of up to $4,200 each to agents.

Other points the inspectors noted include a dormitory in the same compound as the factory and a dorm without any beds or mattresses; different signatures on some workers' passports than on their employment contracts; and people working as many as 15 hours a day.

Malaysia's constitution prohibits forced labour, and the country has several laws that address safety, accommodation, working hours and other workers' rights. Brightway now faces a total of 30 charges for violating a law on minimum standards of housing and amenities, the Malaysian labour department said in December.

Brightway did not comment on these charges. Asked about the authorities' claim that workers were living in shipping containers, Brightway's Baskaran told Reuters the government inspectors were mistaken: The workers' quarters were covered with metal decking, which could have been misconstrued as containers, he said.

Brightway says it is not responsible for alleged violations such as recruiters charging hiring fees or imposing long hours, because it does not charge fees and overtime hours were in accordance with Malaysian laws. It said its dormitories were congested, "purely due to the COVID situation," because it had converted a warehouse into temporary accommodation.

After the December raid, Brightway paid its 2,719 workers 38 million ringgit ($9.21 million), to repay their recruitment fees, Baskaran said.

Asked about the audit findings on forced labour indicators, he said, "it depends on how you interpret forced labour."

RED FLAGS

Brightway's customers include Kimberly Clark of the United States, whose brands include Kleenex and Andrex; Australian personal protective equipment supplier Ansell; and the UK's National Health Service. All declined to comment in detail on Intertek's reports. Ansell told Reuters the audits, when it inspected them, "revealed several non-compliances with labour standards."

Ansell and Kimberly-Clark both said Brightway had corrected some of these problems since the government raid in December.

Kimberly-Clark spokesman Terry Balluck said the company was "keenly aware of the real-life challenges with an effective audit," but added that every audit identifies "some issue or opportunity," and audits continue to be an effective tool to safeguard workers at all levels.

Ansell said audits are a key tool that should be supplemented with dialogue and communication with suppliers.The NHS directed queries to the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care. A spokesman said, "all our suppliers must follow the highest legal and ethical standards or they can be blocked from applying for future contracts."

The International Labour Organization did not comment on the Brightway audit, but said it was aware of doubts over how effectively such private initiatives protect workers' rights.

"There is also the question about what happens before and after the audits, and how the violations detected are addressed," the UN agency said in an email.

Five Brightway workers told Reuters they had been informed in advance by their supervisors of planned audits. They said they were asked to clean their hostels ahead of time and provide only positive feedback about the company on their food, hostel facilities and access to passports.

All five, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Brightway usually withholds workers' passports but places them in their personal lockers on days auditors visit. Retention of passports by an employer is considered a forced labour indicator by the ILO.

Brightway's Baskaran said workers can access their passports any time in the lockers, for which they have keys. Brightway does not prepare workers for the audit, but there are efforts to clean hostels, he said.

"During audits, just like everything else, it is a norm to put in extra effort to clean up the place, amongst other activities," he said.

($1 = 4.1250 ringgit)

(Edited by Sara Ledwith)