02/09/2021
Texas businesses take the fight over voting rights to Washington.
Demonstrators protested against a strict voting-rights bill on July 13 in Austin.Credit…Eric Gay/Associated Press
The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature this week passed a major bill overhauling election laws in the state, the latest of many to tighten voting rules this year. In Texas, as elsewhere, many businesses and industry groups have spoken out against the move, arguing that it is bad for the economy.
Texas has persuaded many companies to relocate or expand operations there with its business-friendly policies. But in taking a stand on voting rights, some companies have invited scrutiny of their words and actions, especially with political donations. Balancing this against the tightening of some of the country’s strictest voting rules will test companies’ social pledges with financial imperatives.
There is also the risk of political blowback for speaking out in a state with a Republican governor and a Republican senator embracing restrictive voting rules as a platform for potential presidential runs in 2024.
“It is about ensuring that all Texans trust the outcome of every election in Texas,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who presides over the Texas Senate, said in a statement.
In the day or so after the voting bill passed, the first reaction of Texas-based businesses that spoke out on ballot access appeared to pivot to Washington, putting pressure on Congress to pass federal voting protections.
“We hoped for a different outcome,” an American Airlines spokeswoman told the DealBook newsletter. The airline, based in Fort Worth, had sought legislation “making it easier to vote, not harder,” issuing a statement in April opposing the law. In May, the airline joined Fair Elections Texas, a nonpartisan coalition of about two dozen businesses — including Microsoft, Unilever and Levi Strauss — that called on lawmakers to expand ballot access.
A spokeswoman for Dell, which is based in Round Rock, said it would encourage employees to vote and urge political leaders to “focus on staying committed to a healthy and welcoming business climate for all Texans.” Microsoft, Patagonia and Levi Strauss also said they were disappointed with the Texas bill’s passage and called for Congress to pass voting rights legislation.
“Texans love Texas,” but they want Washington’s help, said Nathan Ryan, an Austin city commissioner and the chief executive of the consulting firm Blue Sky Partners, part of the Fair Elections Texas group. He and others are strategizing, he said, and will approach the Biden administration and congressional leaders to press for passage of two federal voting rights laws: the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act. (Both passed the House but have stalled in the Senate amid a Republican filibuster.)
There is “an immediate need for a national minimum standard for voter protection,” said David Clunie of the Black Economic Alliance, an organization behind a letter in April with hundreds of signatories condemning laws restricting ballot access.
New “categories of attack” are being created, like introducing criminal penalties for election administrators, said Sarah Walker of the nonpartisan group Secure Democracy, which businesses and industry groups turn to for help understanding these bills.
“The clock is ticking. The U.S. Senate must act,” said Rafael Anchia, a Texas House member and a Democrat. The Texas bill will be put in place in about 90 days, he noted, calling on “those in the seat of democracy to pass a national voting rights bill.”
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Facebook’s European headquarters in Dublin.Credit…Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times
Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service was fined nearly $270 million by Irish authorities on Thursday for not being transparent about how it uses data collected from people on the service, in a case that represents a big test of Europe’s ability to enforce its landmark data privacy law.
The 265-page decision is the first major ruling against Facebook under the European Union’s far-reaching General Data Protection Regulation, or G.D.P.R., a three-year-old law that many have criticized for not being properly enforced. Irish regulators said WhatsApp was not clear with users about how data was shared with other Facebook properties like its main social network and Instagram.
WhatsApp said it would appeal the decision, setting up what is expected to be a lengthy legal battle.
The G.D.P.R. was heralded as the world’s most comprehensive data privacy law when it was enacted, and championed as a model for the rest of the world to counter the data-hording practices of Facebook, Google and other internet giants. But the law has resulted in few fines or penalties, and many have said it has not fulfilled its promise.
Regulators in Ireland have been at the center of the debate. Under the law, companies must be regulated by the countries where they have their European headquarters. The European offices of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and scores of other companies are based in Ireland because of its low corporate tax rates and other benefits.
But that has put tremendous pressure on Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, an underfunded and much-criticized agency that has been tasked with enforcing a novel and complex data protection law against some of the largest companies in the world.
In July, lawmakers in Ireland’s Parliament issued a scathing report, saying the Irish regulator “fails to adequately protect the fundamental rights of citizens” because of its lack of enforcement.
The challenge of enforcing the G.D.P.R. is being closely watched as European Union officials debate new regulations for other areas of the technology industry, including stricter antitrust and content moderation policies. Critics contend that the G.D.P.R shows that although the European Union has drafted strong digital policies, it has struggled to enacting them well.
The fine of 225 million euros, a fraction of Facebook’s annual profit, was the largest issued by Irish regulators against a tech giant under the law; in December, Ireland fined Twitter 450,000 euros related to a data breach. The ruling said WhatsApp did not meet its “transparency obligations” to clearly disclose how data from users would be used by Facebook for its other services.
The decision requires WhatsApp to update its privacy policy and make other changes to make people more aware of how data will be used.
The WhatsApp case has generated considerable debate among European Union countries about the appropriate level of enforcement under the region’s data protection rules. Officials in other countries in the 27-nation bloc have criticized Ireland for not acting more quickly against large tech platforms.
Other countries pushed Ireland to increase its initial proposed fine, which had been set at only up to 50 million euros. That sum was raised to 225 million euros after other national regulators used a board created by the law to coordinate enforcement and adjudicate disputes to push for a larger penalty.
Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who has filed several complaints with authorities in Ireland against Facebook, welcomed Thursday’s decision but said the fine by the Data Protection Commission was still too small. The G.D.P.R. allows fines of up to 4 percent of global revenue. He said there were scores of other cases waiting to be addressed.
“This shows how the D.P.C. is still extremely dysfunctional,” said Mr. Schrems, who now runs a privacy advocacy group called Noyb.
WhatsApp, which Facebook purchased in 2014, criticized Ireland’s decision, saying it has updated its privacy policy to be more comprehensive.
“WhatsApp is committed to providing a secure and private service,” Joshua Breckman, a spokesman for WhatsApp, said in a statement. “We have worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive and will continue to do so. We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate.”
Other tech companies have also been targeted under G.D.P.R., although critics say the punishments are relatively small and unlikely to result in meaningful changes in behavior.
In July, Amazon was fined nearly 750 million euros for violations related to its advertising practices by Luxembourg’s privacy regulator. In 2019, Google was fined 50 million euros by French authorities for not getting adequate permission from uses for certain online advertising.
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Twenty-five thousand linear feet of two-by-four wooden planks was salvaged from Atlanta film sets and incorporated into the Kendeda Building.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York Times
As the green building movement evolves beyond energy efficiency into new areas of sustainability, one promising effort focuses on finding new life for used building materials.
“Just in the past year or two, the conversation around deconstruction and reuse has really catapulted,” said Shawn Wood, a construction waste specialist for the City of Portland, Ore., which he believes is the first municipality in the country to adopt an ordinance requiring certain homes to be deconstructed, rather than demolished.
Deconstruction ordinances can help reduce waste, but more demand for salvaged materials is needed to really drive the market, he said. Interest is ticking up among municipal leaders and even Google as the construction industry tries to reduce its carbon footprint, reports Lisa Prevost for The New York Times.
But there are challenges to scaling up the effort for large commercial projects:
Using salvaged materials isn’t necessarily a money saver if the materials have to be refurbished and stored.
Older materials don’t necessarily adhere to new building codes and certifications.
Structures built in the 1960s or later include more composite materials that are difficult to take apart and reuse.
The obstacles are considerable, but the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, offers an example of what’s possible.
It was designed to meet the Living Building Challenge, which requires, among many other standards, the incorporation of salvaged materials — specifically, one salvaged item for every 500 square meters of design.
Lifecycle Building Center, an Atlanta store that sells donated materials for reuse, sourced 25,000 linear feet of two-by-fours, all salvaged from television and movie sets from Georgia’s thriving film industry. That was enough, when nailed together with the new boards, to form 125 floor panels.
“We weren’t trying to meet the minimum for salvage — we wanted to find big examples,” said Jimmy Mitchell, a sustainability engineer at Skanska USA, the construction manager for the project.
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The headquarters of Cathay Pacific Airways in Hong Kong.Credit…Jerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock
Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong’s biggest carrier, has begun disciplinary proceedings against flight attendants and pilots who have refused to get Covid-19 vaccines, one of the first examples of an airline enforcing a vaccination mandate.
“We continue to review the future employment of those who are not vaccinated and assess whether they can continue to be employed as aircrew with Cathay Pacific,” a company spokesperson said in an email, following a policy announced in June that all air crew must be fully vaccinated by the end of August.
The carrier, which now operates all flights with fully vaccinated aircrew, employs 13,500 people in Hong Kong, according to its latest half-year report.
The spokesperson said that the vast majority of Hong Kong employees — 93 percent — had booked or received their vaccinations as of Thursday, including 99 percent of pilots and 93 percent of cabin crew.
But a number of those who remain, the company said, may risk losing their jobs. The airline said that most of the unvaccinated employees were exempt from its vaccine mandate because they had valid medical reasons or were on long-term leave.
The stringent policy — which other airlines like United Airlines, Air Canada and SWISS also adopted — is harsher than that of many other airlines, which have mostly focused on encouraging their employees to get shots. Delta Air Lines, for example, has said that workers who are not vaccinated by Nov. 1 will have to pay an additional $200 per month to remain on the airline’s health plan. More companies are considering imposing such fees on the unvaccinated, following the airline’s lead.
Apple said it was changing its policy to address an investigation in Japan.Credit…Chris Delmas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Apple said on Wednesday that it was adjusting its App Store policies to allow certain kinds of applications to do business more directly with their customers.
Under the change, so-called reader apps, which include Netflix and Spotify, will be permitted to include a link within their apps to direct users to set up or manage their accounts on the individual company’s website, rather than through the App Store.
That would let those companies avoid paying the traditional 30 percent fee that Apple charges when people make payments for things like subscriptions on the App Store. Apple had long prevented companies from steering their users to their own websites, which would have deprived it of that 30 percent cut. These reader apps “provide previously purchased content or content subscriptions for digital magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music and video,” according to the company.
Apple said the change related to an agreement with the Japanese Fair Trade Commission, which had been investigating the tech giant’s App Store policies.
Phil Schiller, the Apple executive who oversees the App Store, said in a statement that the change would “help developers of reader apps make it easier for users to set up and manage their apps and services, while protecting their privacy and maintaining their trust.”
The tweak will take effect early next year. Apple has been under increasing pressure for its App Store rules.
Last week, the company announced a similar change as part of a legal settlement with app makers, and said it would create a $100 million fund for small app developers. Last year, Apple halved the fee that the smallest app developers pay through the App Store.
The company is also waiting on a judge’s decision in its antitrust legal battle against Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, which took Apple to court in May over claims that it abused its power over the App Store. If Epic wins, companies could avoid Apple’s commissions.
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The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature this week passed a major bill overhauling election laws in the state, the latest of many to tighten voting rules
