About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 2024)
BUSINESS John Chamblissl Managing Editor 770-718-3407 I news@gainesvilletimes.com The Times, Gainesville, Georgia Weekend Edition-January 26-27,2024 Ring to restrict police requests for camera footage Jessica Hill Associated Press A Ring doorbell camera is seen installed outside a home in Wolcott, Conn., July 16, 2019. BY HALELUYA HADERO Associated Press NEW YORK — Ama zon-owned Ring will stop allowing police depart ments to request doorbell camera footage from users, marking an end to a feature that has drawn criticism from privacy advocates. In a blog post on Wednes day, Ring said it will sunset the “Request for Assistance” tool, which allows police departments and other public safety agencies to request and receive video captured by the doorbell cameras through Ring's Neighbors app. The company did not provide a reason for the change, which will be effec tive starting this week. Eric Kuhn, the head of Neighbors, said in the announcement that law enforcement agencies will still be able to make public posts in the Neighbors app. Police and other agencies can also still use the app to “share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Kuhn said. The update is the latest restriction Ring has made to police activity on the Neighbors app following concerns raised by privacy watchdogs about the com pany's relationship with police departments across the country. Critics have stressed the proliferation of these rela tionships — and users' abil ity to report what they see as suspicious behavior — can change neighborhoods into a place of constant sur veillance and lead to more instances of racial profiling. In a bid to increase trans parency, Ring changed its policy in 2021 to make police requests publicly visible through its Neigh bors app. Previously, law enforcement agencies were able to send Ring owners who lived near an area of an active investigation private emails requesting video footage. “Now, Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platform ing casual and warrantless police requests for foot age to its users,” Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a state ment on Wednesday. Law enforcement agen cies can still access videos using a search warrant. Ring also maintains the right to share footage with out user consent in limited circumstances. In mid-2022, Ring dis closed it handed over 11 videos to police without notifying users that year due to “exigent or emer gency” circumstances, one of the categories that allow it to share videos without permission from owners. However, Guariglia, of the Electronic Frontier Founda tion, said the group remains skeptical about the ability of police and the company to determine what is or is not an emergency. Last summer, Ring agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle with the Federal Trade Com mission over allegations that the company let employees and contractors access user videos. Furthermore, the agency said Ring had inad equate security practices, which allowed hackers to control consumer accounts and cameras. The company disagrees with those claims. Oakland In-N-Out to close — IN-N-OUT Photos by Jane Tyska Associated Press Customers line up at the In-N-Out drive-thru off Hegenberger Road in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 22. In-N-Out will close its only restaurant in Oakland because of a wave of car break-ins, property damage, theft and armed robberies targeting customers and employees alike, the company announced. The burger joint in a busy corridor near the Oakland International Airport will close on March 24. Restaurant says it s shutting down due to theft, robberies A sign warns patrons of car break-ins at the In-N-Out restaurant off Hegenberger Road in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 22. Associated Press OAKLAND — In-N-Out Burger says it will close its first location in its 75-year history due to a wave of car break-ins, property damage, theft and robberies affecting customers and employees alike at its only restaurant in Oakland, California. The fast-food burger joint in a busy corridor near Oakland Interna tional Airport will close on March 24 because even though the company has taken “repeated steps to create safer conditions our Customers and Associ ates are regularly victimized,” Denny Warnick, In-N-Out's chief operating officer, said in a statement Wednesday. “We feel the frequency and sever ity of the crimes being encountered by our customers and associates leave us no alternative,” Warnick said. Oakland has seen a spike in prop erty crime and robberies throughout the city located across the bay from San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The In-N-Out slated for closure is in a busy business corridor that attracts travelers headed to the airport and baseball fans who attend A's games at the Coliseum. Since 2019, police have logged 1,335 incidents in the vicinity of the restaurant on Oakport Street — more than any other location in Oak land, the newspaper reported. That number includes nine robber ies, two commercial burglaries, four domestic violence incidents and 1,174 car break-ins, according to Oakland police data shared with the Chronicle. The Oakland Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for the data and comment from The Associated Press. Sean Crawford, who works in a building around the corner from the restaurant, told the newspaper that last year, he saw two people get out of a car and go from vehicle to vehicle in the In-N-Out drive-thru lane, robbing people at gunpoint. In-N-Out Burger is based in Irvine, California. Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao told KTVU-TV that more police officers have been assigned to the area but that more needs to be done. “As mayor, I have prioritized this critical gateway to Oakland,” Thao told the Oakland-based television sta tion, adding that Oakland police have three cameras placed to monitor the area. Thao's office also provided statistics to show that property crime on Hegen berger Road, a major street near the burger joint that connects the airport to the Coliseum, trended downward at the end of 2023, with car break-ins down 43% from 308 incidents to 176 incidents, and thefts down by 49%. HP Enterprise discloses hack with suspected ties to Russia BY FRANKBAJAK AP Technology Writer BOSTON — Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed Wednesday that suspected state-backed Russian hackers broke into its cloud-based email system and stole data from cybersecurity and other employees. The provider of information technology products and services said in a Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory filing that it was informed of the intrusion on Jan. 12. It said it believed the hackers were from Cozy Bear, a unit of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service. Microsoft reported last week that it also discovered an intrusion of its corporate network on Jan. 12. The Red mond, Washington, tech giant said the breach began in late November and also blamed Cozy Bear. It said the Russian hackers accessed accounts of senior Microsoft executives as well as cybersecurity and legal employees. Cozy Bear was behind the SolarWinds breach and focuses stealth intelligence-gathering on Western govern ments, IT service providers and think tanks in the U.S. and Europe. “Based on our investigation, we now believe that the threat actor accessed and exfiltrated data beginning in May 2023 from a small percentage of HPE mailboxes belonging to individuals in our cybersecurity, go-to-mar- ket, business segments, and other functions,” HPE, which is based in Spring, Texas, said in the filing. Company spokesman Adam R. Bauer, reached by email, would not say who informed HPE of the breach. “We're not sharing that information at this time.” Bauer said the compromised email boxes were running Micro soft software. In the filing, HPE said the intrusion was “likely related to earlier activity by this threat actor, of which we were notified in June 2023, involving unauthorized access to and exfiltration of a limited number of SharePoint files.” SharePoint is part of Microsoft's 365 suite, formerly known as Office, which includes email, word-processing and spreadsheet apps. Bauer said HPE is unable to say whether the breach of its network was related to the hack that Microsoft dis closed last week as “we do not have the details of the inci dent Microsoft disclosed.” Hewlett Packard Enterprise 165 Dascomb Road Elise Amendola Associated Press Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed Wednesday, Jan. 24, that suspected state-backed Russian hackers broke into its cloud-based email system and stole data from cybersecurity and other employees. US economy grew at surprisingly strong 3.3% pace for Q1 BY PAUL WISEMAN AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON — The nation's economy grew at an unexpectedly brisk 3.3% annual pace from October through December as Americans showed a continued willingness to spend freely despite high interest rates and price levels that have frustrated many households. Thursday's report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy's total output of goods and services — decelerated from its sizzling 4.9% growth rate the previous quarter. But the latest figures still reflected the surprising durability of the world's largest economy, marking the sixth straight quarter in which GDP has grown at an annual pace of 2% or more. Consumers, who account for about 70% of the total economy, drove the fourth-quarter growth. Their spending expanded at a 2.8% annual rate, for items ranging from clothing, furniture, recreational vehicles and other goods to services like hotels and restaurant meals. The GDP report also showed that despite the robust pace of growth in the October-December quarter, inflationary measures continued to ease. Consumer prices rose at a 1.7% annual rate, down from 2.6% in the third quarter. And excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation came in at a 2% annual rate. Those inflation numbers could reassure the Federal Reserve's policymakers, who have already signaled that they expect to cut their benchmark interest rate three times in 2024, reversing their 2022-2023 policy of aggressively raising rates to fight inflation. ‘Although GDP growth came in hotter than expected in the fourth quarter, underlying inflation continued to slow," said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics. “The upshot is that an early spring rate cut by the Fed is still the most likely outcome.” The state of the economy is sure to weigh on people's minds ahead of the November elections. After an extended period of gloom, Americans are starting to feel somewhat better about inflation and the economy — a trend that could sustain consumer spending, fuel economic growth and potentially affect voters' decisions. A measure of consumer sentiment by the University of Michigan, for example, has jumped in the past two months by the most since 1991. There is growing optimism that the Fed is on track to deliver a rare “soft landing” — keeping borrowing rates high enough to cool growth, hiring and inflation yet not so much as to send the economy into a tailspin. Inflation touched a four-decade high in 2022 but has since edged steadily lower without the painful layoffs that most economists had thought would be necessary to slow the acceleration of prices. The economy has repeatedly defied predictions that the Fed's aggressive rate hikes would trigger a recession. Far from collapsing last year, the economy accelerated — expanding 2.5%, up from 1.9% in 2022.
