'Spreading like wildfire'

Alarmed by rising coronavirus infections across the country and frustrated by persistent pandemic conspiracy theories, public health officials forcefully criticized social media companies over the weekend, accusing them of endangering the public. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that dangerous misinformation about the virus is being "aided and abetted by technology platforms." Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added that past vaccination campaigns wouldn't have been nearly as effective if they also had been hampered by misinformation, as the COVID-19 vaccine has. —USA Today

• — "Modern technology companies have enabled misinformation to poison our information environment with little accountability to the abusers," Murthy said. "They've designed product features such as 'like' buttons that reward us for sharing emotionally charged content ... and their algorithms tend to give us more of what we click on, pulling us deeper and deeper into a well of misinformation."
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• — The POTUS agrees. Bluntly. On Friday, President Biden rebuked social media platforms for their role in the spread of COVID-19 disinformation. "The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated," he said. "And they're killing people." Later, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked at a briefing if she finds Facebook's response to pandemic disinfo adequate. "Clearly not," she said, adding, "We're talking about additional steps that should be taken."
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• — Facebook did not take it well. Accusing the White House of passing the blame from its failure to reach the 70% vaccination threshold by July 4, Facebook pushed back. Company spokesperson Dani Lever said in a statement that the platform "will not be distracted by accusations which aren't supported by the facts," touting Facebook's effort to connect users with authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines. "The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period," she said. —The Hill

Downie: The anti-vax hypocrisy

"[R]ight-wing voices such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have spread lie after lie about vaccination efforts. And Republican governors such as Kristi L. Noem (S.D.), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), and Mike Parson (Mo.) have encouraged 'personal responsibility' or sown fears about government efforts to vaccinate more Americans. Never mind that those governors got their shots months ago. Never mind that, according to some estimates, nearly half of South Dakotans have been infected, or that Florida's daily case average has quadrupled in the past month. The residents of their states will have to bear the risks, for the good of the governors' poll numbers." —James Downie in The Washington Post

James Downie is the digital opinions editor at The Washington Post.

MORE: Conservative hostility to Biden vaccine push surges with Covid cases on the rise —NBC News

Arizona audit is no bombshell

Maricopa County officials say the so-called "bombshell" preliminary findings of the Arizona election audit are actually a dud. They have issued a point-by-point knockdown of the charges leveled by Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, and Ben Cotton, founder of CyFir, at a State Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last Thursday. The county was not invited to provide a response at the hearing, public testimony was barred, and Democrats on the panel were not allowed to participate or ask questions during the hearing. Jack Sellers, who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said in a prepared statement, "Finish your audit, release the report, and be prepared to defend it in court." The two contractors said they are likely months away from a final report. —Arizona Daily Star

MORE: Poll: Americans oppose new Texas-style GOP voting restrictions, prefer Democratic reforms —Yahoo! News

The West calls out China for cyberattacks

The White House publicly blamed China today for an attack on Microsoft's Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers worldwide, allowing hackers to gain access to sensitive data. Believed to have begun in January, the cyberattack injected computers with malware that secretly monitored systems belonging to small businesses, local and state governments, and some military contractors. As part of the attack, an unidentified American company was also hit with a high-dollar ransom demand. The U.S. was joined by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and NATO in condemning Beijing's Ministry of State Security for the malicious attacks. —NPR

MORE: DOJ charges four Chinese nationals with state-backed worldwide hacking campaign —ABC News

Blow: The fate of democracy and the press are tied

"Democracies cannot survive without a common set of facts and a vibrant press to ferret them out and present them. Our democracy is in terrible danger. The only way that lies can flourish as they now do is because the press has been diminished in both scale and stature. Lies advance when truth is in retreat. The founders understood the supreme value of the press, and that's why they protected it in the Constitution. No other industry can claim the same. But protection from abridgment is not protection from shrinkage or obsolescence. We are moving ever closer to a country where the corrupt can deal in the darkness with no fear of being exposed by the light." —Charles Blow in The New York Times

Charles Blow is an opinion columnist at The New York Times.

MORE: Jury finds gunman criminally responsible for killing five in Maryland newspaper shooting —The Hill

Focus on freedom of the press

Attorney General Merrick Garland formally prohibited federal prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations today, reversing years of department policy. The new policy aims to resolve a politically thorny issue that has long vexed prosecutors—weighing the media's First Amendment rights against the government's desire to protect classified information. There are a few exceptions to the new rule, including cases of reporters suspected of working for foreign agents or terrorist organizations, or situations with imminent risks, like kidnappings or crimes against children. —Associated Press

• — Israeli spyware scandal. An Israeli cyber-surveillance company, NSO Group, has come under scrutiny after an international alliance of news outlets reported that governments used its software to target journalists, dissidents, and opposition politicians. The Israeli government is facing renewed international pressure for allowing the company to do business with authoritarian regimes that use the spyware for purposes other than its stated aim: targeting terrorists and criminals. NSO has denied the claims. —The New York Times
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• — Khashoggi associates hacked. According to digital forensic analysis, NSO Group's Pegasus spyware was used to secretly target the smartphones of the two women closest to murdered Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi. His wife's phone was targeted by a Pegasus user six months before his killing, but the analysis could not determine whether the hack was successful. His fiancee's phone was also penetrated by spyware, and another close associate was successfully hacked days after the journalist's murder. —The Washington Post
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• — Journalists killed. Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Danish Siddiqui was killed Friday in Afghanistan after coming under fire by Taliban militiamen. On assignment with Reuters, Siddiqui was embedded with Afghan special forces in Kandahar province when he was killed along with an Afghan officer. Siddiqui's death occurred just a day after famed Dutch investigative journalist Peter de Vries succumbed to injuries he sustained after being shot on July 6 in Amsterdam. —NPR

Eady, Hjorth & Dinesen: Insurrection may haunt GOP for some time

"The Capitol insurrection was one of the most remarkable examples of a violent attack on U.S. democratic institutions in recent times. And it seems to have pushed some portion of citizens away from identifying with the Republican Party, which has been affiliated with the insurrection. In other words, while political violence that violates democratic norms may hearten extreme partisans, it can also bring intra-partisan backlash or demobilization. ... [O]ur findings suggest that partisan violence has political costs, which might be underestimated by the politicians who court it." —Gregory Eady, Frederik Hjorth & Peter Thisted Dinesen in The Washington Post

Gregory Eady is an assistant professor of political science, Frederik Hjorth is an associate professor of political science, and Peter Thisted Dinesen is a professor of political science, all at the University of Copenhagen.

MORE: Capitol rioter who breached Senate gets eight months for felony —Associated Press

I think it's quite paradoxical that some in the GOP are encouraging Cuban protestors, who are trying to push out authoritarianism, while with the same breath, they're trying to reinstate an authoritarian here in the U.S.! —Anthony W., Georgia

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