The Wall Street Journal - 31.10.2019

A6| Thursday, October 31, 2019 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**

U.S. WATCH

maker of consumer drones,

based in China’s tech-concen-

trated city of Shenzhen, dis-

putes the security concerns. It

has said users can prevent

their drones from transmitting

data back to the company or

connecting to the internet—

and that the Chinese govern-

ment has never sought the

U.S. NEWS

emergency situations, such as

when lives are threatened, Mr.

Goodwin said.

Officials worry that U.S. re-

liance on Chinese drones

might be putting critical infra-

structure at risk. They are

concerned the drones may be

sending information back to

the Chinese government or

hackers elsewhere to use for

cyberattacks or other offenses.

Last month a bipartisan

group of lawmakers intro-

duced legislation to bar fed-

eral agencies from buying

drones from China and any

other country deemed a na-

tional security risk.

In 2017 the U.S. Department

of Homeland Security warned

that it believes Chinese drone

manufacturer DJI is “selec-

tively targeting government

and privately owned entities

within these sectors to expand

its ability to collect and ex-

ploit sensitive U.S. data.”

DJI, the world’s largest

data that DJI does have. It

said Wednesday it will help In-

terior with its review.

But U.S. lawmakers have

noted that the Chinese govern-

ment has broad power over

Chinese companies. Many con-

sider that an ever-present

threat to the privacy of cus-

tomers using Chinese-made

security devices and have

pushed to end their use by

U.S. government agencies.

The Interior Department’s

decision is one of the biggest

responses yet and may be the

only total fleet shutdown in

the federal government. It is

not coordinating with the

White House or other federal

agencies.

Last year, Interior Depart-

ment officials executed more

than 10,000 drone flights as

part of its job to manage more

than 500 million acres of U.S.

land. In 2018, officials used

drones to locate and help res-

cue a Hawaii resident trapped

by lava flows.

The department has esti-

mated that using drones saved

more than $14 million in tax-

payer dollars in 2018.

The Interior Department re-

lies heavily on drones, along

with the U.S. Department of

Defense for military opera-

tions, according to Dan Get-

tinger, co-director of the Cen-

ter for the Study of the Drone

at Bard College in New York.

U.S. Customs and Border Pro-

tection has a long history of

reliance on drones for patrol-

ling, and FBI agents use them

in tactical operations, he

added.

The U.S. military has largely

stopped buying Chinese-made

drones after federal lawmak-

ers banned such purchases

this year. Before that rule, the

Pentagon had already banned

purchases of commercial, off-

the-shelf drones until it can

determine how to mitigate se-

curity risks.

WASHINGTON—The Inte-
rior Department is grounding
its entire fleet of aerial
drones, one of the largest in
the federal government, citing
increasing concerns about the
national security risk from
Chinese manufacturers.
The department has more
than 800 drones, all of which
are either made in China or
have Chinese parts, according
to a person familiar with the
matter. The machines are used
to fight forest fires, survey
erosion, monitor endangered
species and inspect dams.
Under an order from Inte-
rior Secretary David Bernhardt
on Wednesday, the drones will
be grounded until the depart-
ment completes a review of
potential security risks of Chi-
nese drones, said department
spokesman Nick Goodwin.
Exceptions will be made for

BYTIMOTHYPUKO
ANDKATYSTECHFEREK

Interior Department Grounds Its Drones

A Grand Canyon National Park employee operates a drone.

BRANDON TORRES/GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

FATAL PLANE CRASH: The pilot and a passenger were killed Wednesday after a Piper PA-28 plane crashed into a townhouse complex

shortly after taking off from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport outside Atlanta at about 10:30 a.m. There were no injuries on the ground.

DAVID GOLDMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

of revenue—86% of total reve-

nue—from advertising in the

first nine months of this year.

Shares in Twitter fell about

2% in after-hours trading on

the decision.

Twitter’s decision bolsters a

growing argument among so-

cial-media critics that the con-

tent that platform operators al-

low people to pay to promote

should be held to higher stan-

dards than the content that

spreads organically on their

platforms.

Twitter had already shifted

its focus on landing political ad

dollars from advocacy groups,

trade organizations and federal

agencies, instead of candidates’

campaigns, in the past few

years, former employees said.

The move largely occurred

since political campaigns pulled

back from Twitter, which didn’t

provide as effective “direct-re-

sponse” results as Facebook

ads that are designed to spur

viewers to donate or join cam-

paigns’ email lists.

Leading up to the 2016 elec-

tion and after, Twitter tried

making several changes in at-

tempts to improve direct re-

sponse from ads on its plat-

form, these people said.

ContinuedfromPageOne

“Twitter is at best a tertiary

place that campaigns go to to

run ads,” said Jessica Alter, co-

founder of Tech for Campaigns,

a nonprofit that provides tal-

ent, technology and training for

centrist and progressive cam-

paigns. She added that Twitter

doesn’t have as large of an au-

dience as Facebook or Google,

and its ad tools aren’t as good

for political advertisers.

“This decision was based on

principle, not money,” Twitter

finance chief Ned Segal said in

a tweet. He said there was no

change to Twitter’s guidance

for its fourth-quarter results.

Facebook, Twitter and plat-

forms including YouTube, part

of Alphabet Inc. ’s Google, came

under fire for their role in poli-

tics after Russian trolls used

their platforms to spread divi-

sive information around the

2016 U.S. presidential election.

Since then, Facebook and Twit-

ter created websites that dis-

play information about political

ads that run on their sites.

Facebook has long avoided

fact-checking political candi-

dates’ personal Facebook posts,

and said in early October it

would exempt campaign ads

from fact-checking. In re-

sponse, Sen. Elizabeth Warren

(D., Mass.) paid for an ad on

Facebook with a false claim

about CEO Mark Zuckerberg to

highlight flaws in Facebook’s

political ad policy and how it

handles misinformation.

Twitter’s move “is yet an-

other attempt to silence con-

servatives, since Twitter knows

President Trump has the most

sophisticated online program,”

said Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s

2020 campaign manager, on

Wednesday.

Mr. Zuckerberg said in a

Facebook post on Wednesday

that though he has considered

whether Facebook should carry

political ads, he believes his

company should continue to

run them.

EDUCATION

Student Test Scores

Down in Most Areas

U.S. students continued a
pattern of failing to make nota-
ble gains in a national exam,
with result scores dropping in
nearly all categories and on par
with those from a decade ago.
Fourth-graders made the only
statistically significant gain—
point—in math, for an average
score of 241 out of a possible 500,
according to the 2019 National As-
sessment of Educational Progress,
known as the Nation’s Report
Card, released Wednesday. The
tests are taken every two years
by a sample of fourth- and eighth-
graders in reading and math.
“Over the past decade, there
has been no progress in either
mathematics or reading perfor-
mance, and the lowest perform-
ing students are doing worse,”
said Peggy G. Carr, associate com-
missioner of the National Center
for Education Statistics, which ad-
ministers the assessment. Scores
for the lowest performers mostly
fell from a decade earlier.
Education Secretary Betsy De-
Vos called the results devastating
and reiterated support for giving
students more options outside
the traditional education system.
Carissa Moffat Miller, execu-
tive director of the Council of
Chief State School Officers, said
the group would lead a summit
of state chiefs, national experts
and educators to try to improve
literacy for all students.
—Tawnell D. Hobbs

EL PASO

Accused Shooter’s

Family Named in Suit

The family of a victim killed in

the August mass shooting at an

El Paso, Texas, Walmart store is

suing the accused gunman, his

parents and grandparents and

the online message board 8chan.

Four relatives of Angelina Eng-

lisbee filed the lawsuit Tuesday in

El Paso District Court. Ms. Englis-

bee was one of 22 people killed

in the rampage. Authorities ar-

rested Patrick Crusius, 21, in the

killings. He has pleaded not guilty.

The Englisbee family’s suit

targets 8chan and three people

associated with it: owner James

Watkins; its founder, Fredrick

Brennan; and Matthew Prince,

the chief executive of Cloudflare,

which formerly provided internet

services to 8chan. The suit ac-

cuses them of encouraging Mr.

Crusius in his white nationalism

and violence.

Neither Mr. Crusius’s public

defender nor representatives of

8chan and Cloudflare responded

to a request for comment.

The lawsuit accuses Mr. Cru-

sius’s parents, John and Lori Cru-

sius, and grandparents, Larry and

Cynthia Brown, of negligence,

saying they “provided his educa-

tion and training and were re-

sponsible for his supervision.”

Chris Ayres, a lawyer repre-

senting the Brown and Crusius

families, said: “The reality is that

this family, too, was shocked and

stunned by these events.”

—Elizabeth Findell

and Erin Ailworth

NORTH DAKOTA

Keystone Pipeline

Is Leaking Oil

A pipeline that carries tar

sands oil from Canada through

seven states has leaked an un-

known amount of crude oil over

more than a quarter-mile swath in

northeastern North Dakota, state

environmental regulators said.

Regulators were notified late

Tuesday night of the leak near

Edinburg, in Walsh County, State

Environmental Quality Chief Dave

Glatt said. Pipeline owner TC En-

ergy shut down the pipeline after

the leak was detected. The cause

of the spill is under investigation.

The Calgary, Alberta-based

company, formerly known as

TransCanada, didn’t respond to

requests to comment.

State regulators were on the

scene Wednesday, and they esti-

mated the area of the spill was

1,500 feet long by 15 feet wide.

Some wetlands were affected,

but drinking-water sources were

spared, Mr. Glatt said. The com-

pany was still working to contain

the spill Wednesday afternoon.

—Associated Press

Lawmakers looking into
Boeing Co.’s grounded 737
MAX jet fleet portrayed a cor-
porate culture in which senior
managers seemingly ignored
alarm bells over safety, and
they pressed the company’s
chief executive about whether
he did enough before or after
two crashes that cost 346 lives.
Throughout a six-hour
House hearing Wednesday,
legislators and their staff un-
veiled a raft of internal docu-
ments that painted the fullest
picture yet of design errors
that contributed to the two
crashes, and of management’s
disregard for safety warnings
from subordinates. The docu-
ments and testimony from se-
nior Boeing executives also
highlighted the intense com-
mercial pressure that played

the first jet went down in In-

donesia in October 2018. Mr.

Muilenburg resisted calls for

his resignation.

“Are you taking a cut in

pay?” Rep. Steve Cohen (D.,

Tenn.) asked. “Is anybody at

Boeing taking a cut or working

for free to try to rectify this

problem, like the Japanese

would do?”

“It’s not about the money

for me,” Mr. Muilenburg re-

sponded. He said it was up to

Boeing’s board to set his com-

pensation. Mr. Muilenburg

said he wanted to see Boeing

through the 737 MAX crisis. “I

am accountable,” he said.

Mr. Muilenburg also indi-

cated that given information

that has recently come to light,

he would have responded dif-

ferently after the October 2018

crash of Lion Air Flight 610. “If

we knew what we know now,

we would have grounded [the

MAX fleet] immediately after

Lion Air,” he said.

The documents released

Wednesday cast a harsh spot-

light on Boeing’s culture,

raising fresh skepticism

among lawmakers about its

engineering and manufactur-

ing decision-making—even

beyond the company’s mis-

steps in designing a 737 MAX

flight-control system that led

to the two crashes.

In one email revealed by

the House panel on Wednes-

day, a Boeing employee ex-

pressed concern about the risk

of relying on a single sensor to

trigger the new system, known

as MCAS, nearly three years

before problems with the sen-

sors and the system brought

down the Lion Air flight.

The so-called angle-of-at-

tack sensor measures the an-

gle of the plane’s nose and

tells the system to push it

down if the aircraft is at risk

of stalling. But if that single

sensor malfunctioned, the

system had no backup and

could force the plane into a

nosedive—as investigators

now believe it did in both the

Lion Air crash in Indonesia

and the crash five months

later of an Ethiopian Airlines

MAX jet—with catastrophic

consequences.

“Are we vulnerable to single

[angle-of-attack] failures with

[the system’s] implementation

or is there some checking that

occurs?” a Boeing employee

asked in an email from Decem-

ber 2015.

John Hamilton, the top en-

gineer in Boeing’s commercial

airliner unit who testified

alongside Mr. Muilenburg, said

the email “highlights our engi-

neers do raise questions, in an

open culture,” adding engi-

neers followed a thorough

process before opting for a

single sensor.

In another email, a senior

Boeing 737 production man-

ager warned that the company

was straining its workforce

too much in its haste to ramp

up production. The manager

sent the email four months be-

fore the first crash in October

2018.

Mr. Muilenburg responded

that the company took seri-

ously the concerns of the vet-

eran employee, now retired,

and took a number of actions,

including setting up “some ad-

ditional quality checkpoints”

throughout the factory. The

CEO said the employee also

sent the complaints to him di-

rectly, and that he had an-

swered. Mr. Muilenburg didn’t

spell out his response to the

employee, but told the com-

mittee: “We did not change

the production rate.”

into some of management’s

decisions.

As a result of the congres-

sional scrutiny, including a

Senate committee hearing

Tuesday, the Chicago-based

aerospace company is increas-

ingly on the defensive.

Appearing before the House

Transportation Committee on

Wednesday, Chief Executive

Dennis Muilenburg heard from

at-times emotional and angry

lawmakers who demanded

that he take personal respon-

sibility for the fatal accidents

and pointed to a $15 million

bonus he received as part of

his annual compensation after

By Andy Pasztor,

Andrew Tangel

and Ted Mann

Documents Reveal Warnings at Boeing
Political

Ads Banned

On Twitter

Twitter said there

was no change to its

guidance for fourth-

quarter results.

P.O. Box 2195, Duxbury, MA 02331

800-222-1236 781-934-

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