The New York Times - 19.09.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-EDTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 N A27

The presshas performed

admirably in reporting on

privacy violations by the

National Security Agency

and major internet com-

panies. But news sites of-

ten expose users to the same surveillance

programs and data-collection companies

they criticize.

Even articles that explained how the

N.S.A. was using Google cookies to “pin-

point targets for hacking” often included

the same cookies uncovered by Edward

Snowden. Likewise, articles about the

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal

often include Facebook tracking code, al-

lowing Facebook to keep tabs on what

people read about it.

Surveillance on news websites is partic-

ularly problematic because the news you

consume may reveal your political lean-

ings or health interests — information

that is not just exploited by corporations

to sell you things, but could also be abused

by governments. And because news orga-

nizations benefit from the surveillance

economy by running advertisements tar-

geted to reader interests, they may be less

likely to report on their own tracking prac-

tices.

A recent article by The Times headlined

“Can an Abortion Affect Your Fertility?”

provides a useful example of how privacy

is infringed on by news websites. I used

my software platform, webXray, to load

the article page 10 times in a row with the

Chrome browser. During each page load

the software kept track of data transfers

made to outside companies and generated

a summary of what happened.

The analysis revealed that people read-

ing the article online may be tracked by

nearly 50 different companies, one of

which is Oracle BlueKai. According to its

website, BlueKai helps companies “per-

sonalize” marketing campaigns by ingest-

ing “massive amounts” of data. The

BlueKai privacy policy specifies that us-

ers are categorized into “health and well-

ness interest segments,” including catego-

ries such as “health conditions” and “med-

ical terms.” Given that numerous compa-

nies may track users, this is only the tip of

the iceberg.

There is a troubling lack of transparen-

cy in these practices. The Times’s privacy

policy does not disclose the vast majority

of tracking companies (including

BlueKai) on its site, requires users to ac-

cept cookies to fully use the site and ex-

plicitly states that The Times ignores the

“do not track” browser setting.

This type of tracking is standard in the

news industry, and The Times is far from

the worst offender.

A recent study I conducted with Reuben

Binns compared 4,000 United States-

based news sites with 4,000 non-news

sites. The news sites exhibited a signifi-

cantly higher reliance on outside compa-

nies to manage site functions such as ad-

vertising and hosting fonts. These outside

companies often maintain vast databases

of personal web browsing habits.

Some of these companies, like Google

and Facebook, have cooperated with the

N.S.A. and may be legally required to dis-

close user data to law enforcement.

Worse, only 10 percent of these outside

parties are disclosed in privacy policies of

the news sites we studied, meaning even

diligent readers will never learn who col-

lects their data. From a privacy perspec-

tive, news websites are among the worst

on the web.

News organizations did not create this

surveillance-for-profit system. At the

dawn of the internet era, advertisers de-

manded tracking to ensure that ads were

being shown to humans, not bots. Then, as

advertisers pushed for ways to better tar-

get ads, ad tech companies created vast

networks to harvest user data and broker

ads on billions of web pages, providing a

one-stop shop for advertisers to reach

web users.

At the same time that ad tech networks

began to dominate web advertising, tradi-

tional forms of advertising and subscrip-

tion revenue for newspapers began to dry

up. To stop the bleeding, many news out-

lets partnered with ad tech companies to

gain entry to their expanding networks.

These early decisions put news organiza-

tions on a path whereby they sacrificed

reader privacy, reduced their ability to

maintain direct relationships with adver-

tisers and ultimately put their survival in

the hands of middlemen like Google.

The result is that as online advertising

networks become more centralized, the

old model of an independently managed

and free press is being replaced by one

where giant technology companies con-

trol user data andthe purse strings.

While the problems are significant, two

approaches, both mandated by Europe’s

General Data Protection Regulation,

might benefit news outlets and readers.

The first, data protection impact assess-

ments, requires organizations to engage

with users so their needs may be under-

stood and considered. This could involve

creating a digital ombudsman or public

editor to represent the privacy concerns

of readers.

A second mandated approach, privacy

by design, requires tech companies to de-

velop software that makes privacy the de-

fault mode, meaning users must opt in to

tracking used for advertising.

The European regulation shows that

improving user privacy can be quite sim-

ple. In comparison to the nearly 50 compa-

nies tracking users on “Can an Abortion

Affect Your Fertility?” in the United

States, I found only 16 in the European Un-

ion.

If people everywhere should have the

same fundamental rights to privacy as

Europeans, and if providing privacy is not

unduly harming revenue, why shouldn’t

The Times provide enhanced privacy to

all its readers? In the same way The

Times leads in high-quality news cover-

age, it could also lead in respecting reader

privacy. 0

ROSE WONG

When News Sites Spy on You

Timothy Libert

TIMOTHY LIBERTis a faculty member in

computer science at Carnegie Mellon

University, where he teaches in the pri-

vacy engineering program.

The press is among the

worst on the web when it

comes to privacy.

I

SRAEL is undecided. It is politically

split. On Tuesday, for a second time

this year, voters did what voters do,

and the conclusion is still, well, incon-

clusive.

In the coming days, Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the head of

the Likud party, and his main political op-

ponent, Benny Gantz, who is the head of

the Blue and White party, will attempt to

convince the president, Reuven Rivlin,

that each has a greater ability than his ri-

val to form a stable coalition to govern Is-

rael. The numbers, however, do not add up

for either of them at the moment.

The most obvious path — a unity gov-

ernment including both of them — is

something neither seems to want.

The election pitted two camps against

one another, one supportive of the prime

minister and the other opposing him. The

interesting part was the tactics that both

camps used as their main means of rally-

ing the troops.

Both identified straw men against

which to campaign, scaremongering

about the two least popular groups among

mainstream Israeli voters: ultra-Ortho-

dox Jews and Muslim Arabs. That such

dueling tactics led to a draw not once, but

twice, tells us something about why we

may be witnessing the end of the Netanya-

hu era, even if he manages to hold on to

power.

Back in the old days, when Israel’s first

prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was in

power, the boundaries of the political

mainstream were marked by his famous

saying: “Without Herut and without

Maki.” This phrase put the right-wing

predecessor of Likud, Herut, and the Com-

munist Party, Maki, beyond the pale of po-

litical acceptability.

Herut and Maki no longer exist in the

same way. And yet this sentiment still

holds today: There is a mainstream, and

then there is a periphery that most Is-

raelis find objectionable.

Ask Israelis to rank the groups that con-

tribute to the success of the country, and

year after year they say the same thing:

At the bottom of the list are Muslim Arab

Israelis, and just a notch above them, ul-

tra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim.

With this in mind, the election looks less

like a contest between a for-Netanyahu

camp and a never-Netanyahu camp, and

more like a contest between a never-Arab

camp and a never-Haredi camp — with

neither winning outright.

The Blue and White party is vulnerable

to anti-Arab campaigns because it has no

way of forming a coalition without Arab

support (unless it forms a unity govern-

ment with Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud). And

the elections proved that Likud has its

own Achilles’ heel: It is vulnerable to a

never-Haredi campaign.

The alliance with the ultra-Orthodox

was not unreasonable for Likud. The

Haredi parties are loyal and disciplined.

Give them what they want — such as

funds for their special schools, in which

students study Torah but no math — and

get their votes in return. Since there is

rarely a conflict between what Likud

wants and what the Haredi parties want,

the bond was natural and strong.

But Israelis dislike Haredi representa-

tives, who use their political power to

close stores on the sabbath, and demand

support for young Haredi students who

skip military service. In this election,

Likud leaders have had to face the possi-

bility that the Haredi alliance has a cost.

The politician who identified these dy-

namics best was former Defense Minister

Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael

Beitenu party. Mr. Liberman forced the

second election and ran a masterful cam-

paign based on a simple strategy: He posi-

tioned himself as the only candidate rep-

resenting the mainstream by tapping into

both anti-Arab and anti-ultra-Orthodox

sentiments.

Mr. Liberman has a long history of rally-

ing anti-Arab sentiment. In this election,

he turned against a new group: the

Haredim. Mr. Liberman said that he would

refuse to sit with ultra-Orthodox parties in

the same coalition until his terms are ac-

cepted: among them, equality in military

service, and math and English in Haredi

schools.

With this strategy, Mr. Liberman almost

doubled the number of seats he will have

in the next Knesset, and made himself a

kingmaker — no bloc can form a govern-

ment without his support. More impor-

tant, he may have also redrawn the map of

Israeli politics.

The besmirching of Arabs and Haredim

during the campaign resulted in both of

these groups rushing to the polls. If exit

polls are to be believed, Arab Israelis and

Haredi Jews will emerge from this elec-

tion with increased representation in Par-

liament. Still, their political positions did

not improve.

The new rules Mr. Liberman imposed

mean that a candidate no longer has to be

in the pocket of a right-wing religious co-

alition to reject a partnership with the Ar-

abs. They mean that an Israeli voter no

longer has to be in the center-left camp to

oppose the ultra-Orthodox parties. Mr.

Liberman is no Ben-Gurion, but he man-

aged to recreate “without Herut and with-

out Maki” for the 21st century.

This looks like a realignment that sends

an important message to Israel’s leaders:

The mainstream refuses to let minorities

govern its future. And there’s a message

here for Haredim and Arabs, too: Influ-

ence will come only with the acceptance of

certain norms. 0

The End of the Netanyahu Era

SHMUEL ROSNERis the political editor at

The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the

Jewish People Policy Institute and a

contributing opinion writer.

Political dynamics have

shifted under his feet.

Shmuel Rosner

TEL AVIV

ROBERT GATES, THEformer defense secre-

tary, once scoffed that Saudi Arabia

“wants to fight the Iranians to the last

American.”

The danger is that we slip toward that

nightmare. Secretary of State Mike Pom-

peo says that Iran has committed an “act

of war” by attacking Saudi oil processing

centers. Influential hawks like Senator

Lindsey Graham have suggested carry-

ing out strikes on Iranian oil refineries.

Meanwhile, Iran is warning that it will

retaliate for any strike with a “rapid and

crushing” response.

President Trump faces a conundrum.

If Iran was behind the attack on Saudi

Arabia, that was a serious provocation.

It’s reasonable to wonder if Iranian lead-

ers are emboldened because they see

Trump as someone full of just bluster and

bombast.

“He is not a lion, he is a rabbit,” said Ali

Bigdeli, a political analyst in Tehran, ac-

cording to a Times article by David D.

Kirkpatrick and Farnaz Fassihi.

Iran may have concluded that Trump

is the mother of all bunny rabbits after

the lack of any kinetic response to at-

tacks on oil shipping in May and June, or

to Iran’s shooting down of an American

drone in June.

The upshot is that hawks are urging

Trump to be tougher this time and to con-

sider bombing Iranian targets. That

would be even more dangerous than a

perception of weakness, for it could

quickly escalate. Iran would strike back

at sites in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab

Emirates or Bahrain, and it would target

American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A full war with Iran would be a catas-

trophe. Iran has twice the population of

Iraq and would be a much more formida-

ble foe than Iraq was.

So Trump has a genuine dilemma: In-

action may be perceived as weakness,

while military strikes may escalate and

drag us into cataclysm. But this is a di-

lemma of Trump’s own making.

We are in this mess because Trump

abandoned the landmark 2015 Iranian

nuclear deal. Hawks argued that we

could apply maximum pressure on Iran

and inflict such pain that it would buckle,

without appreciating that Iran could also

ramp up the pressure on us.

That’s the problem with hawks. They

plan out their chess games and trium-

phantly plot a checkmate without appre-

ciating the basic lesson of Sun Tzu or

Clausewitz that the other side also gets

to move.

Unfortunately, without the Iran nucle-

ar deal, all options are bad. We should be

searching for ways to return to the

agreement, with face-saving tweaks that

would allow both Trump and the Iranian

supreme leader to claim victory.

Instead, I’m afraid we risk slipping

into conflict. Nobody wants a war, but

getting out of this will require skillful di-

plomacy, which isn’t something the

Trump team has much demonstrated.

We need not be Saudi Arabia’s guard

dog, or lap dog. Yes, Iran is a threat to

international security — but so is Saudi

Arabia. It is Saudi Arabia that kidnapped

Lebanon’s prime minister, caused a

schism with Qatar and created the

world’s worst humanitarian crisis in

Yemen.

Attacking Saudi oil installations was a

breach of global norms — as was mur-

dering and dismembering a columnist

for The Washington Post who was a resi-

dent of the United States. Saudi Arabia

has the gall to call for an international in-

quiry into the attack on its oil installa-

tions, even as it blocks any international

investigation into the murder of my

friend Jamal Khashoggi.

Macabre new transcripts show that

the Saudi hit squad was discussing the

dismemberment even before Jamal

walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istan-

bul. “I know how to cut very well,” one

member of the team said. “I have never

worked on a warm body, though.”

Saudi Arabia continues to imprison a

Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Loujain al-

Hathloul, after earlier torturing and sex-

ually assaulting her for advocating wom-

en’s rights. The kingdom apparently of-

fered Hathloul freedom if she would pub-

licly deny that she had been tortured;

she bravely refused.

Trump might seek Saudi input on

whether to go to war with Iran by placing

a call not only to a killer on a throne but

also to a hero in prison.

If Crown Prince Mohammed bin

Salman wants to respond militarily to

the airstrikes on its oil facilities, he can

go ahead with the kingdom’s own fighter

jets and missiles. But this is not our fight.

Nor should it be our graveyard.

This is a struggle between two misogy-

nistic, repressive regimes that are both

destabilizing the region. And Trump’s

suggestion that we will be well paid for

defending Saudi Arabia is an insult to our

troops, casting them as mercenaries

working for a thuggish potentate.

Our task instead should be to cooper-

ate with European countries to get out of

this muck and find a way back into the

Iranian nuclear agreement. 0

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

We’re Not

The Saudis’

Mercenaries

Trump brought the

crisis with Iran on

himself, and the nation.

Gail Collins is off today.

F

OR more than a century following
the Industrial Revolution, rural
and small-town young people left
home to pursue survival in com-
mercial meccas. According to the Ameri-
can story, those who thrived in urban cen-
ters had “made it” — a capitalist triumph
for the individual, a damaging loss for the
place he left. We often refer to this as
“brain drain” from the hinterlands, imply-
ing that those who stay lack the merit or
ability to “get out.”
But that old notion is getting dusty.
The nation’s most populous cities —
New York and Los Angeles — are experi-
encing population declines, most likely
driven by unaffordability. To be sure, other
metros are experiencing growth, espe-
cially in the South and West. But there is
an exodus afoot that suggests a national
homecoming, across generations, to less
bustling spaces. Last year, a Gallup poll
found that while roughly 80 percent of us
live in urban areas, respondents most
wished for a rural life.
If happiness is what they seek, those
folks are onto something.
A 2018 study found that in spite of eco-
nomic and health concerns, most rural
Americans are pretty dang happy and
hopeful. Forty percent of rural adults said
their lives had come out better than they
expected. As for cultural woes, those
among them under age 50, as well as peo-
ple of color, showed notably higher ac-
knowledgment of discrimination and com-
mitment to social progress. All in all, it
was a picture not of a dying place but one
that is progressing.
A University of Minnesota Extension
researcher, Ben Winchester, has cited a
“brain gain” in rural America. Mr. Win-
chester found that from 2000 to 2010, most
rural Minnesota counties gained early-ca-
reer to midcareer residents with ample so-
cioeconomic assets. A third of them are re-
turning, while the rest are new recruits.
I grew up in and wrote a memoir about a
place that by many measures during my
Reagan-era childhood and Clinton-era ad-
olescence was indeed “dying.” American
readers love a tale of escape from such
places, populated by characters who ex-
emplify addiction, abuse, bad decision-
making. My memoir instead sought to re-
veal the immense public forces of policy
and socioeconomics that shaped my fam-
ily’s behaviors, opportunities and out-
comes. I wrote affectionately yet unspar-
ingly fromthat area, where I still choose to
reside.
This less-common narrative has
prompted readers to tell me this: Our
stories are different but the same. I know
the world you wrote about — it’s deep in
me, and I care about it.
These aren’t just white people la-
menting the loss of the family wheat farm.

They are black women missing their fam-
ilies in the rural South, Muslim women or-
ganizing workers in meatpacking towns
on the Plains, young gay men hoping to re-
turn to their small-town roots. This is the
rural America I know and love — a place
rife with problems, yes, but containing di-
versity, vibrancy and cross-cultural cama-
raderie.
From where I sit, rural advocates are
heroes of the American odyssey — seeing
value where others see lack, returning
with the elixir of hard-won social capital to
help solve the troubles of home. The politi-
cal scientist Veronica Womack described
to me the metaphorical significance of her
black students at Georgia College consid-
ering work in agriculture.
“It’s kind of a circle,” Dr. Womack said.
“When our ancestors were made free,
land was their pursuit.” So when she says
her students are coming home, she ex-
plained, she means that they have real-
ized that farming is a “vehicle that I can
use to be free.”
The Christian Science Monitor recently
reported on a prairie trend of young peo-
ple, drawn by family ties and affordable
entrepreneurship, returning to rural and
small-town homes around college gradua-
tion. They’re opening restaurants or start-
ing small, unconventional farming opera-
tions.
This return — or refusal to leave — is
good news for Americans who will happily
remain in cities: Rural spaces are inter-
twined with suburban and urban areas by
way of food production, natural resources,
the economy and beyond. We need policy-
makers who understand this (and care
about it).
Fortunately, Democratic presidential
candidates have unveiled an unprece-
dented spate of progressive rural policy
plans. They suggest actions for which
many rural leaders have argued — invest-
ing in rural people and economies to lead a
Green New Deal, cutting out oppressive
middlemen in moving food from
producers to eaters and much more.
The concept of home is subjective. But
we have long interpreted it at the mercy of
forces such as capitalism and industri-
alization. The resulting social imbalance
is an objective crisis. Mobility is a virtue of
freedom. Staying — or returning — is an
equal virtue. 0

Young people are

reversing the heartland

‘brain drain.’

The Return

To Rural

America

SARAH SMARSHis the host of the podcast
“The Homecomers” and the author of
“Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard
and Being Broke in the Richest Country
on Earth.”

Sarah Smarsh
WICHITA, KAN.