The App Drivers and Couriers Union (ACDU) has “cautiously” welcomed the decision, but believes London mayor Sadiq Khan should take further action and limit the number of licensed drivers on the platform. “Such reductions, achieved through attrition, are necessary to ensure Uber can comfortably meet its compliance obligations including worker rights whilst giving TfL the breathing space necessary so that it can comfortably meet its responsibilities to ensure that Uber drivers and the travelling public are protected,” the union said in a press release.

The two organisations have been at loggerheads since September 2017. Transport for London refused to reissue Uber’s licence — which had initially run for five years — because it wasn’t happy with some of the company’s actions and procedures. The regulator didn’t like how Uber reported criminal offences and conducted driver checks, for instance. It was also unimpressed with the company’s use of ‘Greyball’ software which helped drivers evade the authorities by tagging known officials and serving them ghost cars. Uber argued that it had never used Greyball software in the UK, however, and filed an appeal one month later.

Uber was allowed to operate as usual while the legal challenge was settled. In June 2018, the court ruled that Uber could continue operating on a 15-month licence, but only if it met Tranport for London’s conditions. These included a bi-yearly assurance report, appointing three non-executive directors to its board, and giving at least one month’s notice for any major changes to its business model. Then, in September 2019, Transport for London decided to renew Uber’s licence — but only for two months. The regulator accepted that Uber had made some improvements to its culture and governance, but wanted to review “additional material” before committing to a longer licence.

It was later revealed that “issued” had emerged late in the company’s application process. Transport for London noted these in November 2019, when it decided not to renew the company’s licence. “A key issue identified was that a change to Uber’s systems allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other Uber driver accounts,” the regulator explained. “This allowed them to pick up passengers as though they were the booked driver, which occurred in at least 14,000 trips – putting passenger safety and security at risk.” Transport for London did accept that Uber had taken steps to close these loopholes. But it also wasn’t convinced that the company could prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.

Uber has taken further steps to address the regulators concerns. In April, for instance, the company introduced random driver checks via facial recognition. It’s also introduced ‘Programme Zero,’ an initiative designed to ensure that the company never breaks any of Transport for London’s conditions.

According to Verdict, Uber admitted that “mistakes were made” during the hearing. It also argued that it was a different business to the one from 2017. Tim Ward QC, the representative for Uber, argued that only 24 drivers had exploited the photo-related glitch. He said the problem was “not endemic or widespread,” and that all of the issues highlighted by the regulator had been resolved. The regulator’s argument though, was based on the company’s entire history. Marie Dimitriou, the representative for Transport for London, reportedly said in court: “You will have to look at the entire picture and ask yourself: is that good enough, or does that pattern of breaches reveal a problem, namely, an ongoing risk to passengers?”

The judge sided with Uber. The decision reflects how far the company has come since Dara Khosrowshahi took on the role of chief executive in August 2017. Critics won’t be pleased, but many London passengers will be.

Facial recognition technology has been implemented on a trial basis in the UK since 2016, both in London by the Met and in South Wales by the SWP. In South Wales, the AI system is notorious for its error rate. In 2018, the SWP was found to have misidentified 2,300 people as potential criminals.

In London, an 2019 independent study found that the Met’s system had an 81 percent error rate. Although the Met’s own analysis claimed the error rate was far lower, although clearly they too were unsatisfied with the system. In 2020, it switched to Clearview AI.

Clearview AI combines surveillance footage and images pulled from the internet in an attempt to mass identify individuals in public spaces. That has provoked accusations that the technology is dystopian, not helped because Clearview scraped pictures from social media sites, including Facebook, without permission. 

Almost a year after Google introduced Play Pass on Android, it’s expanding the game and app subscription service outside of the US. It’ll be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom this week.

If you’re interested, you can check out Google Play Pass for free with a one-month trial. You’ll find it in the Play Store menu. After the trial’s up, it typically costs $4.99/month for US users. However, Google is introducing an annual plan that’ll help subscribers save some money. It costs $29.99/year for users in the US — essentially making Play Pass half price. Family managers can share a subscription with five other people too.

Back in January, the UK said that “high risk” vendors including Huawei would be allowed to build the country’s 5G network, provided they weren’t “core” parts of it. Clearly, the government has changed its mind. “5G will be transformative for our country, but only if we have confidence in the security and resilience of the infrastructure it is built upon,” Dowden added.

Today’s announcement covers 5G infrastructure, specifically. The UK has used Huawei’s telecommunications equipment for some time, though, in both its mobile and fibre broadband networks. BT, which owns mobile network operator EE, confirmed in December 2018 that it had already started removing Huawei equipment from its 4G network. It’s not clear how much remains at this time and whether the government has any plans to completely outlaw the company’s gear in 3G and 4G-related infrastructure.

The UK government has hinted, however, that it would like to slowly phase out Huawei’s presence in the nation’s fibre broadband. It’s now “advising” network operators to “transition away” from purchasing new Huawei equipment, and is running a technical consultation to determine what the timeframe should be. “We expect this period to last no longer than two years,” the UK government said in a press release.

The announcement follows the US government’s decision to ban American companies from buying telecom equipment with a perceived national security risk. Many politicians and security experts believe that Huawei is a secret surveillance vehicle for the Chinese government — a position the company has always denied — and therefore untrustworthy.

The US market dwarfs the UK in size and influence. Still, losing the latter will undoubtedly damage Huawei’s business.

According to Sky News, Lord Browne of Madingley, the UK chairman of Huawei Technologies, has told the company “in the last few days” that he will step down in September.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

A few months after Google released its second-generation Pixel Buds in the US, they’re now on sale in some other countries. Folks in Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Singapore and Spain are among those who can get their hands on them from the Google Store.

Color availability varies by territory for the time being. You’ll only be able to pick them up in white in most countries for now, but people in the UK (£179) and Canada (CAD$239) can opt for a black facade. Canadians can snag the mint version as well. Google said in a tweet that more colors are on the way next month.

The UK had decided in January that it would allow equipment from Huawei and other “high risk” companies in non-core parts of the nation’s 5G networks, limiting their involvement to 35 percent in networks connecting devices and other hardware to mobile masts. Reports later emerged that the UK might phase out Huawei over the space of three years.

The US has maintained that Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies are dangerous as they could potentially help China spy on sensitive communications. Officials have been publicly reluctant to outline just what (if anything) Huawei is capable of, however, and unofficial reports of access to carrier backdoors suggested these may have been common networking tools. Huawei has maintained its innocence.

Whoever is telling the truth, this could be a further blow to Huawei’s international plans. While Huawei’s forced exit from the US wasn’t surprising, its foothold elsewhere has been relatively safe, if sometimes limited. A UK rethink would kick it out of another major market, and it wouldn’t be surprising if other US allies followed suit.

The government previously planned to build its own Galileo replacement with the help of other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US. The project was put on hold in May just before the publication of a feasibility study. The estimated cost had risen by then to £5 billion ($6.2 billion).

The UK’s Satellite Applications Catapult is working on a white paper that would lay out a method of using the OneWeb constellation for a sat-sav system. However, some experts have suggested that hosting a GPS-style system on OneWeb’s satellites might not be viable.

For one thing, the constellation is at a far lower orbit (1,200 km) than satellites for major positioning systems, such as Galileo and GPS (around 20,000 km). Since early 2019, OneWeb has launched 79 of 650 planned 5G satellites for its initial constellation.

“If you want to replace GPS for military-grade systems, where you need encrypted, secure signals that are precise to centimetres, I’m not sure you can do that on satellites as small as OneWeb’s,” University of Leicester space policy expert Dr Bleddyn Bowen told the Guardian last week. “It’s bolting an unproven technology on to a mega-constellation that’s designed to do something else. It’s a tech and business gamble.”

Meanwhile, Bharti owns the third-largest mobile provider on the planet in Bharti Airtel, which has more than 425 million customers. OneWeb says the company gives it a near-term commercial opportunity “through its presence across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the terrain necessitates the use of satellite-based connectivity.”

As cinemas in the UK prepared to reopen after lockdown, they promised Star Wars fans a treat. Disney and Vue planned to release a 4K version of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in theaters. That would have been the first time a UHD version of an original trilogy film appeared in theaters. But now, Disney and Vue are walking back on their promise. Instead, Vue theaters will show the original 2K version of the film, Variety reports.

This isn’t entirely surprising, as plans for reopening and release dates are still changing. According to Variety, exhibitors Vue and Cineworld have shifted their reopening dates from July 10th to July 31st. Apparently, Mouse House scrapped plans for the 4K release after talks with exhibitors broke down in the last few weeks.

Law enforcement agencies began collecting data from Encrochat on April 1st. According to the BBC, the encryption code was likely cracked in early March. It’s not clear exactly how officials hacked the platform, which is now shut down.

It’s not unusual for criminals to communicate via encrypted apps and devices. In 2018, the FBI arrested Vincent Ramos, the CEO of Phantom Secure, a company that was selling custom BlackBerrys to drug cartels. When Ramos pleaded guilty, he admitted that the encrypted handsets were used to facilitate sales of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines and that Phantom Secure remotely wiped the devices if they were obtained by law enforcement.

In the US, politicians promoting the EARN IT Act want to penalize companies for using end-to-end encryption. In theory, that may prevent platforms like Encrochat and Phantom Secure, but the bill would make changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and doing that could have far-reaching consequences. For starters, it might lead to social media platforms censoring anything that might prompt a legal challenge — or shutting down altogether.

For now at least, we can be happy that officials busted Encrochat users. In addition to the arrests, police in the UK say they prevented kidnappings and executions, “mitigating over 200 threats to life.”

“Together we’ve protected the public by arresting middle-tier criminals and the kingpins, the so-called iconic untouchables who have evaded law enforcement for years, and now we have the evidence to prosecute them,” NCA Director of Investigations Nikki Holland said in a statement.

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson didn’t comment on the specific details. Instead, they reiterated the goal of supporting the NHS Test and Trace service.

The extras would come alongside a possible new “PPE in your pocket” marketing scheme, and would underscore the challenges the UK faces. Widescale adoption of the contact tracing app may be important to preventing infection spikes that lead to further lockdowns, but there’s no guarantee a wary public will download it. Singapore has considered smart bracelets after struggling to recruit users for its app — the UK might not fare much better if residents see few immediate benefits.