Morning Wire - Monday | August 9, 2021

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

The Taliban surges across Afghanistan, Apple plans to scan people’s cell phones for evidence of child sexual abuse, and schools reopen amid more Covid concerns. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Taliban is surging across Afghanistan as Western forces withdraw. We'll talk about some troubling developments on the ground in Afghanistan and how the West is responding. I'm John Bickley with Georgia Hal. It's Monday, August 9th, and this is Morning Wire. Apple reveals that it will be scanning Americans' iPhones for evidence of child sexual abuse, prompting concerns about potential misuse of the system. How will the tech giant's new system function, and what are the privacy and security implications? And schools are kicking off a new year across the country, but classroom learning may look different from state to state.

The CDC recommends that K-12 schools should be opened for full-time in-person learning, but in those indoor settings, everyone should be masked. We'll look at the various approaches being taken for COVID safety and discuss new data showing the toll that lockdowns have taken on students. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Today's episode is sponsored by WioTech. WioTech, one of the nation's leading auto and diesel training schools,

sees the trades as America's front lines. WioTech is shaping young men, women, and veterans to build careers and businesses. America is built on the trades, and WioTech is leading the way in training. Visit yotech.edu to subscribe and donate to the future technicians of America. With Western forces continuing to withdraw from Afghanistan, the situation in the war-torn country has devolved rapidly. we've seen the Taliban quickly seizing control of more and more of Afghanistan, as well as reports of exhausted government forces and overwhelmed local militia. Joining us to discuss the situation in Afghanistan is Deborah Haynes, Foreign Affairs Editor at Sky News.

Deborah, thanks for joining us. Hi, thank you. So if you would, give us the latest on what's happening in Afghanistan. Where did things stand? Well, the Taliban are pushing ahead with this seemingly unstoppable advance. When we speak to British officials, they do continue to hope that the Afghan government forces that they've been backing for the last 20 years will be able to stand their ground. And also you've got warlords coming together and trying to push back against the Taliban.

But in terms of what's happening on the ground at the moment, the momentum does seem to be with the militants. What's changed since Friday is the fall of provincial capital. many across the north, Kunduz is the big prize that fell on Sunday. There's still pockets of resistance. The government forces are still in control of the airport. But in the city center of Kunduz in the north of Afghanistan, the Taliban flag is flying, and that is a significant victory. Are there any signs that the Afghan military can hold this back?

Well, I mean, there hasn't been a complete collapse. There's fighting around key cities like Kandahar. down in the south, obviously the capital of Kabul is still very much under government control. So there is still a lot to play for. And what we've seen is a lot of consolidating by the Afghan government forces. We've also seen a ramping up of airstrikes from the US military. Right. But clearly that's using a much diminished force. I mean, they handed over much of their bases, including Bagram in Kabul. And so their ability to support the Afghan is significantly diminished.

To shift gears, we've seen some very troubling reports about contractors and interpreters that have worked for both the US and UK governments, attempting to get out of the country. You've been covering some of those stories. Can you speak to that? Yes, well, the UK government was initially really slow to offer support

their sort of comment back in 2010, I remember because I was reporting on it, was when you had these pleas for help from Afghan interpreters on the ground saying that they were really, receiving death threats, was we can't bring them out of Afghanistan because we'd be depriving Afghanistan of their brightest and best. Now, clearly, that was at a time when there was all that hope and effort to try to build this democratic country and build the sort of education and health

and security systems that they'd previously wanted, even though President Biden recently said it wasn't about nation building. It very much was back then. And then obviously over the subsequent years, those ambitions have clearly floundered and been reduced and changed. And so the UK government policy has changed with it. And it's become increasingly generous in terms of offering refuge to former staff that are under threat. However, there really is concern, despite the fact that people are very relieved and grateful to the government for changing the rules in the way that they have, there are still many that aren't meeting the criteria. In particular, those that were sacked from their jobs.

And I've been speaking to a couple of former interpreters. Both of them worked with the British military in Helmand in the south of Afghanistan. Both of them say that they are receiving threats. Their lives are in danger. Both were sacked in separate incidents. Both accused of smoking drugs. One of them was also accused of theft. Both say that they were innocent of these crimes.

And obviously I can't tell either way. But neither had time. to appeal, there doesn't seem to be any sort of due process going on when they were sacked. And you've got to think, even if they were guilty of those crimes, does that really justify leaving them behind, knowing that the Taliban won't distinguish between whether or not you were sacked by the British military? They regard anyone who worked with US, British, or other NATO forces as a traitor who deserves to die. Right. Well, very concerning reports that of Afghanistan We'll keep an eye on it.

Thank you so much, Deborah, for talking to us. Very pleasure. That was Deborah Haynes, Foreign Affairs Editor at Sky News. Up next, Apple will begin scanning users' phones for illicit content. Like most Americans, you're busy this summer, which is why there's no better time to skip the trip to the post office and save on postage. Mail and ship letters and packages right from your computer. Go to Stamps.com and enter Wire for a four-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale.

And never go to the post office again. Big Tech Giant Apple has announced plans to scan user's cell phones for illicit content. While some activists are celebrating the move, others are expressing concern regarding data privacy. Here to tell us more is Daily Wires Ian Howarth. Ian, welcome. Good morning, Georgia. So first, what was in this announcement? Well, Apple recently unveiled plans to scan iPhones in the U.S.

in order to detect images of child sexual abuse. This system, known as neural hash, would scan all images on. the person's iPhone before they're uploaded to iCloud, Apple's cloud-based storage service. If the program finds a possible match, the image will then be reviewed manually. If the match is confirmed, the user's Apple account will be disabled, and law enforcement via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, will be notified. Other lesser-known parts of these plans involve Apple scanning users' text messages, and warning parents if their children, who are 13 years old or less, send or view images containing sexually

explicit content. And this program is set to roll out later this year. So what do you mean when you say find a match? So this system is based on hashing, which is basically a mathematical fingerprint of an image. So a match would be an image whose fingerprint is either identical or similar enough to another image. And based on what we know so far, the program will only match images which are already stored in the center's database. So in theory, a match would only be flagged and presumably confirmed if the image was already known to be child pornography. Okay. So in this case, family photos at the beach, for example, wouldn't be flagged, at least according to Apple.

Okay, so they have a bank of known child pornography images, and they specifically cross-reference users' photos against those to make sure that the user is not in possession of a known illegal image. Yes, exactly. I can see why this is controversial, but there are some strong advocates. What are they saying? Yeah, some advocates are celebrating the move by Apple. They're either describing this system as an excellent tool against the spread of these images online,

or they're pointing out that other big tech companies already share digital fingerprints of known child abuse images, and that Apple already scans images in some capacity after they're stored on iCloud. And on the flip side, though, a lot of people feel weird about having their content on the phone scanned by Apple. Yeah, and there are multiple layers to this argument. So the first layer involves concerns over user privacy and whether big tech companies should be able to, to analyze your private information. Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said that while child sexual abuse material and abusers who traffic in it are repugnant, he thinks that Apple is taking the wrong approach. He said that Apple should focus on making it easy for people to report content that

shared with them, that scanning all private photos on your phone is not privacy, and saying that this is not how technology built in free countries works. And then there are concerns about abuse of this system. For example, Matthew Green, a cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins, argued that Apple's program could be used to frame innocent people by sending them what appears to be harmless images which will, without the recipient's knowledge, trigger Apple's checks. And yet another layer of worry relates to abuse by other regimes. Apple has worked closely with the Chinese government in recent years, and there are concerns that the communist state could demand that Apple scan for other files, not just child abuse images, such as evidence of political

dissent. There really is a lot to unpack here, but the central issue is that any scanning would be done on user devices rather than after being stored on the cloud. And this means that the line between on and off-device privacy will be crossed by Apple. Yeah. In many ways, redefining what user privacy now means. Right. Ian, thanks for the update. My pleasure. Daily Wires, Ian Hauerth. This month, schools around America will open their doors for a new school year, while some students will return to a traditional pre-pandemic experience. Others will still be required to wear masks and social distance. Here to discuss how education officials are handling the return

and what we've learned about the impact of last year's school closures is Daily Wire Managing Editor Cabot Phillips. Good morning, Cabot. Hi, John. So many students will be heading back to in-person learning for the first time since March of 2020, which is pretty hard to believe. What are things going to look like for them? Well, most of that just depends on what state you're in.

Even though mask mandates have been mostly scaled back across the country, the CDC is still urging schools to require masks for all students and faculty, regardless of vaccination status too. Right. Some states like Washington, California, and Illinois have responded by issuing statewide mask mandates for all public school students and staff, as well as increased social distancing measures in the classroom. On the other hand, some states have banned school districts from requiring masks. What can you tell us about that? So governors in Arizona, Texas, and Florida have all taken that step. In Florida, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order banning mask requirements in the classroom and threatening to withdraw funding from school districts who defied the order. The State Board of Education is even offering vouchers to parents who feel their children are the victims of, quote, COVID-19 harassment.

This would allow parents to transfer their children to a private school or other school district. What kind of pushback have we seen to those measures? A good amount. In Florida, two lawsuits have been filed against the governor already. They allege that the order is unconstitutional. In addition, at least four school districts have defied the order and have implemented mask mandates on their own. So this issue will likely end up being settled in courts throughout the school year. We've been tracking the spread of vaccine mandates at businesses nationwide. Do we think similar mandates could be coming for some K-12 school districts? It's possible. We've already seen a slew of vaccine mandates for students at universities. across the country, but when it comes to K through 12 schools, it's more complicated. Remember, kids under 12 still aren't approved to get the COVID vaccine. So unless new guidance is issued, a mandate just isn't plausible right now.

Right. And even if it were, parents are split, according to polling. Some support a mandate for those 12 and up. They say that there are already requirements for polio and measles vaccine, so COVID should be included. But many others oppose the mandate. They point to studies showing that young children overwhelmingly expect only minor symptoms if they do contract COVID.

So shifting gears a bit, as remote learning comes to an end, what can you tell us about the impact it had on education in America? This is one of the few topics that experts on both sides agree on. They say remote learning has been a massive failure. In Newark, New Jersey, for example, just 11% of second to eighth graders met the state's minimum reading requirements, 11%. That number is just 9% for math. Now, those numbers were four times higher than they were.

pre-pandemic. We're seeing the same results in places like Baltimore, where 41% of high schoolers earned below a 1.0 GPA during the shutdown. In Tennessee, just 29% of K-12 students are at grade level for reading, and just 25% are there in math. So it's pretty clear that during the lockdowns, education slipped and students suffered. So it seems clear that whatever happens, we can't go back to remote learning. There's no doubt about that. It's going to have to be another solution. Thanks for the update, Cabot. We'll continue tracking how schools reopened this fall. Daily Wire Managing Editor Cabot Phillips.

Other big developments that we're tracking this week, the Tokyo Olympics came to a close on Sunday, and the United States took home the most medals of any country, winning 113. The U.S. also edged out China in winning the most gold medals, earning 39 goals to China's 38. If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review.

That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know. If you like this podcast, get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at DailyWire.com slash subscribe. Use code MorningWire to try a reader's past membership and get your first month for only 99 cents.