and ham became a national hero, even after the revelations that he shared secret information came to light. pakistan was in shock, but willing to forgive han who later withdrew his confessions with all of them in the extent of his involvement in the enlisted nuclear trafficking will remain unclear. but for many in pakistan, abdul cather can will be remembered as the man who restored the nation's pride. had that there hamid al jazeera. ah, exactly half past the hour. this is al jazeera. these are the top stories voting underway in iraq to elect a new parliament and a poll brought forward in response to mass protest. prime minister must offer alchemy was among the 1st to cast a ballot in an attempt to encourage a good turn out. mock went up, the wired has more from a pulling station in baghdad. it's is getting quite,

it's getting really very quiet. and there early results suggesting that it's about around 19 percent. the whole turn out during the day he'd in this pulling center where i'm standing at now. there are an 8 pulling stations. we counted all the votes throughout the day. it's between 13 and 17 percent in all the pulling stations here. and by the way, this is one densely populated neighbourhood in baghdad. this is a cell here, neighborhood, a densely populated neighbourhood. thousands of chin is eons of back on the streets of the capital, protesting against their precedent. there have been several protest in skies seed seized near total power 2 months ago. if he 6 people have been killed by a car bomb in yemen, port city of aidan, the governor and the environment minister both survived the blast, which happened as their conroy was passing by talks between us and taliban officials of entered a 2nd day in qatar. it's the 1st in person meeting since the arm group seized power in afghanistan in august. the outgoing german chancellor,

anglo merkel has been meeting the is really prime minister enough talley bennett in west jerusalem as her last official visit to the country. bennet praised merkel and germany for what he called, what uncompromising support the check president miller's there man is being treated in an intensive care unit for complications from an undisclosed chronic condition. he was staying at the hospital just after meeting the prime minister and refurbish, who narrowly lost parliamentary elections held over the past couple of days. the president is supposed to lead party talks about forming the next government. a russian military plane has crashed and they taught a stone reaching killing at least 15 people. the aircraft was carrying a group of paratroopers when it went down up. next is the listening post that sit for me in the afternoon crew will back from 10 g tomorrow. we will see you soon. bye. ah, how many nukes is too many new comerica hands in many ways driven the arms race?

the parties are much more like the british parties. now today, there are fewer regulations who own a tiger than there are its own a dog. how can this be happening? you'll weakly take on us politics and society, and that's the bottom line. facebook, c, e o. mark soccer is strongly defending the company. he co apologize down to 3. the social media platforms, including last out of the number of times he'd been proud of message from whistleblower braces. hunger is that makes one meant to declare memorial to bankruptcy. hello. i'm richard gilbert in europe, the listening post where we dig into the coverage and look at how news is reported . here are the media stories we're examining this week. a whistleblower, a system crash and the u. s. congress is on its case. facebook is under the microscope, and the me makers are having a field day collaborative journalism strikes again in the form of the pandora papers and expose a on how the rich and powerful hide their wealth and being

a social media influence or in egypt. especially if you're a woman, can be a dangerous business. facebook and it c o. mark zuckerberg. i've never had a week quite like it last sunday, 60 minutes and american news institution broadcast an interview with a facebook whistleblower data. scientist francis, how good. we've heard the allegations before that the company puts profits before people. it's corporate well being before the greater good. how going put a face on that story and she had the documents to back it up. the very next day facebook's system crashed. ever had a problem updating your software. facebook, instagram and whatsapp were all blocked out for almost 6 hours affecting more than $3000000000.00 users worldwide. the day after that, francis hogan was back in front of the news cameras telling lawmakers in washington the time has come to act against a company that has become

a societal menace through algorithms that can fuel disinformation conspiracy theories and put people at risk. facebook has grown accustomed to defending itself . this kind of scrutiny, however, is on another level. our starting point this week is the moment facebook and its other platforms went down. mm hm. it's $840.00 a. m. in silicon valley, california. 11 40 am in new york, late afternoon in london, nightfall in new delhi, users of facebook and other apps owned by the company. what's act and instagram, are seeing error messages instead of home pages. what was supposed to be a routine update of the routers that make up facebook's backbone. the ones that coordinate traffic between its data centers goes wrong. mobile outage taking down

to facebook around the world and truly has with all of those platforms crash. and for the next 5 hours, the planets dependence on one big tech company is laid bare i became aware by trying to communicate with my family group shots on whatsapp, friends and family were based in iran. i thought there was something going on with the internet and the ron. and when i realized it wasn't, i went on to twitter, which is when i read, i know that this will actually a global infrastructure. all issue happening with facebook b as in difference of this particular outage is because it's not just 3 acts. it's cloud company which on the schools how huge this company is. ready probably of records have probably near a 3rd of the population on the planet, have a facebook all what set and or instagram accounts with us. this is on the

scoring throwing in to start really the market dominance of this one company. many people run their businesses off of facebook and instagram. they receive orders for shipments through facebook and it's around. they depend on advertising to facebook and instagram to keep their businesses going. i'm just a professor, so i wasn't affected personally in any way, but i was deeply aware of all of the people who are now deeply dependent on facebook and instagram for their livelihood. facebook, c. e. o. mark zuckerberg has been dealing with a succession of damaging new stories. his company is leaking like a sieve to some big name news organizations. tonight, an explosive report in the wall street journal. the wall street journal revealed facebook was planning to launch an instagram kids zap, despite the company's own researchers concluding the platform already has an adverse effect on the mental health of teenage girls. the new york times then

reported that facebook was planning to clutter its own news feed with positive stories about facebook to counter the growing criticism out there. but critics are a dime, a dozen, ex facebook data scientists turned whistleblowers are not. there were conflicts of interest between well is good for the public. i was gay for facebook and facebook this past week, frances helgrin, the unnamed source behind the wall street journal story shed her anonymity. facebook on research says it is not just the instagram is dangerous for teenagers, they harm's teenagers, is that is distinctly worse and other forms of social media. in her interview on c, b. s. news is 60 minutes. how can said the social media giant should declare moral bankruptcy for putting astronomical prophets before people facebook has realized bad. if they change the algorithm to be safer,

people will spend less time on site. they'll click unless ads, they'll make less money. the only this is something that people have known for a while. what is significant is this whistleblower came out with actual research and you know, the documentation and words of facebook themselves, outlining these very harmful impacts from their software and from their algorithms. she was on one of the probably most impactful news shows in the united states, which is 60 minutes. and so for the 1st time, many things that many internet researchers, digital rights activists have been saying for many years or reaching the ears of, you know, millions of ordinary americans and global citizens. every whistleblower is doing a public service. the so francis house has gone public because she has very good reason to do so,

says that she got on 60 minutes is indicative of how serious main stream is. organizations are taking us after all. and i had to compete with these digital services. and now, perhaps it's time to settle a few accounts. facebook refused an interview request from 60 minutes issuing a statement, instead of diminishing halligan's role in the organization, her credibility as a source. the company claimed that algorithmic changes facebook has made, improve people's experience by prioritizing posts that inspire interactions. which research shows is better for people's well being. but how good wasn't done? on tuesday the day after the blackout, she testified before a senate subcommittee on consumer protection, congressional action is needed. they won't solve this crisis without your help as one of the senators put it. she came armed with thousands of documents,

how going had copied before quitting her job. looming over her testimony was the outage the day before its impact. facebook's dominance and the question of what the u. s. government should do about american lawmakers have an ideological aversion to new forms of regulation and breaking up monopolies is hard to do. i suspect ms. hogan will be remembered as one of the most important whistleblowers in american corporate history right up with those who released devastating documents on how tobacco causes cancer. this might be in that league ultimately, because we can no longer accept the denials and dismissals of facebook leaders. it's all too clear that they've been misleading us, and this is just as important. the significance really lies in re amounts and troves of documents that francis was able to bring out well. and we're seeing it to

day in the hearings in the united states, we're going to be seeing it in the european parliament. the digital service says, act is you know, being formulated as we speak and they're inviting francis to bring her documentation to help and form these regulations going forward. because the question of how it's, she really a behemoth like facebook has been one of the like questions boggling, digital rights and government. it isn't just regulating facebook is regulating big tech, a giant tech companies. it's the idea of relationship between our governments. ah, our rights and freedoms and the opportunities that being able to connect online using video platform like when we're using to record this interview, what they offer us as well. but it doesn't mean it just because something is technically possible. that is actually right. well that it's appropriate either by law or ethically and those are really lashed debates and we need to start having

them an american company. facebook is a much bigger player in other countries than it is at home. india, with its 340000000 users, is facebook's biggest market. and among the most dependent in brazil, almost 150000000 people are on whatsapp. it doubles as a political platform there and helped to bring president bull sonata into office. there's me in mar, wherefore, tens of millions, facebook, these, the internet. it's where they live and conduct their business online. so the approach that us lawmakers take, whether they decide to call in the regulators, will have even greater implications overseas than it will domestically. what we're talking about here is dependence, a very short period of time. a significant portion of the world has been invited to be fully dependent on one company, one american company that can't seem to run itself well. that's dangerous. it's not

just dangerous that it went down, it's not just dangerous that people are dependent on it. it's that combination. we should have resilience and diversity in our communication and media systems. so that the whole world is not depended on one or 2 companies to get through our day. and sadly, that's what we've created. turning to another media story now that's reverberating through the world of the rich and powerful, the largest ever leak of offshore data. flo phillips has been on the case flow, who led this investigation, one of the forth, which are the pandora papers, are a collection of leaked files, reveal by an organization that we've come to know. rather, while the international consortium of investigative journalists faced in washington dc, it was responsible for releasing both the panama and the paradise papers in 20162017,

respectively. the i, c. i. j has been working on this investigation for nearly 2 years throughout the pandemic. going through almost 12000000 financial records and they didn't do the load and that's where the consumption bit comes in. they've been sharing the files with more than 600 journalists in 117 outlets across the globe. some big names like the guardian in the u. k. 2 smaller outlets like taller in algeria, but they took, contained information about off shore companies, the kind that can hold assets, properties, boats, stocks and shares without the owners of those assets having to pay tax in their own countries. basically places where the rich can hide that holding with so many national leaders named in these documents $35.00 plus the billionaires, the celebrities. and must be difficult to pick a stand out story from all of this. while we could go with the king of jordan, who's been using some of these actual companies to buy no fewer than 15 properties

across the u. s. and the u. k. worth more than $100000000.00. his lawyer said that the king quote has not at any point misused public monies, and they added that he has deeply for jordan and its people, which is an interesting addition given that many jordanians wouldn't have known much about the revelations. jordan appeared to block the i, c i, j website, just hours before the pandora papers were released and coverage of the story was know to be absent from news outlets in that country. what tangible change is, what reforms are likely to come of all of this any. so the problem on the paradise papers, publications did lead to a variety of arrests and some financial reforms. since these papers were published, leaders in countries including mexico, india, spain, germany have a valid to help strengthen international financial regulations. however, those are leaders who wasn't named in the papers for hiding their own assets off shall. ok, thanks. it's been more than 10 years now since the arab spring protests swept

across egypt and president cc's government has been progressively tightening its grip on cyberspace. several independent new sites and opposition. websites have been censored, or blocked, and citizens have been targeted through some sophisticated spyware. this past year has seen the emergence of another disturbing trend. women, some of them university students getting arrested over their social media posts, mostly on tick tock and instagram. the charges tend to be vague, such as violating public morals and undermining family values. neither of which the state has actually defined. and those charges seem to be gender specific. they have not been applied to mail social media influencers. the women convicted have been hit with some heavy fines, even jail sentences at what the government's critics are calling the intersection of the surveillance and patriarchal state. well it's me posts mean off she robbie

now on the young women who have come to be known as the tick tock girls ah, on the salon expected. it was a shock for a lot of us and scared me not to want to post anything online. that was a voice move from an egyptian woman out of more than 10 people that we contacted, asking to speak about what it's like to be an egyptian woman active on social media . today, she was the only one who would be to speak with us, not on camera, but to these recorded voice messages. ah, i let assuming in egypt are scared to talk about these issues. our society seems as into fear. shims us into silence. what happened was ellison,

what happened was the sentencing of to women hunting awesome and mobile ada adam. in june this year they were sent to prison for 10 and 6 years respectively. the videos they posted on social media platforms like dick dock and instagram had brought them to the attention of the authorities. so huntington and mo, the are 2 girls who are 20 and 22 years old. there are college students who were very popular on the platforms of tick tock and instagram. we're each had either one or $3000000.00 followers. there were posting videos of themselves lipsynching songs, and so they weren't doing anything out of the norm. a hunting hassan was contracted by like he, the social media company, and she was an encouraged to establish her own agency and to recruits other influencers. so she went on instagram and she sent her an invitation specifically to young women. and in this video, she says, in order to apply, you need to have

a strong internet connection, you need to, you know, have a good personality. and if you're successful, you might be able to make a decent monthly income. and then over at the thomaston, this week of july, and logan dash out on a loop that you know, go to delaney, logan, empty lung, optical tomato, good obama. when the hacker was going to hell of the. and the 1st signs that something had gone awry with where that was, that there was thousands of comments from social media users that this was an invitation by honey, who sound to encourage with sex? work online? ah, the comments on the videos? eluted egyptian authorities awesome. and a lot of wood listed and convicted of quote, violating egyptian family values and human trafficking. dares are the most high profile cases out of at least 10 instances of women being loaded ested for their online activity over the past year. collectively, they are now known as egypt. ok,

good. since 2018 to laws have been used to control the egyptian online sphere. the media regulation law, which treats social media counts and blogs with more than $5000.00 followers as media accounts and the law the women were tried under the cyber crime law. one specific clause of that law article $25.00, also called the morality clause, prohibits the use of technology to quote, infringe on any egyptian family principles or values. that clause has been used in nearly every one of the cases against the women on picked up. we are not against issuing a cyber crime law. however, nobody ever thought that this would be used against women specifically and the article 25 that criminalized late the family morales. we have seen the increasing use of this article, not just by the prosecution, but even when people report crimes on social media. oh, this act, this dancing the,

this women hurt the family morales but with no definition of what is the family morales while for a very long time, it was about journalists and activists and protesters to they. it's about young women who actually have large followings. because what is more threatening to the state than a young person who has millions of people that wake up and every morning and see what they posted. that is deeper reach than the state will ever have. and if they're to, they dancing and whip sinking to morrow, they may be talking about there's pot holes, there's open sewage, there's poverty. i don't think i have prospects for a job. once the language moves into that category, then the state has no control over the dissemination of voices of dissent. me. it is little stretch to say that the addiction state sees young people with online

followings in the millions as potential threats. just a decade ago, online active is improved crucial in mobilizing masses of egyptians to protest the rule of president holstein robado to eventually bring him down. and more recently, in september 2019 activists used social media again to organize demonstrations demanding that a movie of current president of the for thought of c. c. even with that history though, the campaign against egyptian women active on social media seems particularly aggressive. we don't have any cases of using cyber crime law in its article of violating family morales used against any man men, dance men use on appropriate language and they're not prosecuted for it. but also i would add that it's not just the cyber crime law that is used against these women. the law on prostitution is only used against women in egypt. so there is

a white context of using several laws against women. this was part of what we think about in terms of the gender nature of authoritarianism. but really about state patriarchy. the only way for an authoritarian state, which egypt is to day post military cove, 2013, to continue to socially control. every one is to actually become the patriarch of society. now, the current president, president cc saying, i'm going to lay on you a level of patriarchy, and in still in the family of fear of the unknown, a fear of cyberspace. a fear of that your children will be taken into this space where you can no longer control it, because you don't understand it as very much in the nature of gender, patriarchy, or gender authoritarianism in a country like egypt. and i think another important point to bring into this as well as class is that these women, the tech talk women,

they're not from the upper classes of egyptian society. they weren't educated in foreign institutions or educated abroad. they come from a lower socio economic backgrounds. and have exploded on to the see and who have avenues for financial and dependence, and those sorts of values and the kinds of dances and songs that these tick tock women were performing. we're just not what is expected for women from their socio economic background. mm. we contacted the office of egypt, public prosecutor about the cyber crime law and su, of cases against young women. we received no response. however, in a statement posted on his facebook account on the 2nd of may 2020. the public prosecutor justified the address of the women seeing forces of evil, what abusing the new virtual electronic speech to destroy our society,

demolish its values and principles, and steel, its innocence. for many egyptians on social media especially women, the cases have had a chilling effect. her son is a young girl and for her to receive any or send them sequence to the old, her youth is still away from her. the impact that is intended is that if you are women age, it don't have our platform where you can influence don't, especially for a from so secondly, big round or from middle class, these cases represent part of the like a broader regime of information control. be it the censorship of websites online, be it the mass surveillance of civil society. the arrests on mass of civil society and human rights activists. the crackdown has gone beyond solely political expression. and they are particularly targeting women in this case. and i think that these cases will only become more numerous, and this sort of broader regime of information controls is,

is not going anywhere anytime soon. oh, and finally, live by the name die by the me. it's been that kind of week for facebook. imagine having to use a blow torch to get into your server rooms to fix a high tech problem that's locked you out. that actually happened at facebook, a workaround straight out of the industrial revolution van while desperately trying to get your platforms back up and operating in the back of your mind. you just know that means are being manufactured at your expense and they're making their rounds on your rival platforms like twitter, which was always going to rub your nose. will leave you now with some of those names. and we'll see you next time here at the la. ah, did,

ah ah, oh, oh, oh, wait a ah

there are some things you can never forget. then there are scenes which will be etched in your memory forever. in syria, we documented atrocities. and in the northern city of aleppo, we witness something. we will never unsee the bodies bound and executed their hands, tied the gunshot wounds to their heads were bad enough, but watching the relatives identify their loved ones. that's one of the hardest things i've ever done. as hard as it was, we had and needed to film because maybe one day those responsible can and will be held to account. it is an honor, but at the same time it is a challenge to do this job. to bear witness to history, as it's made to make sure what is recorded is accurate and truthful. i'm santa hunter with tiny hidden cameras and the nose are illegally filming,

and sharing people's most intimate moments. when used to investigate south korea's by coming the demick on algebra. ah, this is al jazeera. ah hello, i'm sammy's a dan. this is the news our alive from dell. how coming up in the next 60 minutes? iraq selection appears to attract low voter interest. this 5 being held early in response to angry calls for change.