An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, scientists are releasing the results of a clinical trial designed to test the safety of gene editing as a way of fighting cancer. The results are promising, in that a version of the CRISPR gene-editing system that's already a few years out of date appears to be safe when used to direct immune cells to attack cancer. But the cancers that it was meant to treat simply evolved ways of slipping past immune surveillance. For the clinical trial, this gene-editing system has been combined with recently developed immune therapies that target cancer. There is a class of immune T cells that kill cells recognized as foreign, either because they come from a different person (such as after an organ transplant) or because they are infected with a bacteria or virus. These cells can also recognize and attack cancer but often don't, in part because cancer cells are so similar to healthy ones. People have engineered versions of the T cells' recognition system that specifically target cancer cells, and placed these back into patients, helping the immune system attack the cancer, sometimes with spectacular results. As part of the clinical trial, gene editing was used to improve the efficiency of the cancer-targeting T cells. This was done in two different ways.

The first was to target a gene that normally functions to tone down the immune system (called PDCD1). There has been evidence generated in mice that using antibodies that block the protein made from this gene will increase the immune system's attack on cancers. For this work, the researchers targeted the CRISPR system to delete part of the gene itself, inactivating it. This poses a potential risk, as a failure to tone down the immune response can lead to problematic conditions such as autoimmune diseases. The other way gene editing was used was to knock out the T cell's normal system for recognizing foreign cells, called the T cell receptor (TCR). The TCR is composed of two related proteins that form a binary receptor complex. Engineered versions of this protein are the ones used to get cells to recognize and kill cancer. Normally, these engineered versions of the TCR are simply inserted into an immune cell, where both they and the cell's normal TCR genes are also active. The result is four different TCR parts active at the same time, resulting in a variety of hybrid TCRs. At best, these are ineffective and will reduce the total amount of active TCR in a cell. At worst, they'll cause the T cell to attack healthy cells. For the trial, the researchers generated CRISPR constructs that targeted the cell's normal TCR genes. When successfully deleted, this would ensure that the only TCR on the cell's surface would recognize cancer cells. The researchers ended up working with a total of three patients that had cancers recognized by a known version of the TCR genes.

"While the rates of successful editing were high, the procedure is nowhere near 100 percent effective, and rates of editing varied from nearly half down to 15 percent, depending on the gene," the report says. It adds: "There were no serious adverse affects of the T cell infusions, no sign of a problematic immune response, and the cells persisted in the patients up to nine months after the transfusions, indicating they were tolerated well. [...] The response to the tumor, however, was limited. Two patients appeared to stabilize, while the third showed a response in some tissues but not in others. Ultimately, however, the disease began to progress again, and one of the patients has since died."

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: This month, on the frozen plains of Saskatchewan in Canada, workers began to inject steam and air into the Superb field, a layer of sand 700 meters down that holds 200 million barrels of thick, viscous oil. Their goal was not to pump out the oil, but to set it on fire -- spurring underground chemical reactions that churn out hydrogen gas, along with carbon dioxide (CO2). Eventually, the company conducting the $3 million field test plans to plug its wells with membranes that would allow only the clean-burning hydrogen to reach the surface. The CO2, and all of its power to warm the climate, would remain sequestered deep in the earth. Markets are growing for hydrogen as a fuel for power, heat, and transport, because burning it only releases water. But most hydrogen is made from natural gas, through a process that spews carbon into the air, or by electrolyzing water, which is pricey. Proton Technologies says it can cut costs by relying on oil reservoirs shunned by drillers because they are water-logged or because their oil is too thick.

schwit1 shares a report from Quartz: Face masks are mandatory in at least two provinces in China, including the city of Wuhan. In an effort to contain the coronavirus strain that has caused nearly 500 deaths, the government is insisting that millions of residents wear protective face covering when they go out in public. As millions don masks across the country, the Chinese are discovering an unexpected consequence to covering their faces. It turns out that face masks trip up facial recognition-based functions, a technology necessary for many routine transactions in China. Suddenly, certain mobile phones, condominium doors, and bank accounts won't unlock with a glance.

Complaints are plentiful in the popular Chinese blogging platform Weibo, reports Abacus, the Hong Kong-based technology news outlet. "[I've] been wearing a mask everyday recently and I just want to throw away this phone with face unlock," laments one user. "Fingerprint payment is still better," writes another. "All I want is to pay and quickly run." [...] Biometrics, including facial recognition, are essential to daily life in China, on a scale beyond other nations. It's used to do everything from ordering fast food meals to scheduling medical appointments to boarding a plane in more than 200 airports across the country. Facial recognition is even used in restrooms to prevent an occupant from taking too much toilet paper. And beyond quotidian transactions, the technology is a linchpin in the Chinese government's scheme to police its 1.4 billion citizens. In other facial recognition news, the European parliament said it has no plans to introduce the tech following an outcry in response to a leaked security memo discussing its use.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google and Facebook seem to have resigned themselves to losing part of the longest and highest profile internet cable they have invested in to date. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week, the two companies requested permission to activate the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between the US and the Philippines and Taiwan, leaving its controversial Hong Kong and Chinese sections dormant. Globally, around 380 submarine cables carry over 99.5 percent of all transoceanic data traffic. Every time you visit a foreign website or send an email abroad, you are using a fiber-optic cable on the seabed. Satellites, even large planned networks like SpaceX's Starlink system, cannot move data as quickly and cheaply as underwater cables.

When it was announced in 2017, the 13,000-kilometer PLCN was touted as the first subsea cable directly connecting Hong Kong and the United States, allowing Google and Facebook to connect speedily and securely with data centers in Asia and unlock new markets. The 120 terabit-per-second cable was due to begin commercial operation in the summer of 2018. Instead, it has been PLCN itself that has been disrupted, by an ongoing regulatory battle in the US that has become politicized by trade and technology spats with China.

Thelasko shares a report from Bloomberg: Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to spin out and pursue a public offering of its budding space-internet business Starlink, giving investors a chance to buy into one of the most promising operations within the closely held company. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has already launched more than 240 satellites to build out Starlink, which will start delivering internet services to customers from space this summer, President Gwynne Shotwell said Thursday at a private investor event hosted by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Miami. "Right now, we are a private company, but Starlink is the right kind of business that we can go ahead and take public," said Shotwell, SpaceX's chief operating officer. "That particular piece is an element of the business that we are likely to spin out and go public."

Investors have to this point had limited ways to own a piece of SpaceX, which has become one of the most richly valued venture-backed companies in the U.S. by dominating the commercial rocket industry. It flies satellites into orbit for customers including the U.S. military, carries cargo to the International Space Station and aims to start flying NASA astronauts and high-paying tourists soon. But the rocket-launch business remains competitive and tough. Starlink and its ability to provide high-speed internet across the globe has helped private investors in SpaceX justify a roughly $33 billion valuation. Musk has long maintained that the parent is unlikely to go public until it is regularly ferrying people to Mars.

A security firm consulted by ProPublica found that the "IowaReporter" app used to count and report votes from individual precincts in the Iowa Democratic caucuses was vulnerable to hacking. From the report: The IowaReporterApp was so insecure that vote totals, passwords and other sensitive information could have been intercepted or even changed, according to officials at Massachusetts-based Veracode, a security firm that reviewed the software at ProPublica's request. Because of a lack of safeguards, transmissions to and from the phone were left largely unprotected. Chris Wysopal, Veracode's chief technology officer, said the problems were elementary. He called it a "poor decision" to release the software without first fixing them. "It is important for all mobile apps that deal with sensitive data to have adequate security testing, and have any vulnerabilities fixed before being released for use," he said.

There's no evidence that hackers intercepted or tampered with caucus results. An attack would have required some degree of sophistication, but it would have been much easier to pull off had a precinct worker used an open Wi-Fi hotspot to report votes instead of a cell data plan. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security offered to test the app for the Iowa Democratic Party, but the party never took the government up on it, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official said the party did participate in a dry run, known as a tabletop exercise. The party did not respond to requests for comment on this issue. Gerard Niemira, Shadow's CEO, said in a statement to ProPublica that "we are committed to the security of our products, including the app used during the Iowa caucuses. While there were reporting delays, what was most important is that the data was accurate and the caucus reporting process remained secure throughout."

"Our app underwent multiple, rigorous tests by a third party, but we learned today that a researcher found a vulnerability in our app. As with all software, sometimes vulnerabilities are discovered after they are released." He added that no "hack or intrusion" occurred during the caucuses, and that "the integrity of the vote in Iowa was not compromised in any way." The app is not currently in use, he said.

NBC News is also reporting that the phone number used to report Iowa caucus results was posted on 4chan on Monday night "along with encouragement to 'clog the lines,' an indication that jammed phone lines that left some caucus managers on hold for hours may have in part been due to prank calls."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Boeing Co. engineers have discovered a new software problem on the grounded 737 Max that must be patched before the plane can return to service, Federal Aviation Administration chief Steve Dickson said. A light indicating that the stabilizer trim system wasn't working properly "had been staying on for longer than a desired period," Dickson said, without providing more detail. The issue involves an alert designed to warn when the so-called trim system, which helps raise and lower the plane's nose, isn't working properly, according to two people familiar with the issue who weren't authorized to comment on it.

It's not clear how much of a delay, if any, the issue will create as Boeing finalizes numerous fixes required to get its best-selling plane back into service. One of the people familiar with the trim alert problem said it's not likely to change Boeing's projection of returning the plane to service by mid-2020 because the company had built padding into its schedule. The trim alert issue resulted from Boeing's redesign of the two flight computers that control the 737 Max to make them more resilient to failure, the two people said.

mikeebbbd writes: U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday stressed the threat posed by China's Huawei Technologies and said the United States and its allies should consider investing in Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson, or both firms, to counter Huawei's dominance in next generation 5G telecoms technology.

jowifi writes: NVIDIA officially launched its GeForce NOW earlier this week, making the streaming gaming service available to all with no waitlisting. It is advertising a free tier which allows 1-hour of game play at a session, and a premium tier that allows 6-hour sessions and preferred access to the streaming servers. The premium tier is being offered for a limited-time discounted price of $4.99 for 2020 with the first three months free. The service does not include any games, but provides access to games in your digital library (e.g. Steam) and free-to-play games like Fortnite. It supports Windows, MacOS, Android, and NVIDIA Shield (no mention of Linux).

The contract states independent repair shops must agree to audits and inspections by Apple, even if they leave the program. From a report: Last August, in what was widely hailed a victory for the right-to-repair movement, Apple announced it would begin selling parts, tools, and diagnostic services to independent repair shops in addition to its "authorized" repair partners. Apple's so-called Independent Repair Provider (IRP) program had its limitations, but was still seen as a step forward for a company that's fought independent repair for years. Recently, Motherboard obtained a copy of the contract businesses are required to sign before being admitted to Apple's IRP Program. The contract, which has not previously been made public, sheds new light on a program Apple initially touted as increasing access to repair but has been remarkably silent on ever since.

It contains terms that lawyers and repair advocates described as "onerous" and "crazy"; terms that could give Apple significant control over businesses that choose to participate. Concerningly, the contract is also invasive from a consumer privacy standpoint. In order to join the program, the contract states independent repair shops must agree to unannounced audits and inspections by Apple, which are intended, at least in part, to search for and identify the use of "prohibited" repair parts, which Apple can impose fines for. If they leave the program, Apple reserves the right to continue inspecting repair shops for up to five years after a repair shop leaves the program. Apple also requires repair shops in the program to share information about their customers at Apple's request, including names, phone numbers, and home addresses.

Google Maps has a new look on iOS and Android today to celebrate turning 15 on February 8. The app icon is all-new -- a less playful icon with a multi-colored location pin, set on a white background -- and many features that were previously hidden within the hamburger menu have moved into front-and-center tabs along the bottom. From a report: There are also several new features that integrate shopping, reservations, and Google Lens, and Google Translate. Google says the Maps app redesign makes it more useful -- to help people better plan their trips -- but as I was briefly walked through each of the new features, I couldn't shake the fact that the app is still doing too much. Instead of trimming the fat, Google is doubling down with more features. Maybe it's time Maps went on a diet. Google has always been stronger at rolling out useful features than making software good-looking. But too many features at the expense of functional design is a big loss for users who have no choice but to accept a poorer experience. I'm not saying the new Google Maps app is bad, I'm just saying it still feels bloated because Google has integrated so many of its other services into it and may never return back to a simple maps app. Simplicity is arguably better. Fun trivia: Google Maps wasn't supposed to be unveiled the day it did, and even then it was going to be in beta -- but a reader guessed the URL correctly and posted it on Slashdot.

A Chinese doctor hailed as a hero for trying to warn others about coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak has died from the virus, Chinese state media say. From a report, shared by long-time reader schwit1: Dr Li Wenliang, thought to be 34, tried to send a message to fellow medics about the outbreak at the end of December. Three days later police paid him a visit and told him to stop. He returned to work and caught the virus from a patient. He had been in hospital for at least three weeks. He posted his story from his hospital bed last month on social media site Weibo. "Hello everyone, this is Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital," the post begins. It was a stunning insight into the botched response by local authorities in Wuhan in the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak. Dr Li was working at the centre of the outbreak in December when he noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like Sars - the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003. The cases were thought to come from the Huanan Seafood market in Wuhan and the patients were in quarantine in his hospital.

Two smartphone makers canceled events at the world's biggest mobile technology showcase in response to the coronavirus outbreak, and organizers reinforced hygiene protocol for people still planning to attend. From a report: Delegates were warned to avoid handshakes and microphones will be changed for different conference speakers in an effort to avoid infections at MWC Barcelona, an annual event that's set to draw around 100,000 people from around the world to the Spanish city from Feb. 24 to 27. This year's conference is supposed to be a launch pad for a renewed push on 5G devices. However, South Korea's LG Electronics said it's withdrawing from exhibiting at the conference because most health experts advised against "needlessly" exposing hundreds of employees to international travel. Shenzhen, China-based ZTE, which makes smartphones and wireless networking equipment, cited difficulties in traveling out of China while virus-containment restrictions are in place, and so it's canceling its MWC press conference, though it will still send a delegation.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry by a huge margin in 2019. From a report: Apple Watch shipped 31 million units worldwide in 2019, compared with 21 million for all Swiss watch brands combined. Swiss companies, like Swatch, are losing the smartwatch wars. Steven Waltzer, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, "We estimate Apple Watch shipped 30.7 million units worldwide in 2019, growing a healthy 36 percent from 22.5 million in 2018. A blend of attractive design, user-friendly tech and sticky apps makes the Apple Watch wildly popular in North America, Western Europe and Asia." From a CNBC report titled "Who's afraid of Apple? Not Swiss watchmakers..." in 2015, before Apple Watch went on sale: At the watch industry's leading trade show, BaselWorld in Switzerland, many companies were debating whether to head high-tech or stick with a centuries-old formula of watchmaking. The president of LVMH's watch division and CEO of Tag Heuer, Jean-Claude Biver, told CNBC that the Apple Watch, which will cost up to $10,000, cannot be compared to similarly priced Swiss timepieces.

China's Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo are joining forces to create a platform for developers outside China to upload apps onto all of their app stores simultaneously, in a move analysts say is meant to challenge the dominance of Google's Play store. From a report: The four companies are ironing out kinks in what is known as the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA). The platform aims to make it easier for developers of games, music, movies and other apps to market their apps in overseas markets, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The GDSA was initially aiming to launch in March, sources said, although it is not clear how that will be affected by the recent coronavirus outbreak. A prototype website says the platform will initially cover nine "regions" including India, Indonesia and Russia.

samleecole shares a report: On May 1, 2016, in the middle of final exams, a young woman got a text message that would change her life forever. It included a screenshot of a pornographic video posted online, featuring her. Panicking, she quickly tried to justify what she had done. "They said it would only be in Australia," she told her friend, according to court documents. "I only did it for money." The video spread like wildfire. Jane Doe 11 -- one of 22 women who sued porn production company Girls Do Porn in 2016 for coercing them to have sex on video and lying to them about how the videos would be distributed -- learned from the student council president that "everyone was watching it in the library, so much so that the internet essentially crashed."

In October 2019, after Michael Pratt was charged with federal sex trafficking crimes, Pornhub removed Girls Do Porn's official Pornhub channel, as well as pages promoting Girls Do Porn as "top shelf" content and a reason to pay Pornhub a subscription fee. In January, after the ruling in the civil case found Girls Do Porn owed 22 women a total of $13 million, the official GirlsDoPorn.com site was taken offline. But even with the official site shut down and its owners in jail or on the run, the ruling has done little to stop the spread of the videos online. Pornhub claims that victims of nonconsensual porn -- as many of the Girls Do Porn videos are -- can easily request to remove videos from the site, and that those videos can be "fingerprinted." Broadly speaking, video fingerprinting is a method for software to identify, extract, and then summarize characteristic components or metadata of a video, allowing that video to be uniquely identified by its "fingerprint." According to Pornhub, this would automatically prevent future attempts to upload a video that was flagged.

But a Motherboard investigation found that this system can be easily and quickly circumvented with minor editing. Pornhub's current method for removing Girls Do Porn videos and other forms of non-consensual porn not only puts the onus of finding and flagging videos almost entirely on potentially-traumatized victims -- those victims can't even rely on the system to work.

Google, YouTube and Venmo have sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI, a facial recognition app that scrapes images from websites and social media platforms, CBS News has learned. The tech companies join Twitter, which sent a similar letter in January, in trying to block the app from taking pictures from their platforms. From the report: Clearview AI can identify a person by comparing their picture to its database of three billion images from the internet, and the results are 99.6% accurate, CEO Hoan Ton-That told CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett. The app is only available to law enforcement to be used to identify criminals, Ton-That said. "You have to remember that this is only used for investigations after the fact. This is not a 24/7 surveillance system," he said. But YouTube, which is owned by Google, as well as Venmo and Twitter say the company is violating its policies. [...] In addition to demanding that Clearview AI stop scraping content from Twitter, the social media platform demanded that the app delete all data already collected from Twitter, according to an excerpt of the cease-and-desist letter given to CBS News. Update: LinkedIn is joining the party.

Software engineer Robert Heaton writes: Last week I set up my tablet on my new laptop. As part of installing its drivers I was asked to accept Wacom's privacy policy. Being a mostly-normal person I never usually read privacy policies. Instead I vigorously hammer the "yes" button in an effort to reach the game, machine, or medical advice on the other side of the agreement as fast as possible. But Wacom's request made me pause. Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy? I wondered. Sensing skullduggery, I decided to make an exception to my anti-privacy-policy-policy and give this one a read.

In Wacom's defense (that's the only time you're going to see that phrase today), the document was short and clear, although as we'll see it wasn't entirely open about its more dubious intentions. In addition, despite its attempts to look like the kind of compulsory agreement that must be accepted in order to unlock the product behind it, as far as I can tell anyone with the presence of mind to decline it could do so with no adverse consequences. With that attempt at even-handedness out the way, let's get kicking. In section 3.1 of their privacy policy, Wacom wondered if it would be OK if they sent a few bits and bobs of data from my computer to Google Analytics, "[including] aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about [my] hardware device." The half of my heart that cares about privacy sank. The other half of my heart, the half that enjoys snooping on snoopers and figuring out what they're up to, leapt. It was a disjointed feeling, probably similar to how it feels to get mugged by your favorite TV magician.

Academics from Israel have detailed and demoed a new method for stealing data from air-gapped computers. From a report: The method relies on making small tweaks to an LCD screen's brightness settings. The tweaks are imperceptible to the human eye, but can be detected and extracted from video feeds using algorithmical methods. This article describes this innovative new method of stealing data, but readers should be aware from the start that this attack is not something that regular users should worry about, and are highly unlikely to ever encounter it. Named BRIGHTNESS, the attack was designed for air-gapped setups -- where computers are kept on a separate network with no internet access. Air-gapped computers are often found in government systems that store top-secret documents or enterprise networks dedicated to storing non-public proprietary information.

Early signs of cancer can appear years or even decades before diagnosis, according to the most comprehensive investigation to date of the genetic mutations that cause healthy cells to turn malignant. From a report: The findings, based on samples from more than 2,500 tumours and 38 cancer types, reveal a longer-than-expected window of opportunity in which patients could potentially be tested and treated at the earliest stages of the disease. The work was carried out as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the most comprehensive study of cancer genetics to date. "What's extraordinary is how some of the genetic changes appear to have occurred many years before diagnosis, long before any other signs that a cancer may develop, and perhaps even in apparently normal tissue," said Clemency Jolly, a co-author of the research based at the Francis Crick Institute in London. "Unlocking these patterns means it should now be possible to develop new diagnostic tests that pick up signs of cancer much earlier," said Peter Van Loo, co-lead author, also of the Crick Institute. "There is a window of opportunity."

schwit1 quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be "irrational business behavior." AT&T's actual Q4 2019 revenue was $46.8 billion, but the company said it would have been $48 billion if not for "HBO Max investments in the form of foregone WarnerMedia content licensing revenues."

An AT&T spokesperson told Ars that the $1.2 billion in lost revenue was primarily caused by the decision "not to sell existing content -- mainly Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince -- to third parties such as Netflix." As we've previously reported, AT&T took Time Warner shows off Netflix in order to give the exclusive streaming rights to AT&T's HBO Max, which is scheduled to debut in May 2020 for $14.99 a month. The amount of forgone revenue could grow in future quarters, as Friends just left Netflix on January 1. The Big Bang Theory and Fresh Prince were not on Netflix in the United States, so in those cases the forgone revenue is apparently from not entering into licensing deals instead of ending them. AT&T also pulled Pretty Little Liars off Netflix in mid-2019 in order to give HBO Max the exclusive streaming rights.

Netflix announced today that it's beginning to stream video using AV1 on Android. This high-performance, royalty-free codec provides 20% improved compression efficiency over VP9. 9to5Google reports: Developed by the Alliance for Open Media, founding members include Google, Netflix, and Amazon -- all large video providers. Netflix says its "goal is to roll out AV1 on all of our platforms." In starting on mobile, the service cites how "cellular networks can be unreliable" and "limited data plans." That is particularly the case for subscribers abroad, a key growth market. This results in an overall "good fit for AV1's compression efficiency."

At launch, the "Save Data" option -- More tab > App Settings > Cellular Data Usage -- must be set in the Android client. Netflix only specifies "selected titles" as being available to stream over AV1. Moving forward, Netflix's AV1 usage will expand to more use cases as "codec performance improves over time." The service is already working with "device and chipset partners to extend this into hardware."

Motherboard has chosen to publish the app used to tabulate early voting results in Iowa's Democratic Presidential primary. According to editor-in-chief Jason Koebler, "Trust and transparency are core to the U.S. electoral process," and "that's why Motherboard is publishing the app that malfunctioned in Iowa. From the report: The app, called IowaReporter, ultimately won't affect the vote totals of the Iowa caucuses, which are being recounted with paper ballots and other hard documentation. But the app's failure -- and the widespread attention this failure has received -- spurred chaos on election night, followed by speculation, conspiracy theories, and political jockeying. To try to combat that misinformation, it's necessary to offer complete transparency on what the app is, what it can and cannot do, and why it failed.

Motherboard obtained a copy of the app. By decompiling and analyzing it, it's possible to learn more about how the app was built and what might have gone wrong during the Iowa caucus. We reached out to several security researchers and asked them to analyze it for us, and have published an article about their findings. Motherboard waited to publish the app until Shadow, which controls the app's back-end servers and accounts, confirmed that it had been taken offline. [Shadow Inc. CEO Gerard Niemira] stressed that no voter data could be accessed from the app or from any of the databases it used. What we are publishing is an inert app that is no longer being used for an election, that the DNC has stated will not be used in future elections, and that is no longer connected to backend servers or services. You can download the Android .apk file here.

UPDATE 2/6/20: A security firm consulted by ProPublica found that the "IowaReporter" app was also vulnerable to hacking. "The IowaReporterApp was so insecure that vote totals, passwords and other sensitive information could have been intercepted or even changed," reports ProPublica. "Because of a lack of safeguards, transmissions to and from the phone were left largely unprotected."