Good morning, and welcome to The Epoch Times News Brief for Wednesday, July 31, 2024. I’m Bill Thomas, we’ve got some very pivotal stories to get to, and here’s what’s going on.
The new director of the Secret Service says changes are underway, newly uncovered social media accounts may be linked to the Trump rally shooter, and the U.S. Senate passes bills aimed at protecting children’s privacy. Also, Israel targets a terrorist commander, and Facebook owner Meta will settle a lawsuit with one state for more than $1 billion.
Secret Service Announces Changes
Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr., who just testified in front of two U.S. Senate committees, traveled to the site of the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and said what he saw made him ashamed.Rowe described the area, including the rooftop of the building where the shooter, Thomas Crooks, fired from, saying, “As a career law enforcement officer, and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
Lawmakers from both parties said the Secret Service should have secured the rooftop of the building, or made sure other law enforcement officers had that area protected.
Rowe told lawmakers he believed that the agents had plenty of time to plan for the rally, and called what happened a “failure on multiple levels.” He went on to say that the agency was making changes in order to prevent similar lapses from occurring in the future, which includes making sure that “every event site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it is implemented.”
As you know, the former president survived the shooting with an injury to his right ear. Three other rallygoers were also hit, leaving one man dead and the other two men seriously injured.
Rowe assumed the position of acting Secret Service director after Kimberly Cheatle, the presidential appointee who was serving as director, stepped down last week.
Before she resigned, Cheatle had described the assassination attempt as the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure in decades.”
If you weren’t already aware of this, snipers spotted Crooks 1 hour and 45 minutes before shots were fired, according to text messages disclosed this week, but for some reason, the suspect was not detained. He was eventually shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper just seconds after opening fire on the president.
You should know that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appointed Rowe to serve as acting director and that Rowe has been part of the Secret Service for 24 years.
FBI: Social Media Accounts Possibly Linked to Trump Shooter Had Anti-Semitic and Anti-Immigrant Posts
A top FBI official just said that investigators have discovered a social media account that may be linked to Thomas Crooks, Trump’s would-be assassin, and it featured hundreds of anti-Semitic and anti-immigration comments.Paul Abbate, deputy director of the FBI, testified yesterday before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that focused primarily on the security failures that led up to the Trump assassination attempt.
Abbate said that the social media account has more than 700 posts made between 2019 and 2020, and described them as extreme in nature and supportive of political violence.
Abbate went on to say that the FBI is still working to verify that this particular social media account belonged to Crooks. To refresh your memory, he was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper after firing eight rounds, including one that hit Trump in the ear.
Interesting to note, the shooter’s digital footprint has been in focus since FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers last week that Crooks did a Google search for “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy.” This is a reference to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Senate Passes Bills to Protect Children’s Safety, Privacy Online
The new measures, which passed yesterday in a 91–3 vote, update a decades-old law to safeguard children’s safety on the internet.One of the two bills, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, expands the age limit for protected minors to 16 from 13, and requires social media platforms to obtain consent from users ages 13 to 16 before collecting their personal information. The bill also bans advertisements that focus on kids and teens.
The other bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), is aimed at tech companies’ algorithms that keep users continually consuming content. It will now require the companies to allow minors to limit the category of addictive recommendations or opt out of recommendation systems that facilitate endless scrolling.
KOSA also requires that social media companies take action to prevent the spread of harmful content related to suicide, eating disorders, bullying, and drugs.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called yesterday’s passage of the bills a “momentous day.” Both he and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the author of KOSA, praised parents who lost their children over online harm for turning their grief into action. Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a co-sponsor of the bill, said more needs to be done but that it’s going in the right direction.
Interesting to note, approximately 95 percent of teenagers and 40 percent of children between the ages of 8 and 12 use some form of social media.
You should also know that the U.S. surgeon general put out an advisory last year, which said that excessive use of social media might lead to anxiety and depression, and this past June, he even called for a warning label on social media platforms, similar to those labels found on tobacco products.
Israel Says It Targeted Hezbollah Commander in Beirut Strike
Yesterday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out a targeted strike in Beirut, aimed at the commander of Hezbollah.Hezbollah, the Iran-supported terrorist group controlling southern Lebanon, has been blamed for a soccer field rocket attack last Saturday that killed 12 Israeli children in the town of Majdal Shams.
The IDF strike hit Haret Hreik in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, and damaged several buildings, but it’s not clear if any Hezbollah official was hit.
However, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the strike killed one woman and wounded several others, some of them seriously. As a result, Lebanese officials say they plan to file an urgent complaint with the U.N. Security Council, saying Israel is affecting the safety of civil aviation in the airspace of Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Hezbollah’s strike an escalation and the worst attack on Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border massacre from Gaza.
Interesting to note, Hezbollah has been attacking northern Israel in support of Hamas since Oct. 8.
Meta Agrees to Pay Texas $1.4 Billion Settlement in Biometric Data Lawsuit
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says Meta Platforms has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas over its unauthorized capture and use of personal biometric data from Facebook users.Paxton, in 2022, accused Facebook’s parent company of using facial recognition technology to collect biometric data of more than 20 million Texans without their permission, and he says that information was captured in photos and videos uploaded to the social media platform.
The attorney general said he’s “proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” and went on to say that any abuse of the sensitive data of Texans will be met with the full force of the law.
A Meta spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the company was glad to resolve the issue with the state of Texas and further clarified that the agreement was not an admission of any wrongdoing on the part of the company.
You should know that the Texas lawsuit was the first major case brought and settled under the state’s 2009 Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act. The legislation made it illegal to use facial recognition software to capture and store data without lawful consent and provided damages of up to $25,000 for each violation.
Interesting to note, Meta will pay the $1.4 billion settlement to the state of Texas over the next five years.
And now, it looks like our time is just about up for today, so we’re going to call it a wrap for the Wednesday edition of The Epoch Times News Brief.
During your travels today, it would sure mean a great deal to us if you could tell some folks you know about our program, and that’s because we’re always trying to grow the News Brief family—and in our family, there’s always room for one more.
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And finally, as we do each and every day on this program, we wrap everything up with a very notable quote and this one comes to us from entertainer Dolly Parton, who said: “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
Dolly is a legendary singer-songwriter, and she can play 20 different instruments including fiddle, mandolin, and pan-flute.
Before you go and because this is the last day of the month, you should know that July is National Lasagna Month. Restaurant-ordered or homemade, lasagna is the most perfect food ever invented.
For all of us here at The Epoch Times News Brief, I’m Bill Thomas.
Thank you for making us your one-stop source for a concise, accurate, and unbiased daily synopsis of many of the news stories you need to know about.
Enjoy the remainder of your Wednesday, and we’ll see you right back here tomorrow for another edition of The Epoch Times News Brief. Let’s all continue to watch out for one another, have a superb day today, and bye for now.
