Sure, the Mueller report dropped today. And sure, it's a few hours before a holiday weekend. But Facebook has a bit of unfortunate news to share with you.
Remember last month, when Facebook said it stored a whole bunch of passwords in plain text when they should have been encrypted, potentially affecting "tens of thousands" of Instagram users? Yeah, it quietly updated that blog post Thursday to say it's more like "millions of Instagram users."
In the blog post first unveiled last month, Facebook said it would tell "hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users" and "tens of millions of other Facebook users" that their passwords were stored in an unencrypted database available to 20,000 Facebook employees. Now, a few more Instagram users get to join the fun. Facebook said it found "no evidence to date that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed the passwords," though given the site's very shaky past year, that's not too reassuring.
The news comes just a few hours after Facebook told Business Insider that it collected email contacts from 1.5 million users who signed up after May 2016 and "unintentionally uploaded" them to Facebook. The addresses were collected when users typed in their email passwords to verify the addresses they'd signed up with. Facebook didn't tell these users their email contacts would be imported into the site, but there was no way to opt out of the upload or cancel it once it began. Facebook said those contacts were "used to improve Facebook's ad targeting," Business Insider writes in yet another reassuring addition to Facebook's track record. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Trump is still smarting over remarks Brad Pitt made nearly two weeks ago when he received an Academy Award for his performance in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Trump held a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday night, and spent a considerable amount of time complaining about this year's Oscars. "How bad were the Academy Awards?" he asked. He was mad that the widely praised South Korean film Parasite was named Best Picture, thinking the honor should have gone to an American movie like 1939's Gone With the Wind, and he shared his irritation with Pitt.
While accepting the Best Supporting Actor statue, Pitt said: "They told me I only have 45 seconds up here, which is 45 seconds more than the Senate gave John Bolton this week. I'm thinking maybe Quentin [Tarantino] does a movie about it. In the end, the adults do the right thing." He was referring to the Republican-controlled Senate voting against letting Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, testify during Trump's impeachment trial.
Trump did not appreciate Pitt's comments, which were made as millions of people watched around the world. "I was never a big fan of his," Trump said. "He got up, said a little wise guy thing. He's a little wise guy." Catherine Garcia
Former CIA Director John Brennan is very disturbed by a new report from The New York Times, which says last week, members of the House Intelligence Committee were warned by an aide to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire that Russia is actively meddling in the 2020 campaign in order to get President Trump re-elected.
"We are now in a full-blown national security crisis," Brennan said. "By trying to prevent the flow of intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow's interests, not America's." Brennan served as CIA director from 2013 to 2017.
The briefing was delivered by Shelby Pierson, one of Maguire's aides known for her blunt delivery, the Times reports. When Trump found out about the briefing, he was livid, and complained that the committee's chair, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), will "weaponize" the intelligence against him, a person with knowledge of the matter told the Times. On Wednesday, Trump announced Maguire is being replaced by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist. Catherine Garcia
After his longtime friend and former adviser Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison on Thursday, President Trump announced that he has "a very good chance of exoneration."
Stone was found guilty last year of lying to Congress and witness tampering, tied to his involvement with Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election. While attending an event in Las Vegas, Trump said he is "following this very closely, and I want to see it play out to its fullest, because Roger has a very good chance of exoneration, in my opinion."
Without sharing her name, Trump also said it is "my strong opinion that the forewoman for the jury is totally tainted." She was, he added, "an anti-Trump person, totally. I don't know if this is a fact, but she had a horrible social media account. She's, I guess from what I hear, a very strong woman, a very dominant person, so she can get people to do whatever she wants."
The forewoman disclosed during jury selection that in 2012, she ran for Congress as a Democrat. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the jury acted with "integrity" and Stone was not prosecuted "for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president." Catherine Garcia
While at a private event in England on Wednesday night, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said for the U.S. economy to keep growing, more immigrants need to come to the country.
The Washington Post obtained audio of Mulvaney's remarks, made at the Oxford Union. He told the crowd the United States is "desperate — desperate — for more people. We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we've had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants." He stressed that they must come in a "legal fashion."
President Trump is surrounded by immigration hardliners like senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who wants to curtail both legal and illegal immigration, and others who argue that immigrants increase wage competition against U.S. workers. Last year, Trump said the United States is "full," and people trying to cross the southern border need to "turn around." Mulvaney said the president might have an "anti-immigrant" reputation, the Post reports, but he wants to lure more foreign workers to the U.S. Catherine Garcia