03/03/2025

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Indonesians swindled by scammers using deepfakes

Nine arrested at Tesla dealership

NEW YORK: Nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla dealership on Saturday, protesting owner Elon Musk’s role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. The protest, which police said involved hundreds of people, was one of a wave of “Tesla Takedown” demonstrations staged across the country targeting Musk, who is spearheading the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Throngs of protesters also descended on the electric vehicle maker’s showrooms in Jacksonville, Florida, Tucson, Arizona, and other cities, blocking traffic, chanting and waving signs reading “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy”, and “No Dictators in the USA”. Musk, the world’s richest person, is leading an unprecedented push to shrink the federal government that has resulted in the firing of thousands of employees and the termination of hundreds of aid contracts and federal leases. Tesla and a White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to attempts to seek comment by phone and email on Saturday. In some cases, federal agencies have been forced to try to rehire key workers that had been fired, including some responsible for America’s nuclear weapons and power stations. At least 100,000 of the 2.3 million federal employees have agreed to buy-outs or have been fired since Trump took office on Jan 20. “We are taking action at Tesla, Musk’s flagship company,” the organisers said on the website actionnetwork.org, calling for people to dump Tesla stock and “join the picket lines”. “Detaching Musk from Tesla would be a meaningful blow against this administration and its prerogatives, because it would be a strike against what they hold most dear: money and power,” actor and filmmaker Alex Winter wrote in a Rolling Stone article. Winter has posted on social media that he helped organise the protests. – Reuters Fire hydrants needed repair before wildfires LOS ANGELES: More than 1,000 fire hydrants across Los Angeles required repairs before the devastating wildfires in January. But the Los Angeles Fire Department did not inform the city’s Department of Water and Power (LADWP) until mid-February despite being aware of the issues months before, said a Los Angeles Times report. The fire department discovered the damage to the hydrants during inspections in the months before the Jan 7 Palisades fire. In January, Los Angeles County experienced the most catastrophic wildfires in its history. The two deadly major wildfires, the Palisades and Eaton fires, killed at least 28 people and destroyed over 16,000 structures. While firefighters struggled with low water pressure during the blaze, it’s unclear whether the damaged hydrants played a role, said the report. Firefighters reported being unable to access water from some hydrants as they defended structures in Pacific Palisades. LADWP, the largest municipal utility in the country, relies on the fire department to conduct annual inspections of the city’s 66,000 fire hydrants. In August, it had received an annual report from the department documenting the status of the city’s hydrants, but none were flagged as requiring repairs, said LADWP chief executive Janisse Quinones. In January, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to hydrants during wildfires. “We need answers to ensure this does not happen again,” he wrote on X. – Bernama

o Fact-checkers report deluge of fraudulent videos

deepfakes – audio, images and video appearing to come from a known person but which are in fact the work of scammers using artificial intelligence tools. And victims say the hoaxes are so sophisticated they leave others vulnerable to being conned too. “People should be more careful. Don’t be easily fooled by the lure of prizes,” said Aryani, 56, who lost money to fraudsters after seeing a deepfake video of a prominent businessman. “I need money, but instead I’m asked to send money. They even made video calls with me, as if I were talking directly to them.” During the presidential campaign, deepfakes became a prominent tool to spread misinformation. AFP’s fact-checkers found the account behind the Prabowo clip has posted dozens of similar videos appearing to show high-profile figures. Those videos also promote the bogus financial aid. Police arrested a suspect who pocketed US$4,000 from the scam, said Himawan Bayu

Aji, director of the Indonesian National Cyber Crime Unit. He said officers detained a second person. AFP found the spread of such videos had a much wider reach than the two accounts that police announced. Deepfake videos of the president were still circulating on social media. At least 22 TikTok accounts were touting the same fraudulent scheme since Prabowo took office in October. TikTok said it had removed one of the deepfake scam videos and the associated account, adding it would continue to remove any that violated the platform’s community guidelines, which prohibit misleading posts. Facebook parent Meta did not respond to AFP’s request for comment. AFP, along with more than 100 other fact checking organisations, is paid by TikTok and Meta to verify social media posts that potentially contain false information. Aribowo Sasmito, co-founder of fact checking organisation Mafindo, said his team finds new deepfake scams every week. – AFP

JAKARTA: Wearing traditional Indonesian attire, President Prabowo Subianto speaks to the camera in an Instagram video, asking his people how he can help them after his election last year. “Who hasn’t received aid from me? What are your needs right now?” Prabowo appears to ask viewers in the clip posted in November. But while the leader’s mouth moves and his eyes blink, the words he utters are part of a fraudulent deepfake scam uncovered by police last month that has swindled Indonesians across 20 provinces. Those ensnared by the message were asked to contact a WhatsApp number and hand over between US$15 and US$60 (between RM67 and RM268) as an “administrative fee”. Experts have warned of a tidal wave of

MUSIC AND DANCE ... Revellers from a samba school performing during the second night of Carnival of Brazil at the Sambadrome in Sao Paulo in the runup to Lent. – AFPPIC

Watchdog dismissal case goes against Trump WASHINGTON: A federal judge ruled on Saturday that limits on President Donald Trump’s power to fire the head of an independent watchdog agency are constitutional, teeing up a likely Supreme Court showdown. on Saturday issued a ruling that his dismissal had been “unlawful”. She said there were specific legal reasons for which the agency head could be fired by the president, but “the curt email from the White House informing the special counsel that he was terminated contained no reasons whatsoever”.

and eventually end up in the Supreme Court. The conservative-dominated bench, which includes three Trump-nominated justices, previously declined to block Jackson’s temporary reinstatement, saying it would wait for her final ruling. The Supreme Court is primed to play a significant role in what some experts are suggesting is a looming constitutional crisis as the president tests the limits of his executive power. Since taking office in January, Trump has launched a campaign led by Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swathes of the US government. Numerous court cases challenging Trump’s actions continue to work their way through the courts. – AFP

The case revolves around the White House’s Feb 7 dismissal of Hampton Dellinger, chief of the Office of Special Counsel. His small agency investigates whistleblower complaints and protects federal workers’ rights, among other roles, and could possibly be a significant player in pushing back against Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to fire swathes of federal employees. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had previously ordered Dellinger temporarily reinstated while she considered the case, but

She rejected the White House’s argument that the unique restrictions blocking the president from firing the special counsel were unconstitutional. “The elimination of the restrictions ... would be fatal to the defining and essential feature of the Office of Special Counsel as it was conceived by Congress and signed into law by the president: its independence,” said Jackson. The case is almost certain to be appealed