Saturday, July 14, 2018

Here’s what they did last time. Are we ready this time?
Six Big Takeaways from Mueller’s Indictment of Russian Intel Officers
Special Counsel Robert Mueller released an indictment today of 12 Russian intelligence officers, accusing them of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
The document contained an extraordinary amount of detail about how Russian intelligence carried out its operation.


(Related)
Inside Facebook, Twitter and Google's AI battle over your social lives
When you sign up for Facebook on your phone, the app isn't just giving you the latest updates and photos from your friends and family. In the background, it's utilizing the phone's gyroscope to detect subtle movements that come from breathing. It's measuring how quickly you tap on the screen, and even looking at what angle the phone is being held.
Sound creepy? These are just some of the ways that Facebook is verifying that you're actually human and not one of the tens of millions of bots attempting to invade the social network each day.
That Facebook would go to such lengths underscores the escalation of the war between tech companies and bots that can cause chaos in politics and damage public trust . Facebook isn't alone. Twitter on Wednesday began removing millions of blocked accounts, and Google is looking to stamp out malicious trolls on YouTube.




A podcast for my Disaster Recovery lecture.
It Won’t Happen to Me’: Why People Don’t Prepare for Disasters
Knowledge@Wharton: How often do people forget the fact that they went through a storm previously, yet they don’t prepare for the next one?
Robert Meyer: This is a question we study an awful lot. People actually have a really good memory of past storms that they’ve been through, but what people tend to forget, which often causes laxness in protection or preparation, is what it really felt like to go through these storms. Everyone will remember the storm. You look in the news, and [reports] remind you of it. But what tends to fade quickly is what it really felt like to go through these things. I think it’s part of human evolution that we tend to have a really short memory for pain. As a consequence, it seems really bad at the time, and you have people thinking, “Next time, I’m going to really fully prepare; I never want to go through this again.” Then three or four months later, you remember the event but forget what it felt like.




Interesting.
Microsoft Executive: Facial Recognition Tech Should Be Regulated
Microsoft President Brad Smith ... said in a blog post on Friday that Microsoft believes there should be “thoughtful government regulation” of the controversial technology that can automatically recognize a person’s face. He also said that there should be standards created—via both the public and private sectors—“for the development of norms around acceptable uses.”
… Smith acknowledges that the use of facial recognition technology can be “both positive and potentially even profound” and cites hypothetical scenarios in which computers could more easily find missing children or help law enforcement identify terrorists.
… It’s in other more controversial uses of the technology that Smith calls “more sobering,” and he believes the government should step in with regulation. He cites scenarios like people being monitored in political rallies or shopping mall vendors scanning people’s faces and sharing that data with others without permission.
“This has long been the stuff of science fiction and popular movies – like Minority Report, Enemy of the State and even 1984—but now it’s on the verge of becoming possible,” Smith said. “Perhaps as much as any advance, facial recognition raises a critical question: what role do we want this type of technology to play in everyday society?”
… Some of the questions Smith wants the government to discuss are:
Should law enforcement use of facial recognition be subject to human oversight and controls, including restrictions on the use of unaided facial recognition technology as evidence of an individual’s guilt or innocence of a crime?
Similarly, should we ensure there is civilian oversight and accountability for the use of facial recognition as part of governmental national security technology practices?
What types of legal measures can prevent use of facial recognition for racial profiling and other violations of rights while still permitting the beneficial uses of the technology?




Looks like they could have been doing this all along, but chose not to. I wonder how many organizations monitor continuously.
Uber begins monitoring U.S. driver background checks continuously
As part of a plan to improve safety for its riders, Uber is rolling out ongoing background checks for its drivers, the company tells Axios. Uber has partnered with its background check provider, Checkr, and Appriss, which provides safety data.
Why it matters: Over the years, Uber has been plagued with incidents of driver violence or unsafe behavior. Once a driver had a clean initial background check, the company couldn't always track later violations or problems.
How it works: Through Appriss’s real-time collection of data, Uber will be notified if a driver is newly charged with a criminal offense. From there, Uber can decide if it wants to suspend a driver from its service to prevent unsafe behavior.




Perhaps Facebook is not doing “everything” it can.
Facebook Groups widely used for sharing pirated Hollywood movies
Facebook Groups has a piracy problem — and the company says there's nothing it can do about it.
The social network is awash with groups devoted to freely sharing pirated Hollywood movies with hundreds of thousands of users, Business Insider has found.
With names like "Full HD English Movie" and "Free full movies 2018," these Facebook groups make no attempt to hide their purpose or to conceal catalogs brimming with the latest blockbusters like "Ant Man and the Wasp" and "A Quiet Place." Business Insider found them by simply searching for "free movies" on Facebook.
These groups, some of which are years old, exist despite Facebook's army of human content moderators and automated software meant to detect copyright-infringing content, raising questions about the effectiveness of Facebook's content-policing systems.
Reached for comment, a Facebook representative said it wasn't the company's responsibility to take down such content unless asked to by the content's rights holders, even if the videos seem clearly stolen, because otherwise Facebook can't be sure it is being illegally shared.




Perspective.
Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail spend
Amazon has already been in the crosshairs of the White House when it comes to threats of antitrust investigations, and while some say this is simply Trumpian bluster that has a slim chance of going anywhere, some new numbers out from the researchers at eMarketer could prove to be a fan to the flames.
Amazon is set to clear $258.22 billion in US retail sales in 2018, according to eMarketer’s figures, which will work out to 49.1 percent of all online retail spend in the country, and 5 percent of all retail sales.
… Now, it is fast approaching a tipping point where more people will be spending money online with Amazon, than with all other retailers — combined. Amazon’s next-closest competitor, eBay, a very, very distant second at 6.6 percent, and Apple in third at 3.9 percent. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer when counting physical stores, has yet to really hit the right note in e-commerce and comes in behind Apple with 3.7 percent of online sales in the US.


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