Friday, April 12, 2019


Is there anyplace where we can find all “terrorist” content, if for no other reason, to train our defensive AI systems to recognize it.
EU Tells Internet Archive That Much Of Its Site Is 'Terrorist Content'
We've been trying to explain for the past few months just how absolutely insane the new EU Terrorist Content Regulation will be for the internet. Among many other bad provisions, the big one is that it would require content removal within one hour as long as any "competent authority" within the EU sends a notice of content being designated as "terrorist" content. The law is set for a vote in the EU Parliament just next week.
And as if they were attempting to show just how absolutely insane the law would be for the internet, multiple European agencies (we can debate if they're "competent") decided to send over 500 totally bogus takedown demands to the Internet Archive last week, claiming it was hosting terrorist propaganda content.
And just in case you think that maybe the requests are somehow legit, they are so obviously bogus that anyone with a browser would know they are bogus. Included in the list of takedown demands are a bunch of the Archive's "collection pages" including the entire Project Gutenberg page of public domain texts, it's collection of over 15 million freely downloadable texts, the famed Prelinger Archive of public domain films and the Archive's massive Grateful Dead collection. Oh yeah, also a page of CSPAN recordings. So much terrorist content!




You may get answers to these questions next Friday at the Privacy Foundation Seminar on the CCPA. (See details at https://www.law.du.edu/privacy-foundation) Their seminar on GDPR completely changed the way I teach my Computer Security and System Architecture classes.
Companies Are Ready and Willing to Comply with CCPA – But First, They Need to Know How
No one disputes the importance of guarding the privacy of consumer information. But the recently enacted California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) threatens businesses with potentially crippling liabilities, while also harming consumers who benefit from innovation (including new ways to use data to offer personalized services and product recommendations) and enjoy free services made possible by data collection, processing and usage.
California’s Attorney General and legislature are currently proposing amendments to the law. Their proposals, however, may do little to aid businesses in knowing how to comply with CCPA, and may instead dramatically increase liability risks for non-compliance. Indeed, the amendments currently under consideration appear calculated to please the plaintiff class action bar above all others. The proposed amendments would incentivize private enforcers to sue defendants for annihilating penalties, even where the alleged violations are morally blameless and do not cause actual harm, while also removing the limited mechanisms currently available by which companies can obtain guidance on how to comply.




Another strange Alexa “skill.”
Joe Cadillic writes:
If ever there was a red flag story about Amazon’s Alexa then this is it.
If you watch the “Alexa for Medical Care Advice” video posted above, you will hear Alexa asking Peggy, to “tell me about the symptoms or problems that are troubling you the most.”
Divulging your health issues to a private corporation is extremely troubling as you will see.
Let’s start with the obvious concerns and talk about something you will not see in the video.
Like Peggy telling Alexa, it is none of Amazon’s business what her health concerns are and Alexa should stop listening to everything she says.
Read more on MassPrivateI.




Who sets moral standards? Do they vary by geography or ethnicity?
Instagram Will Now Judge Posts That Can be Classified as Inappropriate, as it Adopts The Nanny Role
Artificially intelligent algorithms and machine learning are possibly going to dictate morals and perhaps more.
Facebook owned Instagram is making tweaks to the Community Guidelines that dictate the posts that you see in the recommendations as well as with hashtag searches. The social network is reworking the algorithms to filter out posts that could be labeled as “inappropriate” but may actually not be breaking any rules or going against community guidelines.
“We have begun reducing the spread of posts that are inappropriate but do not go against Instagram’s Community Guidelines, limiting those types of posts from being recommended on our Explore and hashtag pages,” says Instagram in an official post. But what sort of posts would these be?
Apparently, Instagram will judge the content of each post and then decide whether it violates any community guidelines or not. If it doesn’t, but Instagram still doesn’t like the looks of it, the post will be classified as “inappropriate” and sent to sit on the naughty step. Instagram gives the example of a sexually suggestive post, which may be targeted in this new regime where artificially intelligent algorithms and machine learning are possibly going to dictate morals and perhaps more.
Instagram says such a post will still appear on your Feed if you follow the account that posts it. [So you can still see what the Grand Kleagle has to say, but recruiting new klansmen might become a bit more difficult. Bob] However, these posts will be downrated in a way, and may not appear in the Explore tab, the hashtag pages as well as when a user makes a specific search with a hashtag.


(Related) Would we be better off if the government set the standards?
No smoking, no tattoos, no bikinis: inside China’s war to ‘clean up’ the internet
    • China’s social media companies employ thousands to censor content that falls afoul of the country’s stringent regulations governing the internet
    • While AI is used to remove banned content, many decisions are taken by humans, especially if they involve context




Little lawyers have big ears. (More polite than: Admirals have big mouths.)
How the Navy’s top commander botched the service's highest-profile investigation in years
One officer asked a question that touched on a sensitive topic: two collisions of warships in the Pacific in the summer of 2017 that left 17 sailors dead in the Navy's worst maritime accidents in decades.
The Navy had recently announced that it would criminally prosecute the captains of the vessels and several crew members for negligence leading to the fatal accidents. The questioner wanted to know whether officers now had to worry about being charged with a crime for making what could be regarded as a mistake.
Richardson answered by saying that he could not discuss pending cases. As a bedrock principle of military law, commanders cannot signal a preferred outcome. But then, almost as an afterthought, he attempted to reassure the man that the collisions were no accidents.
I have seen the entire investigation. Trust me, if you had seen what I have seen, it was negligent," Richardson told the audience, according to court records.
Pollio, a Navy attorney, was alarmed. It appeared to her that Richardson had effectively pronounced guilt before trial. And he had done so in public, in front of an audience whose members could conceivably participate in the military's judicial proceedings.




This is sort of a: Microsoft wouldn’t let us have data stored in Ireland, so we wrote a law so now they have to.
Department of Justice Releases White Paper on CLOUD Act
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice released a white paper and FAQ on the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (“CLOUD”) Act, which was enacted in March 2018 and creates a new framework for government access to data held by technology companies worldwide. The paper, titled “Promoting Public Safety, Privacy, and the Rule of Law Around the World: The Purpose and Impact of the CLOUD Act,” addresses the scope and purpose of the CLOUD Act and responds to 29 frequently asked questions about the Act.




For my Vets.
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