Friday, April 26, 2019


Surveilling ‘domestic terrorists’ who never cross the boarder?
CBP’s New Social Media Surveillance: A Threat to Free Speech and Privacy
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released a required Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) on March 27 for the social media monitoring it carries out as part of its new Situational Awareness Initiative. The release of the assessment may have come in response to a March 6 report from NBC7 in San Diego revealing that the U.S. government created a surveillance target list of “Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators and Media.” The list featured journalists, activists, social media influencers, and lawyers working on immigration issues, and was the subject of a recent article for Just Security on the immense growth in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) intelligence gathering programs.




Looks like the 2020 election will be interesting.
Study identifies 80% of journalists falling for false online info
Poynter – “In a new study conducted by the Institute for the Future, a California-based nonprofit think tank, researchers found more than 80% of journalists admitted to falling for false information online. The data was based on a survey of 1,018 journalists at regional and national publications in the United States. Perhaps more concerning: Only 14.9% of journalists surveyed said they had been trained on how to best report on misinformation…”




Privacy laws move at different rates.
South Africa Data Protection Regulations Expected to Take Effect in 2019
Although South Africa’s first comprehensive piece of data protection legislation, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), was originally signed into law in November 2013, the substantive provisions of the law have not yet taken legal effect. That is likely to change since South Africa’s data protection authority, the Information Regulator, published the final draft of its POPIA regulations in December 2018.




Will US laws conflict with HIPAA?
EDPB’s Position on Clinical Trials Creates Friction with Other EU Legislation
Clinical trials in the EU include the collection of sensitive health data from patients. Trial sponsors are obliged to reconcile their respect of regulations governing data protection with regulations governing the conduct of clinical trials. The GDPR¹ could not fully harmonize these rules since this area is already heavily regulated by public health regulations that vary between EU Member States. One of the most disconcerting areas of divergence between EU Member States is the different national positions on whether patient consent is a valid legal ground for processing personal data in clinical trials.




We need a catcher name.
MIT finally gives a name to the sum of all AI fears
Now we know what to call it, that vast, disturbing collection of worries about artificial intelligence and the myriad of threats we imagine, from machine bias to lost jobs to Terminator-like robots: "Machine behaviour."
That's the term that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab have proposed for a new kind of interdisciplinary field of study to figure out how AI evolves, and what it means for humans. (They use the British spelling, as this is a European journal.)
… Commentators and scholars, they write, "are raising the alarm about the broad, unintended consequences of AI agents that can exhibit behaviours and produce downstream societal effects – both positive and negative – that are unanticipated by their creators." There is "a fear of the potential loss of human oversight over intelligent machines," and the development of "autonomous weapons" means that "machines could determine who lives and who dies in armed conflicts."


(Related) In this case, the ‘elite and powerful’ company is McDonalds. (and the AI is reduced to: Would you like fries with that?)
How artificial intelligence will serve the elite and powerful — and leave working people behind
Speaking at the 2019 Forum on China Intellectual Property Protection, Zhang Wen, president of the Beijing Internet Court — which was established in September 2018, and has since processed 14,904 cases — reportedly said that the court employs technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain to render judgement.
Zhang reportedly told the Global Times that “of the 41 cases concluded [with blockchain technology] so far, parties chose to settle out of court rather than litigate in 40 cases with compelling evidence from blockchain. This fosters social credibility development in the country.” He also noted that the court had deployed blockchain in 58 cases to collect and provide evidence. Zhang said:
"In the current use of AI as an assistant to make rulings, efficiency is prioritized over accuracy. A human judge is ultimately responsible for the fair ruling. [...] But we are heading toward a future when we can see an AI judge sitting at the podium."
In September of last year, China’s Supreme Court ruled that evidence authenticated with blockchain technology is binding in legal disputes. The Supreme Court declared that "Internet courts shall recognize digital data that are submitted as evidence if relevant parties collected and stored these data via blockchain with digital signatures, reliable timestamps and hash value verification or via a digital deposition platform, and can prove the authenticity of such technology used."




I would be shocked to find that AI was not being used frequently today. In three years it will probably be testifying about its findings.
Artificial Intelligence Will Change E-Discovery in the Next Three Years
Law Technology Today: “…According to Andrew Ng, Co-Founder of Coursera and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, artificial intelligence (AI) is the new electricity. [Shocking! Bob] “Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago,” he explains, “today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.” Ng is not alone. Consumers’ lives, tastes, and habits have been profoundly altered by artificial intelligence, with companies like Amazon, Google, Netflix, Spotify, and Uber (to name a few) disrupting well-established industries. Legal technology including e-discovery (and software as a service in general) will not be spared. No less an authority than Gartner estimates that 80% of emerging technologies will be built on a foundation of artificial intelligence by 2021… AI facilitates e-discovery by playing a number of roles in the process: curator, advisor, and orchestrator. Both curator and advisor roles are familiar to e-discovery professionals. AI can recommend documents for deeper review (much like Netflix recommends a new movie or TV show), or it can advise a project manager on scoping custodian lists or collection criteria (as it can suggest a response to a text message or email). But newer AIs can also function as an orchestrator of the entire e-discovery process, learning from past actions and results, and coordinating tasks across multiple channels…”




I’m not sure how this would work. But then I’m not a techno-lawyer...
Chinese Internet Court Employs AI and Blockchain to Render Judgement




Perspective. A child without a smartphone is deprived? Abused?
California approves free phones, internet for foster youth
… The California Public Utilities Commission passed the $22 million pilot program that will provide smartphones to more than 30,000 current and former foster youth between 13 and 26. The phones come with an unlimited calling plan, wireless service and mobile hotspot.
… In addition to the cellphones and internet access, the program will partner with the state's 50 county welfare departments for digital literacy training. The classes will teach online safety, effective social media use and how to present professionally for potential employment, Cox said.




Perspective. Another device I’m out of touch for not owning?
AirPods Are the New Cubicles
… The arrival of these now-ubiquitous devices has ushered in a new era of office etiquette—and created a whole new set of problems.
Beyond their tethered forebears, Bluetooth wireless headphones are convenient because they allow workers to forget they’re wearing a device and leave their desks without yanking their laptops onto the floor. In open offices, people commonly wander around with their headphones on all day, into bathrooms and kitchens, sometimes listen to nothing at all in order to avoid the constant distraction of compulsory social interaction.




Perspective. Imagine the logistical challenge.
Amazon says it’s working on free one-day Prime shipping



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