Monday, April 22, 2019


Wouldn’t it be interesting if the hackers had the best AI?
Internet bots are getting smarter and imitating people
Bots are becoming a bigger threat as they get smarter, a new report says.
A whopping 73.6 percent of bad bots are so-called Advanced Persistent Bots, which use anonymous proxies, change their identities and mimic human behavior, according to the 2019 Bad Bot Report from Distil Networks, which provides Web content protection services.
Sophisticated bad bots reproduce mouse movements and clicks that fool even sophisticated detection methods and mask their activity by “reverse engineering detection systems,” Distil said.
Advanced attackers now show definitive behavior that they know about the technology they’re trying to defeat, and they’re continuously learning how to adapt their tactics,” the study said.




Short answer: Nope.
IAPP FAQs: Are GDPR-compliant companies prepared for CCPA?
The California Consumer Privacy Act is top of mind for many privacy professionals across the U.S., who are working to leverage their GDPR preparation to build CCPA-compliance programs. They are learning that while their recent GDPR preparation is helpful, the CCPA has nuanced requirements that go beyond the GDPR. Emphasis is often placed on the novel “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link.
After listening to two useful web conferences comparing the CCPA and GDPR (available here and here, in case you missed them), I wondered if companies outside of the U.S. have realized that California-specific adjustments will be needed. If not, the CCPA’s private right of action and what many consider the litigious nature of the U.S. might soon draw the attention of foreign C-suites.




Does this mean TSA is unable to read the dates on a visa to determine if the passenger has overstayed?
The US wants to scan the faces of all air passengers leaving the country
The US immigration system was designed to track who comes into the country, not who leaves. For more than two decades, authorities have been trying to find an effective way to keep tabs on departing foreigners—and those who overstay their visas.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) now says it’s found a solution: facial recognition. It expects to be able to scan 97% of commercial passengers within the next four years, according to a report released by the Department of Homeland Security today.




What employee privacy?
Employee privacy in the US is at stake as corporate surveillance technology monitors workers’ every move
A 2018 survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide are using employee-movement data, 17% are monitoring work-computer-usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook- or calendar-usage data.
Employees are in a difficult position. As more and more consumer privacy laws take shape, we’ve seen that there’s been a concern from companies that those privacy laws don’t apply to employees,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In the workplace, almost any consumer privacy law can be waived. Even if companies give employees a choice about whether or not they want to participate, it’s not hard to force employees to agree. That is, unless lawmakers introduce laws that explicitly state a company can’t make workers agree to a technology, he said.
One example: Companies are increasingly interested in employee social media posts out of concern that employee posts could reflect poorly on the company. A teacher’s aide in Michigan was suspended in 2012 after refusing to share her Facebook page with the school’s superintendent following complaints about a photo she had posted. Since then, dozens of similar cases prompted lawmakers to take action. More than 16 states have passed social media protections for individuals.
Still, the dearth of specific laws or guidelines around employee data privacy makes it tricky for companies to know what to do. “It would be beneficial to have sort of those standards so that people could understand what you should and shouldn’t do. Today, especially in the U.S. and a lot of places in Asia, there’s sort of no laws around it,” said Waber.




We are still a long way from, “Alexa, do my taxes.”
Smart speakers are great for answering basic questions, like "what's the weather tomorrow" or "what's the population of Brazil" (it's 209.3 million, in case you were wondering). However, since the answers to many of these questions come from Google's ability to scrape the content of webpages, they can sometimes be inaccurate or purposely manipulated. Answers to questions about the UK government should now be fairly accurate, as the country has added "more than 12,000 pieces of information" to both Google Assistant and Alexa.




Old technology and the law.
EU lawmakers back wifi-based car standard in win for Volkswagen
The European Commission’s push for a wifi-based standard for cars backed by Volkswagen took a big step forward on Wednesday after EU lawmakers endorsed wifi over 5G technology promoted by BMW and Qualcomm.
Wifi technology supporters include Renault, Toyota, NXP, Autotalks and Kapsch TrafficCom. The technology primarily connects cars to other cars.
Fifth generation, or 5G, standard hooks up to both cars and devices in the surrounding environment, with a wider range of applications in areas such as entertainment, traffic data and general navigation.
The Commission has defended its stance on wifi technology, saying that it is available unlike 5G and that it would help to boost road safety.
Critics have said a requirement that new technologies be modified to be compatible with older technology is unrealistic and would put a brake on innovation.




There’s a joke here somewhere, but also (maybe) some truth.
Ukraine’s Comedian President Doesn’t Plan to Rule
The landslide victory of comedian and TV producer Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Sunday’s run-off presidential election in Ukraine poses a problem both for the country’s Western backers and those in the Kremlin who hope to exert control again. The Ukrainian people haven’t voted for a specific path, or even simply against politics as usual: They voted against being told what to do.
Zelenskiy is Jewish, and he speaks better Russian than Ukrainian, which means most voters have proved unsusceptible to hardcore Ukrainian nationalism, which is traditionally anti-Semitic and intolerant to all things Russian. Zelenskiy is only 41, and he’s not a member of the post-Soviet political elite, a notoriously corrupt and self-serving bunch, and he’s a self-made millionaire with a successful production company.
But none of this is as important as why, and how, he won.
Poroshenko’s strategy had been to stress his dedication to nation-building: An alliance with the West, strengthening the military, gaining spiritual independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, supporting the Ukrainian language.



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