Who would you like to win the 2020 election and
by how much?
Internet
Research Agency Twitter activity predicted 2016 U.S. election polls
First
Monday – Volume 24, Number 7 – 1 July 2019 > Ruck “In
2016, the Internet
Research Agency (IRA)
deployed thousands of Twitter bots that released hundreds of
thousands of English language tweets. It
has been hypothesized that this affected public opinion
during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Here we test that
hypothesis using vector autoregression (VAR) comparing time series of
election opinion polling during 2016 versus numbers of re-tweets or
‘likes’ of IRA tweets. We
find that changes in opinion poll numbers for one of the candidates
were consistently preceded by corresponding changes in IRA re-tweet
volume,
at an optimum interval of one week before. In contrast, the opinion
poll numbers did not correlate with future re-tweets or ‘likes’
of the IRA tweets. We find that the release of these tweets parallel
significant political events of 2016 and that approximately every
25,000 additional IRA re-tweets predicted a one percent increase in
election opinion polls for one candidate. As these tweets were part
of a larger, multimedia campaign, it
is plausible that the IRA was successful in influencing U.S. public
opinion in 2016.”
Another
checklist for my Computer Security students.
CYBER
RESILIENCE – THE 6 BIGGEST THREATS RIGHT NOW FOR LEGAL
The threat constantly evolves and grows –
and legal firms are at particular peril. In this article, we look at
the 6 biggest current threats as we perceive them.
Because we can?
How
Amazon and the Cops Set Up an Elaborate Sting Operation That
Accomplished Nothing
… New documents obtained by Motherboard using
a Freedom of Information request show how Amazon, Ring, a GPS
tracking company, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service collaborated
on a package sting operation with the Aurora,
Colorado Police Department in December. The operation
involved equipping fake Amazon packages with GPS trackers, and
surveilling doorsteps with Ring doorbell cameras in an effort to
catch someone stealing a package on tape.
The documents show the design and implementation
of a highly elaborate public relations stunt, which was designed both
to endear Amazon and Ring with local law enforcement, and to make
local residents fear the place they live. The parties were
disappointed when the operation didn’t result in any arrests.
Interesting idea.
AI and the
Social Sciences Used to Talk More. Now They’ve Drifted Apart.
Artificial
intelligence researchers are employing machine learning algorithms to
aid tasks as diverse as driving
cars, diagnosing
medical conditions, and
screening
job candidates.
These applications raise a number of complex new social and ethical
issues.
So,
in light of these developments, how should social scientists think
differently about people, the economy, and society? And how should
the engineers who write these algorithms handle the social and
ethical dilemmas their creations pose?
“These
are the kinds of questions you can’t answer with just the technical
solutions,” says Dashun Wang, an associate professor of management
and organizations at Kellogg. “These are fundamentally
interdisciplinary issues.”
We will need thousands of very specific laws if we
go this way.
Deepfake
revenge porn distribution now a crime in Virginia
As
of today, Virginia is one of the first states in the country to
impose criminal penalties on the distribution of non-consensual
"deepfake" images and video.
The
new law amends existing
law in
the Commonwealth that defines distribution of nudes or sexual imagery
without the subject's consent —often called revenge porn —as a
Class 1 misdemeanor. The new bill updated the law by adding a
category of "falsely created videographic or still image"
to the text.
New
laws in Virginia take effect on July 1.
Pick one (or all five) for your toolkit now,
before something goes wrong.
For Kindle lovers…
For our programming students?
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