Monday, December 30, 2019


The camera seems to see a lot!
Wyze leaks personal data for 2.4 million security camera users
You buy a home monitoring camera to improve your security, but Wyze customers might have wound up achieving the opposite. The company, which makes $20 security cameras to pepper around your home, has admitted that data on more than 2.4 million users has been exposed. A database was left exposed, allowing people to access key pieces of data, although financial information was not included.
The issue was uncovered by consulting firm Twelve Security, who announced that sensitive user data had been left exposed on the internet. This included a staggering array of personal information including email addresses, a list of cameras in the house, WiFi SSIDs and even health information including height, weight, gender, bone density and more.
Wyze says it is investigating what happened and how the leak occurred, and that it plans to send an email notification to affected customers. In the meantime, if you have a Wyze account it's a good idea to change your password and turn on two-factor authentication.




Will they also look for missed deductions? (Mais non, mon ami.)
French court clears social media tracking plan in tax crackdown
France’s government can pursue plans to trawl social media to detect tax avoidance, its Constitutional Court ruled on Friday, although it introduced limitations on what information can be collected following a privacy outcry.
Customs and tax authorities will be allowed to review people’s profiles, posts and photographs on social media for evidence of undeclared income or inconsistencies.




Just to see if I agree with the list.
Top 10 Privacy Law Developments of the Decade 2010-2019




I told you I liked lists, even ones with some silly items.
52 things I learned in 2019
Emojis are starting to appear in evidence in court cases, and lawyers are worried: “When emoji symbols are strung together, we don’t have a reliable way of interpreting their meaning.” (In 2017, an Israeli judge had to decide if one emoji-filled message constituted a verbal contract)
Placebos are so effective that placebo placebos work: A pain cream with no active ingredients worked even when not used by the patient. Just owning the cream was enough to reduce pain.
Mechanical devices to cheat your phone pedometer (for health insurance fraud or vanity) are now all over AliExpress.
Using machine learning, researchers can now predict how likely an individual is to be involve in a car accident by looking at the image of their home address on Google Street View.




To AI or not to AI...
When Is It Ethical to Not Replace Humans with AI?
There are legitimate questions about the ethics of employing AI in place of human workers. But what about when there's a moral imperative to automate?
It is by now, well-known that artificial intelligence will augment the human worker and, in some instances outright take jobs once handled by humans. A 2019 report indicated that 36 million U.S. workers have “high exposure” to impending automation. For businesses, the opportunities of AI mean they must scrutinize which tasks would be more efficiently and cost-effectively performed by robots than by human employees, as well as which ones should combine human and AI resources.
Based on my own experiences as an AI strategist, I can identify at least three broad areas where the ethics of employing AI are not only sound but imperative:
1. Physically dangerous jobs
2. Health care
3. Data-driven decision-making



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