Thursday, June 24, 2021

This is an interesting story that could provide bad examples in so many areas.

https://www.databreaches.net/westfield-clerk-mayor-battle-over-spyware-installed-on-city-hall-computers/

Westfield clerk, mayor battle over spyware installed on city hall computers

Richard Essex reports:

Spyware was found on all of the computers in the Westfield clerk treasurer’s office, and now she and the mayor are battling in court about it.
This particular software allows remote access to all the data stored in that office, which includes information for a dozen city bank accounts, and personal information for city employees and taxpayers.
Cindy Gossard, Westfield’s clerk treasurer, says she never gave permission to anyone to install the software and she doesn’t know who has access to sensitive city information held by her office.

Read more on WISH-TV.

[From the article:

She believes the spyware was installed by the city’s information technology department in November. She discovered the software around the same time the mayor of Westfield, Andy Cook, sued her.





A simple overview.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/gdpr-three-years-in/

GDPR – Three Years In

May 2021 marks the third anniversary of the biggest shake up to data protection legislation for a number of decades. Even in draft form, GDPR promised disruption and enforcement in spades and although the final version had some changes, it still maintained its prowess. However, did the reality deliver on these and has the carrot won against the stick?



(Related) For good or evil?

https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2021/06/23/senator-gillibrand-announces-renewed-data-protection-act-2021/

Senator Gillibrand Announces Renewed Data Protection Act 2021

On June 17, 2021, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) announced the reintroduction of the Data Protection Act of 2021 (the “bill”), which would create an independent federal agency, the Data Protection Agency, to “regulate high-risk data practices and the collection, processing, and sharing of personal data.” The bill was first introduced in 2020 and has since been revised to include updated provisions intended to protect against privacy harms, oversee the use of “high-risk data practices” and examine the social, ethical, and economic impacts of data collection.



(Related)

https://www.zdnet.com/article/cybersecurity-firms-battle-dmca-rules-over-good-faith-research/#ftag=RSSbaffb68

Cybersecurity firms battle DMCA rules over good-faith research

The argument is that current rules are hampering ethical and effective vulnerability reporting.





I want a T-shirt with that slogan.

https://www.bespacific.com/big-data-with-great-data-comes-great-responsibility/

Big data: With great data comes great responsibility

Open Access Government – “Dr Florian Kerschbaum from the University of Waterloo. argues that with great data comes great responsibility in this big data focus. Big data helps us combat the pandemic and build cleaner tech-nology – amongst many other benefits. We collect exposure data to contain and trace the spread of the coronavirus. Genome databases can help build better medications and vaccines. Personalised medicine may eventually allow defeating cancer. We collect household energy consumption to build a smart grid that helps save energy and supports renewable energy sources. Car and ride-sharing services in combination with electrical cars will eventually revolutionise transportation and lead to significantly lower carbon emissions. All these services are based on the collection, processing and sharing of big data, personal data. They come with great societal benefits, but they also come with risks if not handled properly. Personal data stored within large repositories of companies are regularly exfiltrated in data breaches. Almost every individual in Western society has been subject to their data being exposed in almost always multiple data breaches. Nation-state actors have been exposed to conduct cyber-espionage on individuals and companies. Although it is 2021, George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a distinct possibility nowadays. So, we must ask ourselves: How do we combine Western civil liberties with the advance of ubiquitous data collection technologies?…”





Humans, the source of every problem in AI.

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/arguments-against-hand-labeling/

Hand Labeling Considered Harmful

There’s another critical issue, which is in some ways upstream to the challenges of bias and explainability: while we seem to be living in the future with the creation of machine learning and deep learning models, we are still living in the Dark Ages with respect to the curation and labeling of our training data: the vast majority of labeling is still done by hand.

There are significant issues with hand labeling data:

    • It introduces bias, and hand labels are neither interpretable nor explainable.

    • There are prohibitive costs to hand labeling datasets (both financial costs and the time of subject matter experts).

    • There is no such thing as gold labels: even the most well-known hand labeled datasets have label error rates of at least 5% (ImageNet has a label error rate of 5.8%!).





Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/gartner-51-of-global-knowledge-workers-will-be-remote-by-the-end-of-2021/

Gartner: 51% of global knowledge workers will be remote by the end of 2021

Tech Republic: “By the end of 2021, 51% of all knowledge workers worldwide are expected to be working remotely, up from 27% of knowledge workers in 2019, according to Gartner. The research firm also estimates that remote workers will represent 32% of all employees worldwide by the end of 2021. This is up from 17% of employees in 2019. Gartner defines knowledge workers are those who are involved in knowledge-intensive occupations, such as writers, accountants and engineers. Gartner defines a remote worker as an employee working away from their company, government entity or customer site at least one full day a week (hybrid workers), or who works fully from home (fully remote workers)…”





Tools & techniques. Try the free options first.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-free-mind-map-tools-best-use/

The 6 Best Free Mind Map Tools (And How to Best Use Them)

Mind maps are one of the best-known logical organization tools. It’s a graphic representation of connections between concepts and ideas. The idea starts from a central topic, and we gradually connect them with different branches and label it with notes, symbols, pictures, links, and more.



No comments: