Saturday, July 03, 2021

Reinventing law for every tech innovation?

https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/02/us_government_cloud/

Microsoft tells US lawmakers cloud has changed the game on data privacy, gets 10 info demands a day from cops

The US House Committee on the Judiciary met on Wednesday to hear testimony on the government's practice of secretly subpoenaing cloud service providers, and Microsoft was happy to oblige.

Tom Burt, Microsoft's veep of customer security & trust, testified as a representative of cloud service providers. He revealed that Microsoft is presented with 7–10 secrecy orders per day from federal law enforcement. These comprise a quarter to a third of all legal demands Microsoft receives, he said.

Burt referred to law enforcement's court-mandated secret targeting of Americans' emails, text messages, and other sensitive data stored in the cloud as shocking in how routine it had become.

"The fact that law enforcement requested, and courts approved, clandestine surveillance of so many Americans represents a sea-change from historical norms," said Burt. He clarified that the practice wasn't exclusive to one party or the other, but rather "an ongoing problem since the ascendancy of cloud computing."





Am I wrong to think the focus is “we gotta get these guys” rather than “we need to ensure fair competition?”

https://www.wired.com/story/what-if-regulating-facebook-fails/

What If Regulating Facebook Fails?

It seems increasingly likely that antitrust and content moderation tools aren’t up to the task. Here’s what we do next.

WHAT IF NOTHING works? What if, after years of scholarship and journalism exposing the dominance, abrogations, duplicity, arrogance, and incompetence of Facebook, none of the policy tools we have come to rely on to rein in corporations make any difference at all?

We have to be prepared for just such an outcome.

On Tuesday a federal court tossed out federal and state cases against Facebook for violating US antitrust laws. The judge ruled that, because antitrust has precise definitions of concepts like “monopoly” and high burdens of proof for actions in restraint of fair competition, the governments had not come close to justifying why these cases should proceed now. After all, the judge pointed out, the US government had raised no objections in 2012 when Facebook bought Instagram, or in 2014 when it bought WhatsApp. Why should the government swoop in to raise objections now? The judge was not wrong to rule that way. But we have been very wrong to allow our defenses against corporate power to shrink over the past 40 years.





Building AI.

https://www.executivegov.com/2021/07/carnegie-mellons-sei-unveils-white-papers-on-3-pillars-of-ai-engineering-rachel-dzombak-quoted/

Carnegie Mellon’s SEI Unveils White Papers on 3 Pillars of AI Engineering; Rachel Dzombak Quoted

Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute has released white papers on three pillars of artificial intelligence engineering: human centered, robust and secure and scalable.

The human-centered pillar of AI engineering seeks to ensure that AI platforms are developed in accordance with the ethical principles of the Department of Defense and other agencies, SEI said Wednesday.

The institute’s white paper on this AI engineering pillar has three focus areas: the need for designers and systems to understand context of use and sense changes over time; development of tools, processes and practices to scope and facilitate human-machine teaming; and mechanisms, methods and mindsets to engage in critical oversight.

The document on robust and secure AI focuses on the development of processes and tools for testing, analyzing and evaluating AI systems, improvement of robustness of AI systems and components and the need to design for security challenges in modern AI platforms.

The institute highlights three focus areas in its white paper on scalable AI and those are scalable management of data and models, scalable infrastructure and algorithms and enterprise scalability of AI development and deployment.





Got words? Need cash?

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-crowdfunding-sites-writers/

The 6 Best Crowdfunding Sites for Writers

creative writers have a lot to gain from crowdfunding apart from money for publication. Get to know these advantages while exploring the platforms below. They're the most helpful when it comes to books and, hopefully, an inspiration to future opportunities for authors.

Why Use Crowdfunding as a Writer?

Put simply, crowdfunding is a preorder process. Whether you only have an idea for a book or a finished manuscript, backers show their support by financing your publication in exchange for a copy, acknowledgment, and other rewards.



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