Friday, November 05, 2021

The Privacy Foundation encourages you to save November 12th for the 2021 Fall Seminar: Privacy-HIPAA/Foundational Principles—Current and Future Trends. The panel experts will examine the foundational roots of HIPAA, including the current extent of HIPAA coverage protecting medical data. Please register by clicking the link below. CLE pending.

Privacy HIPAA Developments



An inexpensive, deniable attack to keep an adversary off balance and perhaps provide information to help target attacks by other means.

https://www.databreaches.net/security-service-of-ukraine-identified-fsb-hackers-who-carried-out-more-than-5000-cyberattacks-on-state-bodies-of-ukraine/

Security Service of Ukraine identified FSB hackers who carried out more than 5,000 cyberattacks on state bodies of Ukraine

From an SSU press release:

SSU cyber specialists have identified hackers from the notorious ARMAGEDON group, which carried out more than 5,000 cyber attacks on state bodies and objects of critical infrastructure of Ukraine. They were officers of the “Crimean” FSB, as well as traitors who sided with the enemy during the occupation of the peninsula in 2014.

The Ukrainian special service revealed the identities of the intruders, obtained incontrovertible evidence of their illegal activity, including interception of their phone calls. SSU has done it despite of the fact that the criminals used the FSB’s own malware, as well as means of anonymization and “covers” in the Internet.

Currently, 5 members of the hackers group received the suspicion notices of high treason according to art. 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

According to available information, the hacker group “ARMAGEDON” is a special FSB project, the primary goal of which was Ukraine. This “direction of work” was coordinated by the 18th Center of FSB of the Russian Federation (Information Security Center), based in Moscow.

Read more of the release here and you can watch the videos they released.

Catalin Cimpanu has a helpful write-up on it all on The Record.



How costly are hackers?

https://thehackernews.com/2021/11/us-offers-10-million-reward-for.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheHackersNews+%28The+Hackers+News+-+Cyber+Security+Blog%29

U.S. Offers $10 Million Reward for Information on DarkSide Ransomware Group

The U.S. government on Thursday announced a $10 million reward for information that may lead to the identification or location of key individuals who hold leadership positions in the DarkSide ransomware group or any of its rebrands.

On top of that, the State Department is offering bounties of up to $5 million for intel and tip-offs that could result in the arrest and/or conviction in any country of individuals who are conspiring or attempting to participate in intrusions affiliated with the transnational organized crime syndicate.



Confusing. I need a couple of lawyers to explain my rights, and they probably won’t agree with each other.

https://www.pogowasright.org/the-impact-of-carpenter-v-united-states-in-the-lower-courts-and-the-emerging-carpenter-test/

The Impact of Carpenter v. United States in the Lower Courts and the Emerging Carpenter Test

John Wesley Hall points us to two recent articles of note:

Lawfare: The Impact of Carpenter v. United States in the Lower Courts and the Emerging Carpenter Test by Matthew Tokson:

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States was widely considered to be a sea change in Fourth Amendment law. Carpenter held that individuals can retain Fourth Amendment rights in information they disclose to a third party, at least in some situations. Specifically, cell phone users retained Fourth Amendment rights in their cell phone location data, even though that data was disclosed to their cell phone companies.
This is a potentially revolutionary holding in the internet era, when virtually every form of sensitive digital information is exposed to a third-party service provider at some point.
[…]

And then Hall points to another piece by Tokson:

Matthew J. Tokson, The Aftermath of Carpenter: An Empirical Study of Fourth Amendment Law, 2018-2021 (September 28, 2021). Harvard Law Review, Forthcoming, University of Utah College of Law Research Paper No. 470, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3932015 Abstract:
Fourth Amendment law is in flux. The Supreme Court recently established, in the landmark case Carpenter v. United States, that individuals can retain Fourth Amendment rights in information they disclose to a third party. In the internet era, this ruling has the potential to extend privacy protections to a huge variety of sensitive digital information. But Carpenter is also notoriously vague. Scholars and lower courts have tried to guess at what the law of Fourth Amendment searches will be going forward—and have reached different, contradictory conclusions.

Read more on FourthAmendment.com.



An AI of human (or greater) intelligence is inevitable. Why do we insist that we must control it? Won’t that be like my cat insisting on controlling me?

https://www.sciencealert.com/calculations-suggest-it-ll-be-impossible-to-control-a-super-intelligent-ai

Calculations Suggest It'll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI

The idea of artificial intelligence overthrowing humankind has been talked about for many decades, and in January 2021, scientists delivered their verdict on whether we'd be able to control a high-level computer super-intelligence. The answer? Almost definitely not.

The catch is that controlling a super-intelligence far beyond human comprehension would require a simulation of that super-intelligence which we can analyze. But if we're unable to comprehend it, it's impossible to create such a simulation.



AI as inventor. Now AI as speaker.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-first-amendment-does-not-protect-replicants-2/

The First Amendment Does Not Protect Replicants

Lessig, Lawrence, The First Amendment Does Not Protect Replicants (September 10, 2021). Social Media and Democracy (Lee Bollinger & Geoffrey Stone, eds., Oxford 2022), Forthcoming, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 21-34, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3922565 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3922565

As the semantic capability of computer systems increases, the law should resolve clearly whether the First Amendment protects machine speech. This essay argues it should not be read to reach sufficiently sophisticated — “replicant” — speech.”



Perspective. Lawyers might find the “Data Trust” interesting.

https://www.bespacific.com/10-breakthrough-technologies-2021-2/

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2021

MIT Technology Review: “This list marks 20 years since we began compiling an annual selection of the year’s most important technologies. Some, such as mRNA vaccines, are already changing our lives, while others are still a few years off. Below, you’ll find a brief description along with a link to a feature article that probes each technology in detail. We hope you’ll enjoy and explore—taken together, we believe this list represents a glimpse into our collective future …”


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