I guess Cyber Command could not retaliate quickly or easily. I’ll have to rethink my “nuke ‘em all” strategy.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/08/canadian_man_ransomware_alaska_charged/
Canadian charged with running ransomware attack on US state of Alaska
A Canadian man is accused of masterminding ransomware attacks that caused "damage" to systems belonging to the US state of Alaska.
A federal indictment against Matthew Philbert, 31, of Ottawa, was unsealed yesterday, and he was also concurrently charged by the Canadian authorities with a number of other criminal offences at the same time. US prosecutors [PDF ] claimed he carried out "cyber related offences" – including a specific 2018 attack on a computer in Alaska.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Philbert was charged after a 23 month investigation "that also involved the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police, federal enforcers], the FBI and Europol."
… The Ottawa Citizen newspaper added that Philbert's alleged modus operandi was "sending spam emails with infected attachments."
Much as we expected...
https://www.bespacific.com/eu-electronic-monitoring-and-surveillance-in-the-workplace/
EU – Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance in the Workplace
Ball, K., Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance in the Workplace, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2021, ISBN 978-92-76-43340-8, doi: 10.2760/5137 , JRC125716.
“This report re-evaluates the literature about surveillance/monitoring in the standard workplace, in home working during the COVID 19 pandemic and in respect of digital platform work. It utilised a systematic review methodology. A total of 398 articles were identified, evaluated and synthesised. The report finds that worker surveillance practices have extended to cover many different features of the employees as they work. Surveillance in the workplace targets thoughts, feelings and physiology, location and movement, task performance and professional profile and reputation. the standard workplace, more aspects of employees’ lives are made visible to managers through data. Employees’ work/non-work boundaries are contested terrain. The surveillance of employees working remotely during the pandemic has intensified, with the accelerated deployment of keystroke, webcam, desktop and email monitoring in Europe, the UK and the USA. Whilst remote monitoring is known to create work-family conflict, and skilled supervisory support is essential, there is a shortage of research which examines these recent phenomena. Digital platform work features end-to-end worker surveillance. Data are captured on performance, behaviours and location, and are combined with customer feedback to determine algorithmically what work and reward are offered to the platform worker in the future. There is no managerial support and patchy colleague support in a hyper-competitive and gamified freelance labour market. Once again there is a shortage of research which specifically addresses the effects of monitoring on those who work on digital platforms. Excessive monitoring has negative psycho-social consequences including increased resistance, decreased job satisfaction, increased stress, decreased organisational commitment and increased turnover propensity. The design and application of monitoring, as well as the managerial practices, processes and policies which surround it influence the incidence of these psycho-social risks. Policy recommendations target at mitigating the psycho-social risks of monitoring and draw upon privacy, data justice and organisational justice principles. Numerous recommendations are derived both for practice and for higher level policy development.”
Privacy from different angles.
Saudi Arabia Issues New Personal Data Protection Law
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has recently issued its first comprehensive national data protection law. The Personal Data Protection Law will enter into force on March 23, 2022 and regulates the collection, processing and use of personal data in the Kingdom.
(Related)
Tech Regulation in Africa: Recently Enacted Data Protection Laws
… While countries like Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa now have comprehensive data protection laws, which share some elements found in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), many of the proposed data protection laws have specific rules that are different from those in other countries in Africa. Consequently, technology companies conducting business in Africa will be required to keep abreast of the evolving regulatory landscape as it relates to data protection on the continent.
Would you trust government bureaucrats to make these decisions? Do we need philosopher-techies to make something like this work?
Why we need a new agency to regulate advanced artificial intelligence: Lessons on AI control from the Facebook Files
With the development of ever more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems, some of the world’s leading scientists, AI engineers and businesspeople have expressed concerns that humanity may lose control over its creations, giving rise to what has come to be called the AI Control Problem. The underlying premise is that our human intelligence may be outmatched by artificial intelligence at some point and that we may not be able to maintain meaningful control over them. If we fail to do so, they may act contrary to human interests, with consequences that become increasingly severe as the sophistication of AI systems rises. Indeed, recent revelations in the so-called “Facebook Files” provide a range of examples of one of the most advanced AI systems on our planet acting in opposition to our society’s interests.
In this article, I lay out what we can learn about the AI Control Problem using the lessons learned from the Facebook Files. I observe that the challenges we are facing can be distinguished into two categories: the technical problem of direct control of AI, i.e. of ensuring that an advanced AI system does what the company operating it wants it to do, and the governance problem of social control of AI, i.e. of ensuring that the objectives that companies program into advanced AI systems are consistent with society’s objectives. I analyze the scope for our existing regulatory system to address the problem of social control in the context of Facebook but observe that it suffers from two shortcomings. First, it leaves regulatory gaps; second, it focuses excessively on after-the-fact solutions. To pursue a broader and more pre-emptive approach, I argue the case for a new regulatory body—an AI Control Council—that has the power to both dedicate resources to conduct research on the direct AI control problem and to address the social AI control problem by proactively overseeing, auditing, and regulating advanced AI systems.
Training bias should be assumed when the goal is to ‘prove’ war crimes.
https://www.ft.com/content/8399873e-0dda-4c87-ba59-0e2678166fba
Researchers train AI on ‘synthetic data’ to uncover Syrian war crimes
In 2017, researchers at Syrian human rights group Mnemonic were faced with a huge mountain to climb. They had more than 350,000 hours of video that contained evidence of war crimes, [certain even before analysis? Bob] ranging from chemical attacks to the use of banned munitions, but they could never manually comb through them all.
In particular, Mnemonic wanted to use AI to search the videos in the Syrian Archive, a repository of social media records of the war, for evidence that a specific “cluster” weapon called RBK-250 — a metal shell containing several hundred small explosives — had been used on civilians. RBK-250 shells also often remain unexploded and can be dangerous for decades after the end of a conflict.
You can be big, but you can’t use big to dominate.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/tech/amazon-italy-fine/index.html
Italy fines Amazon $1.3 billion for abuse of market dominance
Italy's antitrust watchdog said on Thursday it had fined Amazon 1.13 billion euros ($1.28 billion) for alleged abuse of market dominance, in one of the biggest penalties imposed on a US tech giant in Europe.
Amazon said it "strongly disagreed" with the Italian regulator's decision and would appeal.
… Italy's watchdog said in a statement that Amazon had leveraged its dominant position in the Italian market for intermediation services on marketplaces to favor the adoption of its own logistics service — Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) — by sellers active on Amazon.it.
Early days. This could be very useful when a bit more advanced…
https://www.unite.ai/human-image-synthesis-from-reflected-radio-waves/
Human Image Synthesis From Reflected Radio Waves
Researchers from China have developed a method to synthesize near photoreal images of people without cameras, by using radio waves and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). The system they have devised is trained on real images taken in good light, but is capable of capturing relatively authentic ‘snapshots’ of humans even when conditions are dark – and even through major obstructions which would hide the people from conventional cameras.
The images rely on ‘heat maps’ from two radio antennae, one capturing data from the ceiling down, and another recording radio wave perturbations from a ‘standing’ position.
The resulting photos from the researchers’ proof-of-concept experiments have a faceless, ‘J-Horror’ aspect:
Perspective. My tax dollars at work?
https://www.bespacific.com/tsa-guide-how-not-to-be-that-guy-at-the-airport-checkpoint/
TSA Guide – How not to be “That Guy” at the airport checkpoint
This is a short written guide accompanied by gifs – the one that got me was: 5. If you must travel with it, know how to safely pack your gun!
See also LifeHacker for additional information – How to Avoid Getting Flagged By the TSA – Having never traveled with coffee beans I found this advice…interesting…” Although there are no rules against packing coffee powder or beans in your luggage, you may want to avoid doing so, as this can get you flagged by security due to coffee being used to cover up the smell of other illicit substances.…”
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