Centennial Man: 2021-01-03

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Educating CEOs…

https://www.zdnet.com/article/some-ransomware-gangs-are-going-after-top-execs-to-pressure-companies-into-paying/#ftag=RSSbaffb68

Some ransomware gangs are going after top execs to pressure companies into paying

Ransomware gangs are prioritizing stealing data from workstations used by executives in the hopes of finding and using valuable information to use in the extortion process.

They may have it right.

https://www.pogowasright.org/effs-response-to-social-media-companies-decisions-to-block-president-trumps-accounts/

EFF’s Response to Social Media Companies’ Decisions to Block President Trump’s Accounts

Corynne McSherry of EFF writes:

Like most people in the United States and around the world, EFF is shocked and disgusted by Wednesday’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. We support all those who are working to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and we are grateful for the service of policymakers, staffers, and other workers who endured many hours of lockdown and reconvened to fulfill their constitutional duties.

The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions. We also note that those same platforms have chosen, for years, to privilege some speakers—particularly governmental officials—over others, not just in the U.S., but in other countries as well. A platform should not apply one set of rules to most of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful.

Friday, January 08, 2021

Is the capital different from the executive suites in any large corporation?

https://www.databreaches.net/decrypted-how-bad-was-the-us-capitol-breach-for-cybersecurity/

Decrypted: How bad was the US Capitol breach for cybersecurity?

Zack Whittaker reports on concerns that were raised after the massive security failure at the Capitol that resulted in attackers having access to papers, hard drives and more. Zack reiterates some comforting thoughts that were offered on Twitter in the aftermath of the rampage:

Most lawmakers don’t have ready access to classified materials, unless it’s for their work sitting on sensitive committees, such as Judiciary or Intelligence. The classified computers are separate from the rest of the unclassified congressional network and in a designated sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIFs, in locked-down areas of the Capitol building.

Thursday, January 07, 2021

Is this what it took to get the President’s attention?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015830/twitter-trump-suspension-ban/

Twitter locked Trump’s account. Insiders say it needs to go further.

… Initially, Twitter only put limits on the video, but it later removed the tweet entirely, along with a subsequent message that appeared to justify the actions of the mob because they are “great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” Twitter also announced that the president’s account would remain locked for at least 12 hours.

The decision to delete the video put Twitter in line with Facebook and YouTube, which had both opted earlier in the day to remove it for violating their rules. Shortly before Twitter’s decision was announced, “Delete his account” became a trending topic on the platform.

How years of online misinformation erupted into real-world insurrection

Fast Company – “On social networks, a toxic stew of lies simmered for years—until the president’s supporters responded with violent action at the U.S. Capitol… Despite the many fact-checking outlets and news organization efforts devoted to correcting Trump’s errors, he is un-fact-checkable. His constant stream of half truths and outright lies have fostered an environment where millions of people cannot discern between fact and fiction. For average Americans, this has created confusion. But for a faction of Trump supporters, the president’s rhetoric and claims have created pure delusion. They don’t trust Congress. They don’t believe COVID-19 is real. They won’t wear masks. They think the COVID-19 vaccine is a sham. They follow a conspiracy theory called QAnon that says President Trump is fighting a deep network of government corruption …”

The Rioters Who Took Over The Capitol Have Been Planning Online In The Open For Weeks

Is this obvious?

https://www.protocol.com/democrats-georgia-senate-tech

Democrats have won the Senate. Here’s what it means for tech.

Democrats have won both Senate races in Georgia, taking back control of the Senate after five years of Republican leadership. The dramatic shift will undoubtedly reenergize the legislative landscape over the next several years — and could bring Democrats' tech agenda one step closer to reality.

That's good news and bad news for tech. An antitrust crackdown and other regulation becomes more likely — stock futures fell Wednesday as investors anticipated a new regulatory regime for Big Tech — but the tech sector could see gains on immigration and some relief from the Republicans' attacks on Section 230.

Here are the top reforms and nominations that could stand a chance in a new Congress controlled by Democrats.

Breaking up Big Tech

Passing a federal privacy bill

Curbing bias in AI

Expanding high-skilled immigration

Taking a scalpel, not a hammer, to Section 230

Nominating progressives as top tech watchdogs

A graph is worth a thousand words?

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/07/iprally/

IPRally is building a knowledge graph-based search engine for patents

… Co-founded by CEO Sakari Arvela, who has 15 years experience as a patent attorney, IPRally has built a knowledge graph to help machines better understand the technical details of patents and to enable humans to more efficiently trawl through existing patients. The premise is that a graph-based approach is more suited to patent search than simple keywords or freeform text search.

Is law becoming a techie profession?

https://www.bespacific.com/artificial-intelligence-in-the-courts-legal-academia-and-legal-practice/

Artificial Intelligence in the Courts, Legal Academia and Legal Practice

Bennett Moses, Lyria, Artificial Intelligence in the Courts, Legal Academia and Legal Practice (August 7, 2017). Australian Law Journal, 91(7), p. 561-574 (2017), UNSW Law Research Paper No. 20-79, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3742515

“Advances in technology, in particular in artificial intelligence, will continue to have a significant impact on the discipline of law in academia, the practicing profession and the courts. While technological forecasting is a dangerous game, current trends suggest that over the next ten years there will likely be greater reliance on data analytic tools in assessing students, predicting judicial outcomes and making decisions about criminal defendants both pre- and post-conviction. There is also likely to be greater diffusion of expert systems offering standardised legal advice and legal documents, although it is less likely that there will be significant technological innovation in that field. There are significant differences between an artificial intelligence that mirrors doctrinal logic (expert systems) and an artificial intelligence based on projection from empirical observation (data analytics). In particular, few legal professionals understand the mechanisms through which data analytics produces predictions. The limitations inherent and assumptions embedded in these tools are thus often poorly understood by those using them. This essay will explore the limitations of artificial intelligence technologies by considering the ways in which what they produce (for clients, law students and society) differs from what they replace. Ultimately, if we, as legal professionals, want to harness the benefits and limit the detriments of new artificial intelligence technologies, we need to understand what their limitations are, what assumptions are embedded within them and how they might undermine appropriate decision-making in legal practice, legal academia and, most crucially, the judiciary.”

Can you trust anyone who misspells RBG?

https://www.bespacific.com/the-notorious-rgb-lessons-on-legal-writing-from-the-legendary-ruth-bader-ginsburg/

The Notorious RGB: Lessons on Legal Writing from the Legendary Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Lebovits, Gerald, The Notorious R.B.G.: Lessons on Legal Writing from the Legendary Ruth Bader Ginsburg (November 2020). Gerald Lebovits, The Legal Writer, The Notorious R.B.G.: Lessons on Legal Writing from the Legendary Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 92 N.Y. St. B.J. 76 (Nov. 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3718087 – “The article discusses Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s advice on legal writing.”

Tools.

https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2021/01/overviewer-turn-your-iphone-or-ipad.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+freetech4teachers/cGEY+(Free+Technology+for+Teachers)

Overviewer - Turn Your iPhone or iPad Into a Document Camera in Zoom

Thanks to a recent article on The Verge I just learned about a new, free iPhone and iPad app called Overviewer. Overviewer is a free app that lets you use your iPhone or iPad as a document camera during a Zoom meeting. The app essentially mirrors your iPhone or iPad camera into Zoom via Airplay or Lightning Bolt cable.

Here's an overview of how Overviewer works.

Unfortunately, there isn't a similar Android app available right now that I'm aware of. However, I have been successful in sharing my Android screen through a USB cable with a free desktop program called Vysor.

Wednesday, January 06, 2021

True security threat or more political obfuscation? Are all other Apps safe?

https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/06/trump_administration_bans_chinese_apps/

Trump administration bans eight Chinese apps

United States president Donald Trump has signed an executive order banning the use of eight Chinese apps, namely Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay, and WPS Office.

The executive order says the apps “threaten national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” because China can track users’ devices.

Another year end wrap-up. More reasons to hate 2020.

https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/210104-data-breach-litigation-2020.html

Privacy Litigation 2020 Year in Review: Data Breach Litigation

Add a 270% increase in data breaches to the long list of unprecedented challenges in 2020. Cybersecurity is on the short list of major risks facing companies. And when a security incident happens, class actions often follow. Although data breach class actions are not new, we continue to see increases in the number of cases filed, evolving theories from plaintiffs’ counsel, and the development of settlement templates in these cases.

Perspective.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015779/what-buddhism-can-do-ai-ethics/

What Buddhism can do for AI ethics

… Many groups have discussed and proposed ethical guidelines for how AI should be developed or deployed: IEEE, a global professional organization for engineers, has issued a 280-page document on the subject (to which I contributed), and the European Union has published its own framework. The AI Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory has compiled more than 160 such guidelines from around the world.

… Because the development and use of AI spans the entire globe, the way we think about it should be informed by all the major intellectual traditions.

With that in mind, I believe that insights derived from Buddhist teaching could benefit anyone working on AI ethics anywhere in the world, and not only in traditionally Buddhist cultures (which are mostly in the East and primarily in Southeast Asia).

A future strategy?

https://www.wired.com/story/us-needs-more-foreign-artificial-intelligence-know-how/

The US Needs More Foreign Artificial Intelligence Know-How

Jason Furman, a top economic adviser to President Obama, says good ideas come from everywhere—but Trump has dissuaded tech workers from coming to the US.

… Furman served as deputy director of the National Economic Council before becoming chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. He also coauthored a report issued by the Obama administration in October 2016 that detailed the economic importance of AI to the US.

Furman, who is now a professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard, spoke to WIRED senior writer Will Knight. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Reading…

https://pando.com/2021/01/05/why-we-must-democratize-AI-invest-human-prosperity-with-Frank-Pasquale/

Why we must democratize AI to invest in human prosperity, with Frank Pasquale

Four years ago, Frank Pasquale, Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, catalyzed a debate over algorithmic and corporate power with the publication of his highly acclaimed and highly critical book, The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money.

… Pasquale’s new book, New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI, takes a profoundly different approach towards challenging the status quo.

… The following is an edited version of a conversation between Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Frank Pasquale.

Evan: What are your new laws of robotics?

Frank: They can be stated simply. First, robotic systems and AI should complement professionals, not replace them. Second, they should not counterfeit humanity. Third, they should not intensify zero-sum arms races. And fourth, they must always indicate the identity of their creators, controllers, and owners.

More reading… (and listen to the podcast)

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-and-beyond-journalist-ventures-inside-chinas-surveillance-sta

Facial Recognition And Beyond: Journalist Ventures Inside China's 'Surveillance State'

… German journalist Kai Strittmatter speaks fluent Mandarin and has studied China for more than 30 years. He says it's not clear whether or not the Chinese government is capable of using facial recognition software in the way it claims. But he adds, on a certain level, the veracity of the claim isn't important.

"It doesn't even matter whether it's true or not, as long as people believe it," he says. "What the Communist Party is doing with all this high-tech surveillance technology now is they're trying to internalize control. ... Once you believe it's true, it's like you don't even need the policemen at the corner anymore, because you're becoming your own policeman."

Strittmatter's new book, We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State, examines the role of surveillance in China's authoritarian state. He warns that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, has embraced an ideological rigidity unknown since the days of Mao Zedong.

This is true, so far.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/01/what-ai-can-and-cannot-do-intelligence-community/171195/

What AI Can and Cannot Do for the Intelligence Community

A seasoned intelligence professional can be forgiven for raising her eyebrows about artificial intelligence, a nascent and booming field in which it can be hard to sort real potential from hype. Addressing that raised eyebrow — and helping senior leaders understand how to invest precious time and money — will take more than vague generalities and myopic case studies. We therefore offer a hypothesis for debate: AI, specifically machine learning, can help with tasks related to collection, processing, and analysis — half of the Steps in the Intelligence Cycle — but will struggle with tasks related to intelligence planning, dissemination, and evaluation.

A whole new field.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/how-covid-19-has-accelerated-the-shift-towards-tradetech/

How COVID-19 accelerated the shift towards TradeTech

… The emerging solution to manage the challenges of both COVID-19 and techno-nationalism are coming from a burgeoning new field called TradeTech. The dynamics of the development in this field are captured in the new World Economic Forum report, ‘Mapping TradeTech: Trade in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

… The importance of digital trade has also been outlined in a 2019 paper published by the McKinsey Global Institute titled Globalization in transition: The future of trade and value chains.

Perspective. With air travel down due to Covid, I imagine they got these planes cheap!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/amazon-makes-first-aircraft-purchase-to-expand-delivery-network

Amazon Makes First Aircraft Purchase to Expand Cargo Network

Amazon.com Inc. is buying 11 used Boeing 767-300 planes, the first time the online retail giant has purchased, rather than leased, aircraft for its fast-growing air cargo operation.

The company on Tuesday said it was buying seven aircraft from Delta Air Lines Inc. and four from WestJet Airlines Ltd. The WestJet aircraft are currently being converted from passenger to cargo use and will join Amazon’s fleet this year. The Delta jets will start flying routes in 2022. By the end of next year, Amazon expects to have more than 85 planes in service, a spokesperson said.

Tuesday, January 05, 2021

Imagine parallels in other countries…

https://www.bespacific.com/crs-russian-cyber-units/

CRS – Russian Cyber Units

CRS In Focus – Russian Cyber Units, January 4, 2021: “Russia has deployed sophisticated cyber capabilities to conduct disinformation, propaganda, espionage, and destructive cyberattacks globally. To conduct these operations, Russia maintains numerous units overseen by its various security and intelligence agencies. Russia’s security agencies compete with each other and often conduct similar operations on the same targets, making specific attribution and motivation assessments difficult. Congress may be interested in the various Russian agencies, units, and their attributes to better understand why and how Russia conducts cyber operations.”

Surveillance creep. “We can, therefore we must!”

https://www.engadget.com/singapore-tracetogether-police-225552941.html

Singapore police can access data from the country's contract tracing app

With a nearly 80 percent uptake among the country’s population, Singapore’s TraceTogether app is one of the best examples of what a successful centralized contact tracing effort can look like as countries across the world struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic. To date, more than 4.2 million people in Singapore have download the app or obtained the wearable the government has offered to people.

… In an update the government made to the platform’s privacy policy on Monday, it added a paragraph about how police can use data collected through the platform. “TraceTogether data may be used in circumstances where citizen safety and security is or has been affected,” the new paragraph states. “Authorized Police officers may invoke Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) powers to request users to upload their TraceTogether data for criminal investigations.”

In case them thar furriners come up with an idea worth stealing...

https://www.bespacific.com/maximizing-the-index-to-foreign-legal-periodicals-in-all-law/

Maximizing the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals In All Law

A free webinar on the IFLP on January 13, 2021. It’s open to AALL (American Association of Law Libraries) and non-AALL members, but you must register: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 (12pm – 1pm ET). There will be a post at the IALL (International Association of Law Libraries) website for more information. See also these two HeinOnline Blog posts: Discover the Power of AALL’s Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals and Tips from the Experts for Using the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals. (via Lyonette Louis-Jacques, University of Chicago Law School)

Monday, January 04, 2021

One way to explain your security…

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/customer-data-security-5-pillars-to-keep-customer-information-safe/

Customer Data Security: 5 Pillars To Keep Customer Information Safe

It is crucial to taking the right precautions when it comes to data management. Today’s world of big data and mass collection of consumer information has resulted in a significant rise in cybercrime. Consumers now look for a deeper level of trust when it comes to internet security.

Oh, right… Analytical purposes. Remember that Ethical Hacking students.

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-web-scraping-tools/

The Best Web Scraping Tools Online

Need to collect data from websites for analytical purposes? These web scraping tools make it easy.

Forecasts to guide your 2021 planning?

https://threatpost.com/2021-cybersecurity-trends/162629/

2021 Cybersecurity Trends: Bigger Budgets, Endpoint Emphasis and Cloud

Insider threats are redefined in 2021, the work-from-home trend will continue define the threat landscape and mobile endpoints become the attack vector of choice, according 2021 forecasts.

After shrinking in 2020, cybersecurity budgets in 2021 climb higher than pre-pandemic limits. Authentication, cloud data protection and application monitoring will top the list of CISO budget and cybersecurity priorities. According to experts, these are just a few of the themes to dominate the year ahead.

Here is round-robin of expert opinions illuminating the year ahead.

Looking for new lawyers because the old ones couldn’t answer these questions?

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3601991/5-questions-cisos-should-ask-prospective-corporate-lawyers.html#tk.rss_all

5 questions CISOs should ask prospective corporate lawyers

Where can you find an attorney with the knowledge and insight to help you navigate thorny privacy and security issues? These five questions will help you find the right match.

Now fix all those databases that came before the math.

https://www.bespacific.com/differential-privacy/

Differential Privacy

Harvard University Privacy Tools Project – “…Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy. In the simplest setting, consider an algorithm that analyzes a dataset and computes statistics about it (such as the data’s mean, variance, median, mode, etc.). Such an algorithm is said to be differentially private if by looking at the output, one cannot tell whether any individual’s data was included in the original dataset or not. In other words, the guarantee of a differentially private algorithm is that its behavior hardly changes when a single individual joins or leaves the dataset — anything the algorithm might output on a database containing some individual’s information is almost as likely to have come from a database without that individual’s information. Most notably, this guarantee holds for any individual and any dataset. Therefore, regardless of how eccentric any single individual’s details are, and regardless of the details of anyone else in the database, the guarantee of differential privacy still holds. This gives a formal guarantee that individual-level information about participants in the database is not leaked. The definition of differential privacy emerged from a long line of work applying algorithmic ideas to the study of privacy (Dinur and Nissim `03; Dwork and Nissim `04; Blum, Dwork, McSherry, and Nissim `05 ), culminating with work of Dwork, McSherry, Nissim, and Smith `06. See our educational materials for more detail about the formal definition of differential privacy and its semantic guarantees…”

My car hates me?

https://www.pogowasright.org/insecure-wheels-police-turn-to-car-data-to-destroy-suspects-alibis/

Insecure wheels: Police turn to car data to destroy suspects’ alibis

Olivia Solon reports:

On June 26, 2017, the lifeless body of Ronald French, a bearded auto mechanic with once-twinkling eyes, was mysteriously found in a cornfield in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.

French, a grandfather of eight who always tried to help people “down on their luck,” his daughter Ronda Hamilton told NBC affiliate WOOD of Kalamazoo, had disappeared three weeks before. According to the police report, a cord had been wrapped around his neck, his face and his feet. He had been dragged behind a vehicle so forcefully that he had abrasions along his back, and his skull had been partly flattened. The medical examiner attributed French’s death to “homicidal violence.” But then his grieving family heard nothing about arrests.

Centennial Man

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Friday, January 08, 2021

Thursday, January 07, 2021

Wednesday, January 06, 2021

Tuesday, January 05, 2021

Monday, January 04, 2021

Search This Blog

Followers

Blog Archive

Links

About Me