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.

A war by any other name…

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3624008/us-and-uk-issue-rare-joint-guidance-in-response-to-russian-gru-brute-force-campaign.html#tk.rss_all

US and UK issue rare joint guidance in response to Russian GRU brute force campaign

CISOs should leverage this guidance to help get the resources they need to make these and other cyberattacks too costly for nation-state threat actors and criminals.

The United States and the United Kingdom cyber and law enforcement entities (NSA, FBI, CISA and NCSC) have joined forces to protect enterprises in their respective nations and the globe, with the July 1 issuance of defensive guidance regarding Russian the intelligence service’s targeting and attack methodologies. While bilateral sharing of information between the US and UK intelligence services occurs daily, the public sharing of their joint perspective and guidance is especially noteworthy and should be taken on board by every CISO, regardless of company size.

The report, Russian GRU Global Brute Force Campaign, notes since at least mid-2019 through early 2021, the Russian GRU’s (military intelligence) Unit 26165 has used a “Kubernetes cluster to conduct widespread, distributed, and anonymized brute force access attempts against hundreds of government and private sector targets worldwide.” The cybersecurity world has previously identified the efforts of Unit 26165 with the monikers Fancy Bear, APT28, and Strontium.

… The report detailed how the targeting efforts of Unit 26165, while global, have focused primarily on the United States and Europe and included the energy, logistics, academia, research, media, legal, defense, and government sectors. They also targeted political parties, organizations, and consultants.

Apparently it is hard to find people willing to work for the government?

https://therecord.media/dhs-adds-hundreds-of-new-cyber-professionals-to-its-ranks/

DHS adds hundreds of new cyber professionals to its ranks

The US Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced that it is onboarding nearly 300 cybersecurity professionals and has extended job offers to 500 others in what it refers to as “the most successful cybersecurity hiring initiative in DHS history.”

… The announcement is significant, but is also a sign of things to come:

• DHS has more than 2,000 cybersecurity vacancies across various agencies.

Security tool.

https://www.bespacific.com/google-releases-new-open-source-security-software-program-scorecards/

Google releases new open-source security software program: Scorecards

ZDNet – “Some naive people may still think they’re not using open-source software. They’re wrong. Everyone does. According to the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) 2021 “Open Source Security and Risk Analysis” (OSSRA) report, 95% of all commercial programs contain open-source software. By CyRC’s count, the vast majority of that code contains outdated or insecure code. But how can you tell which libraries and other components are safe without doing a deep code dive? Google and the Open Source Security Foundation (OSSF) have a quick and easy answer: The OpenSSF Security Scorecards. These Scorecards are based on a set of automated pass/fail checks to provide a quick review of many open-source software projects. The Scorecards project is an automated security tool that produces a “risk score” for open-source programs…”

Another book I’ll have to read when it becomes available…

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/07/03/a-thought-provoking-reflection-on-how-ai-will-change-conflict

A thought-provoking reflection on how AI will change conflict

Algorithms may make proficient soldiers but poor generals

I, Warbot. By Kenneth Payne. Oxford University Press; 336 pages; $29.95. Hurst; £20

The un’s Panel of Experts on Libya rarely grabs the headlines. But its valedictory report in March caused a furore. It noted that in a battle around Tripoli last year, Libya’s government had “hunted down and remotely engaged” the enemy with drones—and not just any drones. The Kargu-2 was programmed to attack “without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition”. The implication was that it could pick its own targets.

Was this information ever secure?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/07/intuit-to-share-payroll-data-from-1-4m-small-businesses-with-equifax/

Intuit to Share Payroll Data from 1.4M Small Businesses With Equifax

Financial services giant Intuit this week informed 1.4 million small businesses using its QuickBooks Online Payroll and Intuit Online Payroll products that their payroll information will be shared with big-three consumer credit bureau Equifax starting later this year unless customers opt out by the end of this month.

Intuit says the change is tied to an “exciting” and “free” new service that will let millions of small business employees get easy access to employment and income verification services when they wish to apply for a loan or line of credit.

Unlikely to fly here? Do we have a hierarchy of rights and laws?

https://www.pogowasright.org/dutch-supreme-court-rules-ziggo-does-not-have-to-hand-over-details-of-illegal-downloaders/

Dutch Supreme Court rules Ziggo does not have to hand over details of ‘illegal downloaders’

DutchNews.nl reports:

Internet company Ziggo does not have to hand over the details of people who ‘illegally downloaded’ a film, according to a Supreme Court ruling.

Distributor Dutch Filmworks (DFW) had taken the matter to the Netherlands’ highest court after appeal court judges confirmed in 2019 that client privacy trumps alleged piracy.

Read more at DutchNews.nl.

Can we connect this directly to Predator drones to take them out?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/01/tech/facebook-extremist-notification/

Facebook tests prompts that ask users if they're worried a friend is 'becoming an extremist'

Some Facebook users in the United States are being served a prompt that asks if they are worried that someone they know might be becoming an extremist. Others are being notified that they may have been exposed to extremist content.

“We want to get them so bad we’re willing to define new sins they have probably already committed.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/1/22559131/ftc-open-meeting-antitrust-chair-lina-khan-sherman-act-powers?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

Federal Trade Commission expands antitrust powers in Chair Lina Khan’s first open proceeding

In an open meeting on Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission passed a pair of pivotal measures expanding its power to regulate anti-competitive business practices, setting the stage for a more aggressive enforcement approach from the embattled agency.

… The meeting paved the way for an aggressive antitrust approach from the agency, with three separate measures expanding the commission’s power to prosecute anti-competitive business practices.

… “A clear majority of the Supreme Court has expressed their intention to revive the non-delegation doctrine, which holds that only Congress may make laws,” said the pro-business think tank TechFreedom in a statement in advance of the vote. “The FTC might well wind up as the first test case for that long-dormant doctrine if it departs from the clear principles developed by the courts under antitrust law.”

Something to fiddle with in your spare time.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/learn-interior-design-8-free-online-courses/

The Best Free Online Interior Design Courses You Can Take

If you lost drives containing evidence or other confidential data would you be able to have Western Digital “fix” your disks? (Paranoid me asks: Would this ‘hack’ be a model for a company that wanted to force customers to upgrade?)

https://www.databreaches.net/western-digital-to-provide-recovery-services-for-hacked-nas-drives/

Western Digital to provide recovery services for hacked NAS drives

Western Digital has announced a new trade-in programme to help customers mitigate the effects of a mass malware attack that saw terabytes of data wiped from users’ NAS drives overnight.

Those who lost data as a result of the hack will be able to benefit from Western Digital’s data recovery services, as well as a trade-in programme for My Book Live network-attached storage devices that were targeted in the attack. Customers partaking in the programme will be able to upgrade to a new supported My Cloud device.

Both programmes will become available starting July, the company stated.

Read more on TechCentral.ie

Exceptional?

https://www.pogowasright.org/u-s-supreme-court-turns-away-digital-device-border-search-cases/

U.S. Supreme Court turns away digital device border search cases

Sara Merken reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up three cases that relate to constitutional requirements for U.S. border searches of electronic devices like laptops and cell phones.

The high court’s decision to steer clear of the cases comes as courts around the country have grappled in varying ways with how the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution applies in the digital age.

In one of the cases, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the justices to review a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in which a three-judge panel ruled in February that U.S. border agents don’t need warrants to search travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry.

Read more on Reuters.

(Related)

https://www.pogowasright.org/wisconsin-supreme-court-refuses-to-limit-warrantless-forensic-searches-of-cell-phones/

Wisconsin Supreme Court Refuses to Limit Warrantless Forensic Searches of Cell Phones

From EPIC.org:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an opinion in Wisconsin v. Burch finding that cell phone data downloaded with a forensic device can be used in a subsequent, unrelated investigation and trial regardless of whether the data was initially obtained without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. A police department used a forensic device to download the entire contents of the defendant’s phone while investigating a hit-and-run and retained a full copy indefinitely. The sheriff’s office later accessed and searched the copy during an unrelated homicide investigation and used the defendant’s cell phone data as evidence during his trial. The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to decide the constitutional question. Instead, the Court found that the evidence should not be excluded because the police “acted by the book” and there was no conduct to deter with exclusion. The Court said that the sheriff’s office “ha[d] every reason to think [the downloaded data] was lawfully obtained” and found there was no police misconduct because it is “common police practice to share records with other agencies.” Dissenting from this holding, Judge Bradley, along with two other justices of the court, recognized that law enforcement “generally needs a warrant to search the data [cell phones] hold.” She added that the exclusionary rule should apply in this case because “excluding evidence obtained by following such an unlawful and widespread policy provides significant societal value by both specifically deterring continued adherence to an unconstitutional practice and more broadly incentivizing police agencies to adopt policies in line with the Fourth Amendment.” EPIC, along with the ACLU and EFF, filed an amicus brief in the case that argued that the unchecked use of forensic devices to download, store, and share cell data violated the Fourth Amendment by “enabl[ing] the State to rummage at will among a person’s most personal and private information whenever it wanted, for as long as it wanted” without a warrant. EPIC regularly files amicus briefs challenging unlawful access to cell phone data.

A teaching aide?

https://www.bespacific.com/the-overlapping-infrastructure-of-urban-surveillance-and-how-to-fix-it/

The Overlapping Infrastructure of Urban Surveillance and How to Fix It

EFF Free Visual – The Overlapping Infrastructure of Urban Surveillance, and How to Fix It – “Between the increasing capabilities of local and state police, the creep of federal law enforcement into domestic policing, the use of aerial surveillance such as spy planes and drones, and mounting cooperation between private technology companies and the government, it can be hard to understand and visualize what all this overlapping surveillance can mean for your daily life. We often think of these problems as siloed issues. Local police deploy automated license plate readers or acoustic gunshot detection. Federal authorities monitor you when you travel internationally. But if you could take a cross-section of the average city block, you would see the ways that the built environment of surveillance—its physical presence in, over, and under our cities—makes this an entwined problem that must be combatted through entwined solutions. Thus, we decided to create a graphic to show how—from overhead to underground—these technologies and legal authorities overlap, how they disproportionately impact the lives of marginalized communities, and the tools we have at our disposal to halt or mitigate their harms…”

(Related)

https://www.pogowasright.org/maine-law-restricts-facial-recognition-technology-statewide/

Maine law restricts facial recognition technology statewide

AP reports:

A bill touted as the country’s strictest statewide regulation on the use of facial recognition technology has become law in Maine.

While several states regulate facial recognition as a surveillance tool, the Maine law represents a broad prohibition of the technology at the state, county and municipal government levels, with limited exceptions for law enforcement purposes, officials said.

Read more on AP News.

Related: L.D. 1585

Looks to be a bit too expensive for the average guy. Perhaps there is a market for cheaper tools?

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-ways-prevent-drones-infringing-privacy/

How to Prevent Drones Infringing on Your Privacy: 7 Ways

For your viewing pleasure?

https://www.pogowasright.org/funniest-privacy-videos-privacy-at-law-schools/

Funniest Privacy Videos + Privacy at Law Schools

Law professor Daniel Solove writes:

At my event, the Privacy Law Salon, we have a wonderful tradition of showing some of the year’s funniest privacy videos after dinner. I thought I’d share some of the videos I have enjoyed the most, plus some new ones I recently found.

When you want to be amazed and depressed at the same time.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-entire-facebook-history-data-downloader/

How to Download Your Entire Facebook History

… a look at how to download your Facebook data, what's included, and, perhaps most importantly, what's not included.

Once again I am pleased to see none of my students on this list.

https://www.databreaches.net/us-secret-service-brings-back-its-cyber-most-wanted-list/

US Secret Service brings back its Cyber Most Wanted list

Catalin Cimpanu reports:

The US Secret Service has updated its official website this month to add a new page where the agency is now listing the most sought-after fugitives involved in financially related cybercrime investigations.

The new Most Wanted Fugitives page was re-added to the agency’s site after the page had been removed from the site for the past few years.

The agency’s most wanted fugitives page is very similar to the FBI’s Cyber Most Wanted, with some names found on both lists.

Read more on The Record.

This is what passes for ethics today?

https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/01/nice-publishes-ethical-framework-for-applying-ai-to-customer-service/

Nice publishes ethical framework for applying AI to customer service

Nice, a provider of a robotic process automation (RPA) platform infused with machine learning algorithms employed in call centers, today published a Robo Ethical Framework for employing AI to better serve customers.

The goal is to provide some direction on how best to employ robots alongside humans in a call center, rather than focusing on how to replace humans, said Oded Karev, vice president of RPA for Nice.

The field is probably not fracturing, but new buzzwords appear whenever people think they are inventing a new specialization. Or perhaps it’s just marketing.

https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/tip/9-top-AI-and-machine-learning-trends

9 top AI and machine learning trends for 2021

Tiny ML, multi-modal learning, responsible AI -- learn about the top trends in AI for 2021 and how they promise to transform how business gets done.

Redefining antitrust.

https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-antitrust-case-against-facebook-very-much-alive/

Actually, the Antitrust Case Against Facebook Is Very Much Alive

YOU MAY HAVE heard about how the government’s effort to break up Facebook was dealt a death blow by a federal judge on Monday. Per The New York Times, the case was “thrown out,” in a “stunning setback.” As The Washington Post put it, the ruling “handed Facebook a major victory.” One Wall Street Journal reporter summed up the mood by noting on Twitter, “Hard to overstate the blow Facebook landed here.”

But according to several antitrust experts I’ve spoken with, overstatement is precisely the way to describe these news reports. Yes, Monday was a good day for Facebook, whose market cap briefly cracked $1 trillion on the strength of the news. The company had been facing parallel cases filed in December: one by the Federal Trade Commission, the other by a coalition of 46 states, plus Guam and the District of Columbia. On Monday, Judge James E. Boasberg dismissed the states’ case in its entirety, primarily because he found they had waited too long to bring it. That’s a big deal. But, for weird legal reasons that we won’t get into, the timing problem doesn’t apply to the federal government. And so the heart of the FTC’s legal effort—which seeks to force Facebook to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp—is still very much alive. It wasn’t thrown out, it was just sent back to the kitchen. Boasberg has given the FTC, under newly appointed chair Lina Khan, 30 days to beef up the parts of its complaint that he found lacking in evidence. Assuming it chooses to refile the case, there’s good reason to think the agency will be able to meet the challenge.

(Related)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-30/amazon-seeks-to-have-ftc-chair-khan-recused-on-company-actions

Amazon Wants FTC Chair Khan Recused Over Past Criticism

Amazon.com Inc. wants Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan recused from matters involving the company because of her history criticizing the online retailer as a threat to competition.

Amazon filed a request with the agency on Wednesday, arguing that Khan should be barred from handling antitrust enforcement decisions affecting the company, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News.

(Related) I have to keep reminding myself that monopoly not only means controlling the majority of a market but without a majority having the ability to influence the market. Where I really get confused is how one fifth of 46% constitutes undue influence on the market.

https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/global-advertising-spend-2020-quintopoly/

Quintopoly? Five tech companies now earn 46% of global ad revenues as news media left behind

Google, Facebook, Alibaba, TikTok owner Bytedance and Amazon generated ad sales of $296bn last year – making up 46% of the market.

Apparently there is big money in the ‘replace lawyers with software” business.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/30/legalzoom-debuted-up-30percent-ceo-sells-further-push-into-digital-market.html

LegalZoom shares jump 35% in market debut; CEO sees further opportunity in online legal services

… The online legal platform was valued at over $7.5 billion as shares soared as much as 38%.

Perspective. Is Jonathon overreacting? Is the loss of information on the Internet disproportionately greater than other systems?

https://www.bespacific.com/the-internet-is-rotting/

The Internet Is Rotting

The Atlantic – Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. By Jonathan Zittrain – “This absence of central control, or even easy central monitoring, has long been celebrated as an instrument of grassroots democracy and freedom. It’s not trivial to censor a network as organic and decentralized as the internet. But more recently, these features have been understood to facilitate vectors for individual harassment and societal destabilization, with no easy gating points through which to remove or label malicious work not under the umbrellas of the major social-media platforms, or to quickly identify their sources. While both assessments have power to them, they each gloss over a key feature of the distributed web and internet: Their designs naturally create gaps of responsibility for maintaining valuable content that others rely on. Links work seamlessly until they don’t. And as tangible counterparts to online work fade, these gaps represent actual holes in humanity’s knowledge…

It turns out that link rot and content drift are endemic to the web, which is both unsurprising and shockingly risky for a library that has “billions of books and no central filing system.” Imagine if libraries didn’t exist and there was only a “sharing economy” for physical books: People could register what books they happened to have at home, and then others who wanted them could visit and peruse them. It’s no surprise that such a system could fall out of date, with books no longer where they were advertised to be—especially if someone reported a book being in someone else’s home in 2015, and then an interested reader saw that 2015 report in 2021 and tried to visit the original home mentioned as holding it. That’s what we have right now on the web….”