I think we’ll hear more of this tool.

https://apnews.com/article/technology-police-california-arkansas-d395409ef5a8c6c3f6cdab5b1d0e27ef

Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’

… Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.

Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used.

The company was developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials under ex-President George W. Bush. It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails. That information is then sold to companies like Fog.

… What distinguishes Fog Reveal from other cellphone location technologies used by police is that it follows the devices through their advertising IDs, unique numbers assigned to each device. These numbers do not contain the name of the phone’s user, but can be traced to homes and workplaces to help police establish pattern-of-life analyses.

“The capability that it had for bringing up just anybody in an area whether they were in public or at home seemed to me to be a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said Davin Hall, a former crime data analysis supervisor for the Greensboro, North Carolina Police Department. “I just feel angry and betrayed and lied to.”

Not targeted to children… How would you define ‘likely?’ Are children likely to access Google?

https://fpf.org/blog/age-appropriate-design-code-passes-california-legislature/

AGE-APPROPRIATE DESIGN CODE PASSES CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE

This week, the California legislature passed AB 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (ADCA). The California ADCA is modeled after the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code, and would apply to businesses that provide “an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by a child.” If enacted by Governor Gavin Newsom, the child-centered design law would be the first of its kind in the United States.

The California ADCA would introduce significant new compliance obligations for US businesses that go beyond the requirements codified in COPPA – the longstanding federal children’s privacy law. Unlike COPPA, which defines “child” as an individual under 13 years old and applies to child-directed services, the California bill defines “child” as an individual under 18 and applies to any online service that is “likely to be accessed by a child.” For covered entities, the bill would require the implementation of new protective measures for young users, such as configuring default privacy settings to those with the highest level of privacy, and places new limits on profiling, processing geolocation data, and the use of “dark patterns” to influence behavior.

Something local to spice up the discussion…

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmvqm/an-ai-generated-artwork-won-first-place-at-a-state-fair-fine-arts-competition-and-artists-are-pissed

An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed

Jason Allen's AI-generated work "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" took first place in the digital category at the Colorado State Fair.

A man came in first at the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition using an AI generated artwork on Monday. “I won first place,” a user going by Sincarnate said in a Discord post above photos of the AI-generated canvases hanging at the fair.

Sincarnate’s name is Jason Allen, who is president of Colorado-based tabletop gaming company Incarnate Games. According to the state fair’s website, he won in the digital art category with a work called “Théâtre D'opéra Spatial.” The image, which Allen printed on canvas for submission, is gorgeous. It depicts a strange scene that looks like it could be from a space opera, and it looks like a masterfully done painting. Classical figures in a Baroque hall stare through a circular viewport into a sun-drenched and radiant landscape.

But Allen did not paint “Théâtre D'opéra Spatial,” AI software called Midjourney did. It used his prompts, but Allen did not wield a digital brush. This distinction has caused controversy on Twitter where working artists and enthusiasts accused Allen of hastening the death of creative jobs.