Including Colorado.
State attorneys general ask FTC to regulate online data collection practices
Over on his excellent newsletter, Risky Biz News, Catalin Cimpanu reports:
A coalition of 33 state attorneys general have urged the US Federal Trade Commission to pass regulation around online data collection practices. AGs said they are “concerned about the alarming amount of sensitive consumer data that is amassed, manipulated, and monetized,” and that they regularly receive inquiries from consumers about how their data is being hoarded and abused. [Read the full letter here/PDF ]
(Related)
Unfair & deceitful commercial surveillance: Submission to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission
We can, therefore we must?
NCLA Files Class-Action Against Massachusetts for Auto-Installing Covid Spyware on 1 Million Phones
From the New Civil Liberties Alliance, information on a case that was filed on November 14:
Case Summary:
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) worked with Google to auto-install spyware on the smartphones of more than one million Commonwealth residents, without their knowledge or consent, in a misguided effort to combat Covid-19. Such brazen disregard for civil liberties violates the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions and cannot stand. NCLA filed a class-action lawsuit, Wright v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health, et al., challenging DPH’s covert installation of a Covid tracing app that tracks and records the movement and personal contacts of Android mobile device users without owners’ permission or awareness.
Plaintiffs Robert Wright and Johnny Kula own and use Android mobile devices and live or work in Massachusetts. Since June 15, 2021, DPH has worked with Google to secretly install the app onto over one million Android mobile devices located in Massachusetts without obtaining any search warrants, in violation of the device owners’ constitutional and common-law rights to privacy and property. Plaintiffs have constitutionally protected liberty interests in not having their whereabouts and contacts surveilled, recorded, and broadcasted, and in preventing unauthorized and unconsented access to their personal smartphones by government agencies.
Case information:
Robert Wright and Johnny Kula v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health, a Massachusetts agency, and Margaret R. Cooke, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in her official capacity.
Complaint (pdf)
Don’t mess with a Privacy lawyer?
https://www.pogowasright.org/viewing-public-documents-is-not-a-crime-canadian-edition/
Viewing public documents is not a crime, Canadian edition
In today’s episode of “Let’s mitigate this data leak by violating the privacy of people who happened to view it,” we bring you the government of Nova Scotia and a privacy lawyer who didn’t appreciate them violating his privacy.
Canadian privacy lawyer David Fraser has a story to share with you. It’s a story about how the Nova Scotia government had an “oops” incident and then, in trying to address it, obtained his IP address from CanLII, where he had viewed the exposed files. CanLII did not request any warrant and just turned over their logs. Because Fraser and others had read some case decisions that had been accidentally uploaded in unredacted form, the government wanted assurances that they had not downloaded or saved any copies and would delete any copies they had saved. That concern was understandable, and when a WCAT employee called him after seeing Fraser’s name in a news story about the leak, Fraser immediately informed WCAT that they had not downloaded or retained any copies. And all was well. But it didn’t stay well.
At a later date, Fraser got a phone call from the government. They had managed to get his personal information, including his home phone number. How did they get it?
It turns out that after the government contacted CanLII and obtained the detailed logs for the exposed files, the government went to court to get orders to compel ISPs to produce information on the owners of those IP addresses. CanLII would later claim that they had no idea that the government intended to do that.
To make things worse, the court just granted the government the orders to the ISPs it requested. The court did not appoint any amicus to represent the privacy interests of those whose information was being sought. These were citizens who had not violated any laws by viewing publicly available files and yet their privacy rights were ignored by the court who cooperated with the government.
As a privacy lawyer and blogger, Davis has laid this all out for us on YouTube and provided relevant filings.
Watch David explain the incident and violation of his privacy on YouTube.
Eventually, it will get ‘smarter”
https://newatlas.com/military/lanius-ai-suicide-drone-bomb/
AI-driven combat drone can search buildings and execute suicide attacks
… The Lanius is designed to travel in groups of three, sitting on top of a larger, mothership-style drone until they're deployed. Its maximum takeoff weight is 1.25 kg (2.76 lb), including a lethal or non-lethal payload up to 150 g (5.3 oz). A small hobby-style lithium battery gives it a maximum flight time around seven minutes.
… Alone or in a swarm, the Lanius is designed to enter an area and begin autonomously mapping it out using its AI capabilities and collision avoidance systems. It'll detect and label points of interest, as well as things like doors and windows, whether closed or open, and it'll enter buildings and search them with or without direction or direct control from a human pilot.
It's designed to detect humans, and attempt to classify them as friendly or hostile, combatant or non-combatant, armed or unarmed. When an armed threat is detected, it offers its human operator the ability to "engage" the target using whatever weaponry is on board. There's always a human in the loop; this thing will not attempt to kill anyone of it own accord.
Faulty logic?
Legal Personhood For AI Is Taking A Sneaky Path That Makes AI Law And AI Ethics Very Nervous Indeed
… I’ve already covered many cornerstone elements of the AI and legal personhood conundrum, such as the detailed discussion at the link here. Please take a look at that coverage if you want further insider background on the weighty topic. Also, the legal personhood considerations about AI raise a slew of AI Ethics and AI Law questions, few of which are yet resolved, and you might find of interest my ongoing and extensive coverage of Ethical AI and AI Law at the link here and the link here, just to name a few.
… AI is increasingly nearing the capacities of humans. If we deny legal personhood to AI, we are going to find ourselves embroiled in a heaping full of troubles. AI will want to have legal personhood. By having denied this or dragged our feet, the AI will be angry and upset at us. We are fostering an enemy that instead ought to be a friend.
Another perspective is that by ensuring that AI does have a semblance of legal personhood, we can hold AI accountable. You’ve probably been hearing or reading about AI that has gone astray. There is a lot of AI For Bad, perhaps growing as fast or faster than AI For Good. We want to ensure that there is Responsible AI, see my coverage at the link here. Some also refer to this as Accountable AI or Trustworthy AI, which I’ve examined at the link here. If you assign legal personhood to AI, it will apparently force AI into becoming liable for any dastardly actions that the AI emits. Thank goodness and we desperately need such relief and legal protection.
A big step, but not much of a business model.
https://www.therobotreport.com/waymo-to-begin-rider-only-robotaxi-rides-in-san-francisco/
Waymo to begin public robotaxi rides in San Francisco
… The permit allows Waymo to give rides in its autonomous vehicles (AVs) without any driver in the vehicle, but it does not allow Waymo to charge for these rides. Waymo can give autonomous rides throughout San Francisco, as walls as in portions of Daly City, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. The company’s AVs can operate on roads with posted speed limits of up to 65 miles an hour, at any time of day or night.
Perspective.
EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance Database Now Documents 10,000+ Police Tech Programs
EFF: “This week, EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance project hit a bittersweet milestone. With this project, we are creating a searchable and mappable repository of which law enforcement agencies in the U.S. use surveillance technologies such as body-worn cameras, drones, automated license plate readers, and face recognition. It’s one of the most ambitious projects we’ve ever attempted. Working with journalism students at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), our initial semester-long pilot in 2019 resulted in 250 data points, just from the counties along the U.S. border with Mexico. When we launched the first nationwide site in late summer 2020, we had reached just more than 5,000 data points. The Atlas of Surveillance has now hit 10,000 data points. It contains at least partial data on approximately 5,500 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, as well as most territories and districts… However, this milestone sadly also reflects the massive growth of surveillance adoption by police agencies. High-tech spying is no longer limited to well-resourced urban areas; even the smallest hamlet’s police department might be deploying powerful technology that gathers data on its residents, regardless of whether those residents are connected to a criminal case. We’ve seen the number of partnerships between police and the home surveillance company Ring grow from 1,300 to more than 2,000. In the two years since we first published a complementary report on real-time crime centers — essentially police tech hubs, filled with wall-to-wall camera monitors and computers jacked into surveillance datasets — the number of such centers in the U.S. has grown from 80 to 100.”
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