And it could help target smart bombs…

https://www.makeuseof.com/iphone-can-be-tracked-even-when-powered-off/

Your iPhone Can Be Tracked Even When It’s Powered Off

… These discoveries show that most wireless chips continue to run even when your device is off. This is because your device, when turned off, still runs some components in low power mode. For up to 24 hours after you turn off your iPhone, these components have power and tracking is still active.

This is by design, so you can find your iPhone if it’s lost or stolen and gets powered off. However, some hackers with system-level access can use this to gain control of your iPhone even when it’s powered off.

Someday this will happen. What would you tell a caller who claimed to be an AI? Would you ask a judge to stop a company from turning your client off?

https://www.techspot.com/news/95063-google-ai-engineer-who-believes-chatbot-has-become.html

Google AI engineer who believes chatbot has become sentient says it's hired a lawyer

A weird situation gets weirder

… Lemoine's conversations with LaMDA included the AI telling him it was afraid of death (being turned off), that it was a person aware of its existence, and that it didn't believe it was a slave as it didn't need money, leading the engineer to think it was sentient.

Google, and several AI experts, disagreed with Lemoine's beliefs. His employer was especially upset that he published conversations with LaMDA—violating company confidentiality policies—but Lemoine claims he was just sharing a discussion with one of his co-workers.

Lemoine was also accused of several "aggressive" moves, including hiring an attorney to represent LaMDA. But he told Wired this is factually incorrect and that "LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it."

(Related) Sometimes it is easy to tell an article was NOT written by an AI.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/five-reasons-ai-programs-are-not-persons/

Five Reasons AI Programs Are Not ‘Persons’

(Related)

https://thenextweb.com/news/stop-debating-whether-ai-is-sentient-trust

Stop debating whether AI is ‘sentient’ — the question is if we can trust it

AI, for those times you know you represent crooks? Think about how crime is detected with AI and then find a way to obfuscate?

https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2022/06/24/trends-in-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-white-collar-matters/

Trends in the Use of Artificial Intelligence in White-Collar Matters

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key emerging technology that is poised to see vastly expanded use in many areas in which white-collar criminal practitioners work. AI currently is playing a growing role in helping white-collar lawyers and their clients analyze vast amounts of data to uncover insights, connections, and patterns that would be impossible to detect through manual reviews. As AI begins playing a more important role in compliance, fraud detection, and governmental investigations, regulators in the United States and around the world are adopting rules for how AI is implemented. Courts also are weighing in on the use of AI in litigation where it is used to analyze large amounts of electronically stored information (ESI). This article provides an introduction to AI technology and discusses the key regulatory developments practitioners should be aware of as they advise their clients on AI.

Another election, another warning.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/increased-threat-foreign-terrorists-election-influence-operations-2022/story?id=85598905

'Increased threat' of foreign terrorists, election influence operations in 2022: DHS

The Department of Homeland Security recently warned that the threat from foreign terrorist organizations and cyberthreat from adversaries like Russia, including election interference, will likely increase in 2022 according to an intelligence analysis obtained by ABC News.

The document, titled "Key Threats to the Homeland in 2022" and dated June 8, asserts that the greatest threat to the United States this year comes from lone wolf actors and small groups of individuals motived by a cadre of extremist beliefs like the alleged shooter in Buffalo, New York who is currently facing hate crimes charges for killing 10 African-American shoppers at a grocery store. Federal law enforcement agencies including the DHS and Justice Department have previously prioritized combatting domestic violent extremism since the start of the Biden administration.

Harder to say, “Digitals, Citizen” but easier to access.

https://www.pogowasright.org/paving-a-digital-road-to-hell-a-primer-on-the-role-of-the-world-bank-and-global-networks-in-promoting-digital-id/

Paving a Digital Road to Hell? A Primer on the Role of the World Bank and Global Networks in Promoting Digital ID

Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project
Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
NYU School of Law June 2022

The beginning of the Executive Summary:

Governments around the world are designing or implementing digital identification systems, often with biometric components (digital ID). The spread of these systems is driven by a new development consensus which holds that digital ID can contribute to inclusive and sustainable development and is a prerequisite for the realization of human rights. But a specific model of digital ID is being promoted, which draws heavily on the Aadhaar system in India as a source of inspiration. Such digital ID systems aim to provide individuals with a ‘transactional’ or ‘economic’ identity, by establishing their uniqueness. The promise is that with such an economic identity, an individual can transact with both government and private sector actors. This will then improve access to public and private services, fuel economic growth, and contribute to the emergence of truly digital economies. Unlike traditional systems of civil registration, such as birth registration, this new model of economic identity commonly sidesteps difficult questions about the legal status of those it registers.

Many consider rapid and widescale deployment of such digital ID systems to be dangerous. Evidence is emerging from many countries around the world about actual and potential, often severe and large-scale, human rights violations linked to this model of digital ID. Such systems may exacerbate pre-existing forms of exclusion and discrimination in public and private services. The use of new technologies may lead to new forms of harm, including biometric exclusion, discrimination, and the many harms associated with surveillance capitalism.13 Meanwhile, the promised benefits of such systems have not been convincingly proven. These dangerous digital ID systems may lead to “pain without gain.”14

Read the primer (103 pp, pdf)

Indirect, not misdirected.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-future-of-corporate-criminal-liability-watching-the-esg-space/

The Future of Corporate Criminal Liability: Watching the ESG Space

Nelson, J.S. (Josephine Sandler), The Future of Corporate Criminal Liability: Watching the ESG Space (January 15, 2022). J.S. Nelson, The Future of Corporate Criminal Liability: Watching the ESG Space, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4057736 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4057736

“The future of corporate criminal liability in the U.S. and around the world may be for failure to adequately act on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. In Europe and elsewhere, courts have found a fundamental right or the equivalent to protection from climate change. That right has been exercised in court cases against governments first, and it is moving into cases against private corporations. This manuscript focuses within ESG issues on potential U.S. corporate criminal liability for inaction to prevent climate change. There has not been discussion of this topic elsewhere in the literature, and businesses need to look for these developments in the law. U.S. courts are not likely to follow the international pattern of finding a fundamental right to protection against climate change, but they are more likely to find potential corporate criminal liability for misrepresentations that corporations make to investors in the gap between what corporations say and what they do on climate change issues. The first movements in this evolution are already happening.”

Perspective.

https://www.insideprivacy.com/childrens-privacy/eu-consumer-protection-and-data-privacy-authorities-adopt-5-key-principles-for-fair-advertising-to-children/

EU Consumer Protection and Data Privacy Authorities Adopt 5 Key Principles for Fair Advertising to Children

On June 14, 2022, representatives of the EU’s Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network, together with several national data protection authorities in the EU and the secretariat of the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”), endorsed five key principles for fair advertising to children (see press release here ). These recommendations are based on relevant requirements in EU data and consumer protection laws.

Before you take the plunge… Worth your time to read.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/06/on-the-dangers-of-cryptocurrencies-and-the-uselessness-of-blockchain.html

On the Dangers of Cryptocurrencies and the Uselessness of Blockchain

Earlier this month, I and others wrote a letter to Congress, basically saying that cryptocurrencies are a complete and total disaster, and urging them to regulate the space. Nothing in that letter is out of the ordinary, and is in line with what I wrote about blockchain in 2019. n response, Matthew Green has written not really a rebuttal—but “a general response to some of the more common spurious objections…people make to public blockchain systems.”

If you’re doing security right, you probably already take many of these recommended actions.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3664415/what-every-enterprise-can-learn-from-russia-s-cyber-assault-on-ukraine.html#tk.rss_all

What Every Enterprise Can Learn from Russia’s Cyber Assault on Ukraine

Based on its observations of Russia’s cyber assault on Ukraine, Microsoft has developed these strategic steps for global organizations to take to safeguard their operations.

… From February 23 to April 8, 2022, Microsoft saw evidence of nearly 40 discrete destructive attacks that permanently destroyed files in hundreds of systems across dozens of organizations in Ukraine.

… Based on our observations in Ukraine so far, we recommend taking the following steps to safeguard your organization:

(Related)

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/3532928-russia-launched-cyber-espionage-campaigns-against-ukraine-allies-microsoft/

Russia launched cyber espionage campaigns against Ukraine allies: Microsoft

Russia has levied dozens of cyber espionage campaigns in 42 countries since it invaded Ukraine in February, according to a new Microsoft report.

Strategy or a short attention span?

https://newslogic.in/technology/mark-zuckerberg-meta-midterm-elections-html/

As Midterms Loom, Meta C.E.O. Shifts Focus Away From Elections

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, made securing the 2020 U.S. election a top priority. He met regularly with an election team, which included more than 300 people from across his company, to prevent misinformation from spreading on the social network. He asked civil rights leaders for advice on upholding voter rights.

The core election team at Facebook, which was renamed Meta last year, has since been dispersed. Roughly 60 people are now focused primarily on elections, while others split their time on other projects. They meet with another executive, not Mr. Zuckerberg. And the chief executive has not talked recently with civil rights groups, even as some have asked him to pay more attention to the midterm elections in November.

Safeguarding elections is no longer Mr. Zuckerberg’s top concern, said four Meta employees with knowledge of the situation. Instead, he is focused on transforming his company into a provider of the immersive world of the metaverse, which he sees as the next frontier of growth, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Just as we will sell the rope used to hang us, we will buy the cameras used to surveil us.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/22/1054586/hikvision-worlds-biggest-surveillance-company/

The world’s biggest surveillance company you’ve never heard of

You may never have heard of Hikvision, but chances are you’ve already been captured by one of its millions of cameras. The Chinese company’s products can be found anywhere from police surveillance systems to baby monitors in more than 190 countries. Its ability to make decent-quality products at cheap prices (as well as its ties with the Chinese state) has helped make Hikvision the largest manufacturer of video surveillance equipment in the world.

But while Hikvision’s close links with the Chinese government have helped it grow, it is these links that may now be its undoing. The firm has helped build China’s massive police surveillance system and tailored it to oppress the Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. As a result, the US government has imposed several sanctions on it in the last three years. This year, the US Treasury is reportedly considering adding Hikvision to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, usually reserved for countries like North Korea or Iran.

… With over 600,000 Hikvision networks, the United States has the second-highest number of the company’s cameras, just after Vietnam (The research couldn’t identify most camera networks in China.) Each of these detected IP networks can support up to 24 Hikvision cameras, meaning the total numbers of cameras will be even higher. And that is only a conservative estimate, because not all the cameras appear in Shodan scans.

A minor hack and I can be 39 again…

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23179752/instagram-age-verification-ai-social-vouching-methods

Instagram is testing an AI tool that verifies your age by scanning your face

You can try it out yourself — how old does the computer think you are?

Instagram is testing new methods for users to verify their age, including an AI tool built by a third-party company, Yoti, that estimates how old you are just by scanning your face.

… Currently, Instagram asks users to verify their age only when teenagers try to edit their birth date to show them as 18 or older. To verify their age, users can send in pictures of various ID cards, and, from today, users in the US will have two additional options: social vouching and AI estimation.

For the first method, social vouching, Instagram will ask three mutual followers of the user to confirm how old they are. The mutual followers will have to be over the age of 18 themselves, and will have three days to respond to Instagram’s request. The second method, AI estimation, involves sending a video selfie to a third-party company, Yoti, which uses machine learning to estimate a person’s age.

… You can actually try Yoti’s system on the web right here (the company says it doesn’t retain any data you share with it) and see its accuracy rates below. The numbers show, in years, the error rate of Yoti’s age estimations for different age ranges, skin tones, and genders.

This seems strange to my “I-am-not-an-economist” brain. Aside from countries buying Russia’s gas, who is buying and holding Rubles? Does a large rebound equal strength?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-ruble-currency-russian-economy-2022/

Russia's ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year

The Russian ruble continues to rise against the dollar, making it the best-performing currency in the world this year.

Three months after the ruble's value fell to less than a U.S. penny amid the toughest economic sanctions imposed on a country in modern history, Russia's currency has mounted a stunning turnaround. The ruble has jumped 40% against the dollar since January.

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/international-attitudes-toward-the-u-s-nato-and-russia-in-a-time-of-crisis/

International Attitudes Toward the U.S., NATO and Russia in a Time of Crisis

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought war to Europe at a scale unseen since the 1940s. In response, the United States and its NATO allies have supplied Ukrainian defense forces with weapons and training, while millions of refugees have fled into neighboring countries. The war has been the center of international attention for months, and as a new 18-nation Pew Research Center survey shows, it has had an impact on public opinion. Ratings for Russia, which were already negative in most of the nations surveyed, have plummeted further following the invasion. In 10 countries, 10% or less of those polled express a favorable opinion of Russia. Positive views of Russian President Vladimir Putin are in single digits in more than half of the nations polled. Attitudes toward NATO, in contrast, are largely positive, and ratings for the alliance have improved in several nations since last year, including Germany and the U.S., as well as nonmember Sweden. Swedish attitudes toward NATO grew increasingly positive over the course of the survey’s field dates. Meanwhile, overall ratings for the U.S. are largely positive and stable. A median of 61% across 17 nations (not including the U.S.) express a favorable view of the U.S. Still, there have been some changes since last year, with favorable opinions increasing significantly in South Korea, Sweden and Australia, while declining significantly in Greece, Italy and France. Over the past couple of years, our surveys have found strong concerns in advanced economies about the health of American democracy. In 2021, more than half in most nations surveyed said democracy in the U.S. used to be a good example for other nations to follow, but that it no longer is. This year’s survey reveals a consensus about America’s divisive politics: Large majorities in nearly all the nations polled say there are strong conflicts between people who support different political parties in the U.S…”

 

About time?

https://www.brookings.edu/research/geopolitical-implications-of-ai-and-digital-surveillance-adoption/

Geopolitical implications of AI and digital surveillance adoption

… The United States and partner democracies have implemented sanctions, export controls, and investment bans to rein in the unchecked spread of surveillance technology, but the opaque nature of supply chains leaves it unclear how well these efforts are working. A major remaining vacuum is at the international standards level at institutions such as the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where Chinese companies have been the lone proposers of facial recognition standards that are fast-tracked for adoption in broad parts of the world.

To continue addressing these policy challenges, this brief provides five recommendations for democratic governments and three for civil society.

Does better/newer/other technology make this more concerning? I think not.

https://www.pogowasright.org/cops-will-be-able-to-scan-your-fingerprints-with-a-phone/

Cops Will Be Able to Scan Your Fingerprints With a Phone

Matt Burgess reports:

For more than 100 years, recording people’s fingerprints has involved them pressing their fingertips against a surface. Originally this involved ink but has since moved to sensors embedded in scanners at airports and phone screens. The next stage of fingerprinting doesn’t involve touching anything at all.

So-called contactless fingerprinting technology uses your phone’s camera and image processing algorithms to capture people’s fingerprints. Hold your hand in front of the camera lens and the software can identify and record all the lines and swirls on your fingertips. The technology, which has been in development for years, is ready to be more widely used in the real world. This includes use by police—a move that worries civil liberty and privacy groups.

Read more at WIRED.

This technique has been used before…

https://www.pogowasright.org/the-stolen-sip/

The Stolen Sip

A New York appellate court expunges a teen’s DNA sample, which was obtained by police who gave him a cup of water before taking it for DNA testing without his knowledge or consent.

Read the ruling In the Matter of Francis O.

Source: Courthouse News, via Joe Cadillic

Intelligence gathering tools are whatever works for you…

https://www.protectprivacynow.org/news/eye-opening-report-on-how-coffee-makers-could-spy-on-you

Eye-Opening Report on How Coffee Makers Could Spy on You

In the early post-Cold War era, anti-Communist crusaders were often accused of being hysterical, seeing Communists under their beds. Now a report from Christopher Balding and Joe Wu, researchers at New Kite Data Labs. sees the Chinese Communist Party inside coffee makers in American homes. And they are not crazy.

This alarming report is a consequence of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which ordinary appliances are given smart applications to interact with each other, as well as to report on performance and consumer behavior. According to Balding, interviewed by The Washington Times, Chinese-made coffee makers gather and report information about customers’ names, their locations, usage patterns and other information. In hotels, a coffee maker could report to China types of payments and routing information.

Similar issues have been found with vacuum cleaners that respond to voice commands, baby monitors and video doorbells.

The Chinese government has famously built a “panopticon,” a ubiquitous surveillance network that seamlessly integrates facial recognition, social media activities, payments, and other data to potentially track every citizen of that country. IoT, by design but mostly by technological evolution, is rapidly scaling the capacity to bring universal surveillance into the homes of the world.

Have we been thinking too small?

https://www.bespacific.com/what-makes-data-personal/

What Makes Data Personal?

Montagnani, Maria Lillà and Verstraete, Mark, What Makes Data Personal? (June 4, 2022). UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 3, Forthcoming 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4128080 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4128080

“Personal data is an essential concept for information privacy law. Privacy’s boundaries are set by personal data: for a privacy violation to occur, personal data must be involved. And an individual’s right to control information extends only to personal data. However, current theorizing about personal data is woefully incomplete. In light of this incompleteness, this Article offers a new conceptual approach to personal data. To start, this Article argues that personal data is simply a legal construct that describes the set of information or circumstances where an individual should be able to exercise control over a piece of information. After displacing the mythology about the naturalness of personal data, this Article fashions a new theory of personal data that more adequately tracks when a person should be able to control specific information. Current approaches to personal data rightly examine the relationship between a person and information; however, they misunderstand what relationship is necessary for legitimate control interests. Against the conventional view, this Article suggests that how the information is used is an indispensable part of the analysis of the relationship between a person and data that determines whether the data should be considered personal. In doing so, it employs the philosophical concept of separability as a method for making determinations about which uses of information are connected to a person and, therefore, should trigger individual privacy protections and which are not. This framework offers a superior foundation to extant theories for capturing the existence and scope of individual interests in data. By doing so, it provides an indispensable contribution for crafting an ideal regime of information governance. Separability enables privacy and data protection laws to better identify when a person’s interests are at stake. And further, separability offers a resilient normative foundation for personal data that grounds interests of control in a philosophical foundation of autonomy and dignity values—which are incorrectly calibrated in existing theories of personal data. Finally, this Article’s reimagination of personal data will allow privacy and data protection laws to more effectively combat modern privacy harms such as manipulation and inferences.”

How Microsoft has changed…

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/06/21/microsofts-framework-for-building-ai-systems-responsibly/

Microsoft’s framework for building AI systems responsibly

Today we are sharing publicly Microsoft’s Responsible AI Standard, a framework to guide how we build AI systems. It is an important step in our journey to develop better, more trustworthy AI. We are releasing our latest Responsible AI Standard to share what we have learned, invite feedback from others, and contribute to the discussion about building better norms and practices around AI.

(Related)

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/21/microsoft_api_ai_algorithms/

Microsoft promises to tighten access to AI it now deems too risky for some devs

Deep-fake voices, face recognition, emotion, age and gender prediction ... A toolbox of theoretical tech tyranny

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” Did Shakespeare have the right idea? (Perhaps he was an AI?)

https://theconversation.com/from-ais-to-an-unhappy-elephant-the-legal-question-of-who-is-a-person-is-approaching-a-reckoning-185268

From AIs to an unhappy elephant, the legal question of who is a person is approaching a reckoning

Happy the elephant’s story is a sad one. She is currently a resident of the Bronx Zoo in the US, where the Nonhuman Rights Project (a civil rights organisation) claims she is subject to unlawful detention. The campaigners sought a writ of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf to request that she be transferred to an elephant sanctuary.

Historically, this ancient right which offers recourse to someone being detained illegally had been limited to humans. A New York court previously decided that it excluded non-human animals. So if the courts wanted to find in Happy’s favour, they would first have to agree that she was legally a person.

It was this question that made its way to the New York Court of Appeal, which published its judgment on June 14. By a 5-2 majority, the judges sided with the Bronx Zoo. Chief Judge DiFiore held that Happy was not a person for the purposes of a writ of habeas corpus, and the claim was rejected. As a researcher who specialises in the notion of legal personhood, I’m not convinced by their reasoning.

DiFiore first discussed what it means to be a person. She did not dispute that Happy is intelligent, autonomous and displays emotional awareness. These are things that many academic lawyers consider sufficient for personhood, as they suggest Happy can benefit from the freedom protected by a writ of habeas corpus. But DiFiore rejected this conclusion, signalling that habeas corpus “protects the right to liberty of humans because they are humans with certain fundamental liberty rights recognised by law”. Put simply, whether Happy is a person is irrelevant, because even if she is, she’s not human.

(Related)

https://www.newsweek.com/soon-humanity-wont-alone-universe-opinion-1717446

Soon, Humanity Won't Be Alone in the Universe | Opinion

… Even if humanity has been alone in this galaxy, till now, we won't be for very much longer. For better or worse, we're about to meet artificial intelligence — or AI — in one form or another. Though, alas, the encounter will be murky, vague, and fraught with opportunities for error.

(Related)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/17/google-ai-ethics-sentient-lemoine-warning/

Opinion We warned Google that people might believe AI was sentient. Now it’s happening.

By Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell

A Post article by Nitasha Tiku revealed last week that Blake Lemoine, a software engineer working in Google’s Responsible AI organization, had made an astonishing claim: He believed that Google’s chatbot LaMDA was sentient. “I know a person when I talk to it,” Lemoine said. Google had dismissed his claims and, when Lemoine reached out to external experts, put him on paid administrative leave for violating the company’s confidentiality policy.

But if that claim seemed like a fantastic one, we were not surprised someone had made it. It was exactly what we had warned would happen back in 2020, shortly before we were fired by Google ourselves. Lemoine’s claim shows we were right to be concerned — both by the seductiveness of bots that simulate human consciousness, and by how the excitement around such a leap can distract from the real problems inherent in AI projects.

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-to-future/

How to Future

Via LLRX – How to Future – Kevin Kelly, is a Web Maverick and by his own definition, a futurist. This discipline is comprised of really keen historians who study the past to see the future. They look carefully at the past because most of what will happen tomorrow is already happening today. In addition, most of the things in the future will be things that don’t change, so they are already here. The past is the bulk of our lives, and it will be the bulk in the future. It is highly likely that in 100 years or even 500 years, the bulk of the stuff surrounding someone will be old stuff, stuff that is being invented today. All this stuff, plus our human behaviors, which are very old, will continue in the future.

Intelligence vs. the quick buck? Why else do nothing to risk disclosing your presence for so many years?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/previously-undiscovered-team-of-state-sponsored-chinese-hackers-has-been-quietly-committing-cyber-espionage-in-the-apac-region-for-a-decade/

Previously Undiscovered Team of State-Sponsored Chinese Hackers, Has Been Quietly Committing Cyber Espionage in the APAC Region for a Decade

A new advanced persistent threat (APT) group linked to China has been discovered by SentinelLabs, but only after conducting cyber espionage campaigns under the radar since 2013. The Chinese hackers have been given the name “Aoqin Dragon,” appear to specialize in targeting the Asia Pacific region and likes to lure victims with malicious documents that appear to be salacious ads for pornography sites.

The cyber espionage group is thought to have been in action since at least 2013, with a heavy focus on certain APAC countries and regions: Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam. The group also focuses in on government agencies, educational institutions and telecommunications firms, and appears to target individuals involved in political affairs.

A 15 minute video...

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000008314175/china-government-surveillance-data.html

China’s Surveillance State Is Growing Bigger and More Invasive. These Documents Reveal How.

A Times investigation analyzing over 100,000 government bidding documents found that China’s ambition to collect digital and biological data from its citizens is more expansive and invasive than previously known.

(Related) Every government sees value in surveillance.

https://threatpost.com/kazakh-govt-used-spyware-against-protesters/180016/

Kazakh Govt. Used Spyware Against Protesters

An agent of the Kazakhstan government has been using enterprise-grade spyware against domestic targets, according to Lookout research published last week.

The government entity used brand impersonation to trick victims into downloading the malware, dubbed “Hermit.” Hermit is an advanced, modular program developed by RCS Lab, a notorious Italian company that specializes in digital surveillance. It has the power to do all kinds of spying on a target’s phone – not just collect data, but also record and make calls.

Answering the obvious questions.

https://hbr.org/2022/06/building-transparency-into-ai-projects

Building Transparency into AI Projects

As algorithms and AIs become ever more embedded in people’s lives, there’s also a growing demand for transparency around when an AI is used and what it’s being used for. That means communicating why an AI solution was chosen, how it was designed and developed, on what grounds it was deployed, how it’s monitored and updated, and the conditions under which it may be retired. There are four specific effects of building in transparency: 1) it decreases the risk of error and misuse, 2) it distributes responsibility, 3) it enables internal and external oversight, and 4) it expresses respect for people. Transparency is not an all-or-nothing proposition, however. Companies need to find the right balance with regards to how transparent to be with which stakeholders.

Applications for surveillance? Your iPhone as an AI-phone.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/21/23176561/iphone-identify-flowers-plants-art-landmarks-more-how-to-ios-15-camera-app-visual-look-up

Today I learned you can identify plants and flowers using just your iPhone camera

No app required — just take a picture

… It works very simply. Just open up a photo or screenshot in the Photos app and look for the blue “i” icon underneath. If it has a little sparkly ring around it, then iOS has found something in the photo it can identify using machine learning. Tap the icon, then click “Look Up” and it’ll try and dredge up some useful information.

It doesn’t just work for plants and flowers, either, but for landmarks, art, pets, and “other objects.” It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s surprised me more times than it’s let me down.

(Related)

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/06/beyond-images-air-force-official-on-ai-quest-for-integrated-intel-picture/

Beyond images: Air Force official on AI quest for ‘integrated’ intel picture

… The service has been working on automated target recognition (ATR) for a while, but “only as of late has the processing power of the systems that we were using really caught up to the aspirations of what we wanted to do with it,” Winston Beauchamp, Air Force deputy chief information officer, said in a June 15 interview.

“So back when we started the ATR journey, we were talking about hundreds of largely still images, largely black and white, coming in from overhead systems or airborne systems,” he said. “Now, we’re talking about thousands and we’re talking about full motion video and multispectral, in some cases hyperspectral [images], coming from a variety of platforms that are government and commercial. All of these have to be somehow processed and, ideally, find some way to stitch them together into an integrated picture.”

Intelligence is now gathered by “hobbyists” over the Internet.

https://spacenews.com/explosion-at-chinese-space-launch-center-revealed-by-satellite-imagery/

Explosion at Chinese space launch center revealed by satellite imagery

An explosion severely damaged rocket facilities at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in October 2021, commercial satellite imagery shows.

Jiuquan spaceport is situated in the Gobi Desert and hosts major orbital launches including all of the country’s Shenzhou human spaceflight missions. Established in 1958 it is the first of China’s four national spaceports to be constructed.

Evidence of the explosion was discovered by space enthusiast Harry Stranger using imagery from Airbus and CNES and posted on Twitter June 10.

Perspective.

https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2022/06/20/the-future-of-education

The future of education

WILL PERSONALISED learning replace teachers? Host Tom Standage travels to the year 2042 to find children being taught by personalised learning assistants powered by artificial intelligence, and funded by corporate advertising. What does this mean for schools? Back in the present, Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, and Mark Johnson, The Economist’s education correspondent, debate how technology will change education, and the merits of the “flipped classroom”. Runtime: 23 min

I’d like to know what the cops were thinking. (Did his son call 911?) Did they see a crime or a dad radiating ‘you can't do that to me?’

https://www.pogowasright.org/tor-ekeland-sues-nyc-cops-after-arrest-for-destroying-sons-laptop/

Tor Ekeland sues NYC cops after arrest for destroying son’s laptop

Kathianne Boniello reports:

A prominent Brooklyn criminal-defense attorney was busted for breaking his son’s gaming laptop, but claimed it was cops who were wrong for “assaulting” his parental rights.

Tor Ekeland, 52, says his constitutional and civil rights were violated when two detectives charged him with criminal mischief for the January 2021 incident, in which his 13-year-old son allegedly lied about doing homework on the device — prompting the angry dad to throw it on the ground and stomp on it, according to a lawsuit.

Read more at New York Post.

So in New York, a parent who tries to teach his kid a lesson for lying to him and not meeting his responsibilities gets charged criminally if he destroys his child’s device that he had paid for?

The charges against Ekeland have already been dropped, but this arrest and charges never should have happened. You may disagree with Ekeland’s parenting decision or commiserate with him if you’ve ever lost your patience with your own child, but this never should have been a criminal matter.

Location: hits or near misses? Can you assume that people without phones eat fast food in the same ratios?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/customers-visits-remain-relatively-steady-at-mc-donalds-wendys-report-finds-202624514.html

Navigating inflation impact on fast food: McDonald's, Wendy’s, Burger King

Consumers are still heading to fast food chains — despite inflation taking a toll on their wallets.

In the month of May, the cost of food away from home jumped 7.4% compared to a year ago, but according to a new report from Placer.ai, Americans are eating out at fast food restaurants the same amount as 2021 and at some fast food giants, Americans are dining out even more.

In the report, which was generated by anonymous location data from a panel of 30 million mobile devices, which Placer.ai then leverages with AI and machine learning to make estimates about overall visit locations, Shira Petrack, Placer.ai marketing content manager, found that the quick-service restaurant sector seems to be "maintaining relatively steady visitation patterns."

On the other hand, they might just want to be prepared to destroy the Internet if they go to war.

https://www.makeuseof.com/why-chinese-researchers-want-to-destroy-starlink/

Why Chinese Researchers Want to Destroy Starlink Satellites

In April 2022, a Chinese researcher published a paper declaring that the Starlink Satellite constellation threatens Chinese national security.

The report encourages the Chinese PLA to develop strategies to observe, disable, and destroy not just individual Starlink satellites but the entire system.

But why is Starlink a threat to China, and would the Chinese government actually attack Starlink?

… Although the researchers recognize Starlink's contribution to developing internet and communication technologies, they also shared how it can be used for other purposes. According to the report, when SpaceX filed for a patent in August 2017, its included satellite communication and transmission, satellite imaging, remote sensing, and other services.

This broad application means that, alongside civilian applications, Starlink also has massive military potential. This allegation is further supported by the US Military's cooperation with SpaceX in developing and launching its satellites.

Perspective?

https://www.pcgamer.com/of-course-ai-npcs-can-be-conscious-and-can-have-feelings-says-technophilosopher/

Of course AI NPCs 'can be conscious and can have feelings' says technophilosopher

Meta's just released another concept video showing off the metaverse's

(opens in new tab)

potential capabilities and, while your mind might immediately go to a place of "what a load of corpo bull," there's something to be said for Meta's proposition: "the metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real."

To try and get a handle on it, I've been speaking to David Chalmers, Australian-born technophilosopher professor at New York University, and author of countless books and papers on tech, AI, and consciousness