Sunday, March 19, 2023

Another security tool outflanked by the advance of technology.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/16/voice-system-used-to-verify-identity-by-centrelink-can-be-fooled-by-ai

AI can fool voice recognition used to verify identity by Centrelink and Australian tax office

A voice identification system used by the Australian government for millions of people has a serious security flaw, a Guardian Australia investigation has found.

Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) both give people the option of using a “voiceprint”, along with other information, to verify their identity over the phone, allowing them to then access sensitive information from their accounts.

But following reports that an AI-generated voice trained to sound like a specific person could be used to access phone-banking services overseas, Guardian Australia has confirmed that the voiceprint system can also be fooled by an AI-generated voice.



(Related) Technology fights back.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4384122

Detecting Deep Fake Evidence with Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Look from a Criminal Law Perspective

The widespread use of deep fakes is particularly worrisome for criminal justice, as it risks eroding trust in video, image or audio evidence. Since detecting deep fakes is a challenging task for humans, several projects are currently investigating the use of AI-based methods to identify manipulated content. This paper critically assesses the use of “deep fake detectors” from the perspective of criminal evidence and procedural law. It contends that whilst the use of AI detectors is beneficial (if not inevitable), risks arising from their use in criminal proceedings must not be underestimated. After a brief introduction to deep fake technology and detection methods, the paper analyses three key issues, namely accuracy, scientific validity and fair access to detection tools between parties. In light of these challenges, the paper argues that the introduction of deep fake detectors in criminal trials must comply with the same standards required for expert evidence. To do so, higher transparency and increased collaboration with software providers are needed.





A new term to further define the problem…

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4384541

Privacy Nicks: How the Law Normalizes Surveillance

Privacy law is failing to protect individuals from being watched and exposed, despite stronger surveillance and data protection rules. The problem is that our rules look to social norms to set thresholds for privacy violations, but people can get used to being observed. In this article, we argue that by ignoring de minimis privacy encroachments, the law is complicit in normalizing surveillance. Privacy law helps acclimate people to being watched by ignoring smaller, more frequent, and more mundane privacy diminutions. We call these reductions “privacy nicks,” like the proverbial “thousand cuts” that lead to death.

Privacy nicks come from the proliferation of cameras and biometric sensors on doorbells, glasses, and watches, and the drift of surveillance and data analytics into new areas of our lives like travel, exercise, and social gatherings. Under our theory of privacy nicks as the Achilles heel of surveillance law, invasive practices become routine through repeated exposures that acclimate us to being vulnerable and watched in increasingly intimate ways. With acclimation comes resignation, and this shift in attitude biases how citizens and lawmakers view reasonable measures and fair tradeoffs.

Because the law looks to norms and people’s expectations to set thresholds for what counts as a privacy violation, the normalization of these nicks results in a constant re-negotiation of privacy standards to society’s disadvantage. When this happens, the legal and social threshold for rejecting invasive new practices keeps getting redrawn, excusing ever more aggressive intrusions. In effect, the test of what privacy law allows is whatever people will tolerate. There is no rule to stop us from tolerating everything. This article provides a new theory and terminology to understand where privacy law falls short and suggests a way to escape the current surveillance spiral.





Do we need a ‘Top Gun’ for robots?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4388065

Autonomous Weapons

This chapter examines autonomous weapon systems (AWS) from an international law perspective. It demystifies AWS, presents the landscape around them by identifying the main legal issues AWS might pose, and suggest solutions whenever possible. To be of use for both the layperson and expert looking for an overview of the increasingly convoluted debate about AWS, it begins with a lexicon of terms and concepts key to understanding the field, and provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of autonomy in military equipment. Having set the scene, the chapter continues with a critical examination of the ongoing international regulatory debate about AWS, and its reception in scholarship. The analysis closes with a reflection on attribution of responsibility for internationally wrongful conduct resulting from the combat employment of AWS, considered by some as the pivotal legal peril ostensibly resulting from weapon autonomy.





My AI questions why this is limited to robots (AIs) with bodies? Would HAL be covered?

https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/robotics-ai-and-criminal-law-crimes-against-robots

Robotics, AI and Criminal Law. Crimes Against Robot

This book offers a phenomenological perspective on the criminal law debate on robots. Today, robots are protected in some form by criminal law. A robot is a person’s property and is protected as property. This book presents the different rationale for protecting robots beyond the property justification based on the phenomenology of human-robot interactions. By focusing on robots that have bodies and act in the physical world in social contexts, the work provides an assessment of the issues that emerge from human interaction with robots, going beyond perspectives focused solely on artificial intelligence (AI). Here, a phenomenological approach does not replace ontological concerns, but complements them. The book addresses the following key areas: Regulation of robots and AI; Ethics of AI and robotics; and philosophy of criminal law.

It will be of interest to researchers and academics working in the areas of Criminal Law, Technology and Law and Legal Philosophy.





Conclusions seem hard to come by…

https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.24750

ChatGPT and a new academic reality: Artificial Intelligence-written research papers and the ethics of the large language models in scholarly publishing

This article discusses OpenAI's ChatGPT, a generative pre-trained transformer, which uses natural language processing to fulfill text-based user requests (i.e., a “chatbot”). The history and principles behind ChatGPT and similar models are discussed. This technology is then discussed in relation to its potential impact on academia and scholarly research and publishing. ChatGPT is seen as a potential model for the automated preparation of essays and other types of scholarly manuscripts. Potential ethical issues that could arise with the emergence of large language models like GPT-3, the underlying technology behind ChatGPT, and its usage by academics and researchers, are discussed and situated within the context of broader advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing for research and scholarly publishing.





I wish I could make a backup copy!

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/17/librarians-should-stand-internet-archive-opinion

The Internet Archive Is a Library

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in San Francisco, has grown into one of the most important cultural institutions of the modern age. What began in 1996 as an audacious attempt to archive and preserve the World Wide Web has grown into a vast library of books, musical recordings and television shows, all digitized and available online, with a mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge.”

Right now, we are at a pivotal stage in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, still pending, brought by four of the biggest for-profit publishers in the world, who have been trying to shut down core programs of the archive since the start of the pandemic. For the sake of libraries and library users everywhere, let’s hope they don’t succeed.

You’ve probably heard of Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which archives billions of webpages from across the globe. Fewer are familiar with its other extraordinary collections, which include 41  million digitized books and texts, with more than three million books available to borrow. To make this possible, Internet Archive uses a practice known as controlled digital lending,” “whereby a library owns a book, digitizes it, and loans either the physical book or the digital copy to one user at a time.”



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