For both my Security classes. (I do like good bad examples) If facial recognition is used to say “Hey, check this out!” I’d be happy. If it says, “Found target, launching weapons.” I’m a bit more concerned.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48842750

Biased and wrong? Facial recognition tech in the dock

… The Californian city of San Francisco recently banned the use of FR by transport and law enforcement agencies in an acknowledgement of its imperfections and threats to civil liberties. But other cities in the US, and other countries around the world, are trialling the technology.

In the UK, for example, police forces in South Wales, London. Manchester and Leicester have been testing the tech to the consternation of civil liberties organisations such as Liberty and Big Brother Watch, both concerned by the number of false matches the systems made.

… Just this week, academics at the University of Essex concluded that matches in the London Metropolitan police trials were wrong 80% of the time, potentially leading to serious miscarriages of justice and infringements of citizens' right to privacy.

A bit of Computer Security history.

https://www.techradar.com/news/getting-up-to-speed-with-ai-and-cybersecurity

Getting up to speed with AI and Cybersecurity

Many people are unaware that the first computer virus predates the public internet.

In 1971 Bob Thomas, an American IT academic wrote Creeper, the first computer program that could migrate across networks. It would travel between terminals on the ARPANET printing the message “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can”. Creeper was made self-replicating by fellow academic and email inventor, Ray Thomlinson, creating the first documented computer virus.

In order to contain Creeper, Thomlinson wrote Reaper, a program that would chase Creeper across the network and erase it – creating the world’s first antivirus cybersecurity solution.

Something for my Computer Security discussions.

https://www.wired.com/story/biggest-cybersecurity-crises-2019-so-far/

THE BIGGEST CYBERSECURITY CRISES OF 2019 SO FAR

A ‘fake news” law? Think Russia will comply?

https://www.bespacific.com/will-californias-new-bot-law-strengthen-democracy/

Will California’s New Bot Law Strengthen Democracy?

The New Yorker – “When you ask experts how bots influence politics—that is, what specifically these bits of computer code that purport to be human can accomplish during an election—they will give you a list: bots can smear the opposition through personal attacks; they can exaggerate voters’ fears and anger by repeating short simple slogans; they can overstate popularity; they can derail conversations and draw attention to symbolic and ultimately meaningless ideas; they can spread false narratives. In other words, they are an especially useful tool, considering how politics is played today.

On July 1st, California became the first state in the nation to try to reduce the power of bots by requiring that they reveal their “artificial identity” when they are used to sell a product or influence a voter. Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. Just as pharmaceutical companies must disclose that the happy people who say a new drug has miraculously improved their lives are paid actors, bots in California—or rather, the people who deploy them—will have to level with their audience… By attempting to regulate a technology that thrives on social networks, the state will be testing society’s resolve to get our (virtual) house in order after more than two decades of a runaway Internet…”

Another good bad example. What is the ‘balance of power’ when companies have “big Data?”

https://www.bespacific.com/public-management-of-big-data-historical-lessons-from-the-1940s/

Public Management of Big Data: Historical Lessons from the 1940s

Public Management of Big Data: Historical Lessons from the 1940s by Margo Anderson – Distinguished Professor, History and Urban Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“At its core, public-sector use of big data heightens concerns about the balance of power between government and the individual. Once information about citizens is compiled for a defined purpose, the temptation to use it for other purposes can be considerable, especially in times of national emergency. One of the most shameful instances of the government misusing its own data dates to the Second World War. Census data collected under strict guarantees of confidentiality was used to identify neighborhoods where Japanese-Americans lived so they could be detained in internment camps for the duration of the war.” – Executive Office of the President, Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values, May 2014

(Related) Will the lawyer with the “bigger Data” always win?

https://www.bespacific.com/methods-of-data-research-for-law/

Methods of Data Research for Law

Custers, Bart, Methods of Data Research for Law (October 28, 2018). Custers B.H.M. (2018), Methods of data research for law. In: Mak V., Tjong Tjin Tai E., Berlee A. (Eds.) Research Handbook in Data Science and Law. Research Handbooks in Information Law Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 355-377. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3411873

“Data science and big data offer many opportunities for researchers, not only in the domain of data science and related sciences, but also for researchers in many other disciplines. The fact that data science and big data are playing an increasingly important role in so many research areas raises the question whether this also applies to the legal domain. Do data science and big data also offer methods of data research for law? As will be shown in this chapter, the answer to this question is positive: yes, there are many methods and applications that may be also useful for the legal domain. This answer will be provided by discussing these methods of data research for law in this chapter. As such, this chapter provides an overview of these methods.”

Crisis or not?

https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2019/07/04/legislative-fix-needed-to-keep-internet-applications-free-in-california/

Opinion: Legislative Fix Needed to Keep Internet Applications Free in California

No matter where you go in California, you’re likely to see someone on their smartphone, tablet or computer using an app or other online service to look something up, watch a video, send an email, check social media or the weather, or any number of the dozens of things people do online every day.

Today, most of these online activities are free, meaning whether you are a college student researching a paper, a single mom looking for a job, or a small employer sending an email to your staff, the internet provides everyone from all walks of life equal and free access to information and services critical to our everyday lives. But these free services that have helped level the socio-economic playing field are at risk unless a policy fix is passed in Sacramento this year.

In 2018, the State Legislature hastily passed a sweeping measure known as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This law was intended to give consumers more understanding and control of their online personal data and information, something we all support.

… Many flaws did come to light. One of the most significant has to do with language in the CCPA that hinders tailored online advertising by prohibiting the sharing of technical information necessary to make the ads work. These ads are a major reason why many online services are free now, and unless fixed this year, this flaw in the CCPA could result in new costs for online services we take for granted and get for free today.

… A policy fix would clarify that when a consumer opts-out of the “sale” of their personal information, it does not restrict the ability of companies to continue to market targeted ads to that same consumer as long as those ads rely on sharing technical information only, not personally identifiable information.

(Related) Is this ‘personal information” or merely technical information?

https://www.bespacific.com/fingerprinting-to-track-us-online-is-on-the-rise-heres-what-to-do/

‘Fingerprinting’ to Track Us Online Is on the Rise. Here’s What to Do.

The New York Times – Advertisers are increasingly turning to an invisible method that pulls together information about your device to pinpoint your identity. “Fingerprinting involves looking at the many characteristics of your mobile device or computer, like the screen resolution, operating system and model, and triangulating this information to pinpoint and follow you as you browse the web and use apps. Once enough device characteristics are known, the theory goes, the data can be assembled into a profile that helps identify you the way a fingerprint would.

And here’s the bad news: The technique happens invisibly in the background in apps and websites. That makes it tougher to detect and combat than its predecessor, the web cookie, which was a tracker stored on our devices. The solutions to blocking fingerprinting are also limited…”

I had hoped to stay away from the whole Block Chain / Bitcoin kerfuffle.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/facebooks-libra-cryptocurrency-could-have-profound-implications-for-personal-privacy/

Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency Could Have Profound Implications for Personal Privacy

In the never-ending search for new revenue streams, social media giant Facebook is now looking to launch its very own cryptocurrency, known as Libra. While the stated goal of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency is to bring financial services to the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked population, and to make it easier and more convenient than ever before to send and receive money around the world, data privacy experts, politicians, regulators, central bankers and government officials are already warning that the latest innovation from Facebook may result in a confusing headache of privacy, financial, political, and socio-economic issues.

Whatever you do, don’t act like a criminals covering their tracks...

https://www.securityweek.com/georgia-failed-subpoena-image-wiped-elections-server

Georgia Failed to Subpoena Image of Wiped Elections Server

Nearly two years ago, state lawyers in a closely watched election integrity lawsuit said they intended to subpoena the FBI for the forensic image, or digital snapshot, the agency made of a crucial server before state election officials quietly wiped it clean. Election watchdogs want to examine the data to see if there might have been tampering, given that the server was left exposed by a gaping security hole for more than half a year.

A new email obtained by The Associated Press says state officials never did issue the subpoena.

The FBI's data is central to activists' challenge to Georgia's highly questioned, centrally administered elections system, which lacks an auditable paper trail and was run at the time by Gov. Brian Kemp, then Georgia's secretary of state.

The plaintiffs contend Kemp's handling of the wiped server is the most glaring example of mismanagement that could be hiding evidence of vote tampering. They have been fighting for access to the state's centralized black-box voting systems and to individual voting machines, many of which they say have also been wiped clean.

Shucks! Now I’ll have to make my own.

https://9to5google.com/2019/07/03/youtube-hacking-videos/

YouTube no longer allows ‘instructional hacking and phishing’ videos

… On July 2nd, YouTube Help added “more examples of content that violates” its policy regarding “harmful or dangerous content.” The list includes “Extremely dangerous challenges,” “Violent events,” and “Eating disorders.”

The last item is now “Instructional hacking and phishing,” which the video site identifies as “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data.”

Coming soon to a country near me?

https://www.hldataprotection.com/2019/07/articles/international-eu-privacy/cookie-consent-what-good-compliance-looks-like-according-to-the-ico/

Cookie consent – What “good” compliance looks like according to the ICO

On 3 July 2019, the UK data protection authority (the ICO) updated its guidance on the rules that apply to the use of cookies and other similar technologies. The ICO has also changed the cookie control mechanism on its own website to mirror the changes in the new guidance.

• The use of cookie walls as a blanket approach to restrict access to a service until users consent will not comply with the cookie consent requirements.
• Implied consent is also no-go.
• The ICO also views consent mechanisms that emphasise that users should ‘agree’ or ‘allow’ cookies over ‘reject’ or ‘block’ as non-compliant. It calls this ‘nudge behaviour’ which influences users towards the ‘accept’ option.

Because it came up in both my classes yesterday.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/07/us_journalist_d.html

US Journalist Detained When Returning to US

Pretty horrible story of a US journalist who had his computer and phone searched at the border when returning to the US from Mexico.

… The EFF has extensive information and advice about device searches at the US border, including a travel guide.

If you are a U.S. citizen, border agents cannot stop you from entering the country, even if you refuse to unlock your device, provide your device password, or disclose your social media information. However, agents may escalate the encounter if you refuse. For example, agents may seize your devices, ask you intrusive questions, search your bags more intensively, or increase by many hours the length of detention. If you are a lawful permanent resident, agents may raise complicated questions about your continued status as a resident. If you are a foreign visitor, agents may deny you entry.

Another take on the topic.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/ethics-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/

Ethics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

If we don’t know how AIs make decisions, how can we trust what they decide?

… We are standing at the cusp of the next wave of the technological revolution: AI, or artificial intelligence. The digital revolution of the late 20th century brought us information at our fingertips, allowing us to make quick decisions, while the agency to make decisions, fundamentally, rested with us. AI is changing that by automating the decision-making process, promising better qualitative results and improved efficiency.

… Unfortunately, in that decision-making process, AI also took away the transparency, explainability, predictability, teachability and auditability of the human move, replacing it with opacity. The logic for the move is not only unknown to the players, but also unknown to the creators of the program. As AI makes decisions for us, transparency and predictability of decision-making may become a thing of the past.

Anyone can (and will) play.

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/03/tensorflow-light-ftw.html

Make: a machine-learning toy on open-source hardware

In the latest Adafruit video (previously ) the proprietors, Limor "ladyada" Friend and Phil Torrone, explain the basics of machine learning, with particular emphasis on the difference between computing a model (hard) and implementing the model (easy and simple enough to run on relatively low-powered hardware), and then they install and run Tensorflow Light on a small, open-source handheld and teach it to distinguish between someone saying "No" and someone saying "Yes," in just a few minutes. It's an interesting demonstration of the theory that machine learning may be most useful in tiny, embedded, offline processors.

“Siri, draft a smarter bill.”

https://fpf.org/2019/07/03/californias-ab-1395-highlights-the-challenges-of-regulating-voice-recognition/

California’s AB-1395 Highlights the Challenges of Regulating Voice Recognition

Under the radar of ongoing debates over the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the California Senate Judiciary Committee will also soon be considering, at a July 9th hearing, an unusual sectoral privacy bill regulating “smart speakers.” AB-1395 would amend California’s existing laws to add new restrictions for “smart speaker devices,” defined as standalone devices “with an integrated virtual assistant connected to a cloud computing storage service that uses hands-free verbal activation.” Physical devices like the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod, and others (e.g. smart TVs or speakers produced by Sonos or JBL that have integrated Alexa or Google Assistant), would be included, although the bill exempts the same cloud-based voice services when they are integrated into cell phones, tablets, or connected vehicles.

“Let’s replace all that new technology we don’t understand with old technology we can understand, like locks and keys!” Not very urgent if it took three years to pass.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/07/03/u-s-government-makes-surprise-move-to-secure-power-grid-from-cyber-attacks/#4106fd6b3191

U.S. Government Makes Surprise Move To Secure Power Grid From Cyberattacks

Homeland Security officials say that Russian hackers used conventional tools to trick victims into entering passwords in order to build out a sophisticated effort to gain access to control rooms of utilities in the U.S. The victims included hundreds of vendors that had links to nuclear plants and the electrical grid.

… Nations have been trying to secure the industrial control systems that power CNI for years. The challenge lies in the fact that these systems were not built with security in mind, because they were not originally meant to be connected to the internet. [They were not built with Internet security in mind. The new bits were! Bob]

It is with this in mind that the U.S. has responded with a new strategy: rather than bringing in new technology and skills, it will use analog and manual technology to isolate the grid's most important control systems. This, the government says, will limit the reach of a catastrophic outage.

"This approach seeks to thwart even the most sophisticated cyber-adversaries who, if they are intent on accessing the grid, would have to actually physically touch the equipment, thereby making cyberattacks much more difficult," said a press release as the Securing Energy Infrastructure Act (SEIA), passed the Senate floor.

When introducing the bill in 2016, U.S. Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said: "Specifically, it will examine ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies, like manual procedures controlled by human operators."

I wonder how far behind government patching is?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cyber-command-issues-alert-about-hackers-exploiting-outlook-vulnerability/

US Cyber Command issues alert about hackers exploiting Outlook vulnerability

US Cyber Command has issued an alert via Twitter today about threat actors abusing an Outlook vulnerability to plant malware on government networks.

The vulnerability is CVE-2017-11774, a security bug that Microsoft patched in Outlook in the October 2017 Patch Tuesday.

As one of the very few who do not own a smartphone, I would immediately come under suspicion: What is he trying to hide? Clearly he tossed the phone rather than be caught with subversive material.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware

China Is Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at its Border

Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found.

The Android malware, which is installed by a border guard when they physically seize the phone, also scans the tourist or traveller's device for a specific set of files, according to multiple expert analyses of the software. The files authorities are looking for include Islamic extremist content, but also innocuous Islamic material, academic books on Islam by leading researchers, and even music from a Japanese metal band.

Was it really that hard to comply?

https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/02/tiktok-investigated-uk-child-safety/

TikTok now faces a data privacy investigation in the UK, too

TikTok is under investigation in the UK for how it handles the safety and privacy of young users. UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that the popular short-form video app potentially violated GDPR rules that state that technology companies must have different rules and protections for children, reported The Guardian. The UK began its probe on TikTok back in February, shortly after the FTC fined the app for child privacy violations.

Available in November?

https://www.amazon.com/GDPR-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/1119546095/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=gdpr+for+dummies&qid=1562085300&s=books&sr=1-2

GDPR For Dummies

Curses! Foiled again.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/20680230/facebook-libra-calibra-crypto-maxine-waters-congress-regulation-investigation-halt

House lawmakers officially ask Facebook to put Libra cryptocurrency project on hold

House Democrats are requesting Facebook halt development of its proposed cryptocurrency project Libra, as well as its digital wallet Calibra, until Congress and regulators have time to investigate the possible risks it poses to the global financial system.

… “If products and services like these are left improperly regulated and without sufficient oversight, they could pose systemic risks that endanger U.S. and global financial stability,” Water writes. “These vulnerabilities could be exploited and obscured by bad actors, as other cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and wallets have been in the past.”

For my geeks.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/02/facebook-open-sources-dlrm-a-deep-learning-recommendation-model/

Facebook open-sources DLRM, a deep learning recommendation model

Facebook today announced the open source release of Deep Learning Recommendation Model (DLRM), a state-of-the-art AI model for serving up personalized results in production environments. DLRM can be found on GitHub, and implementations of the model are available for Facebook’s PyTorch, Facebook’s distributed learning framework Caffe2, and Glow C++.

Who would you like to win the 2020 election and by how much?

https://www.bespacific.com/internet-research-agency-twitter-activity-predicted-2016-u-s-election-polls/

Internet Research Agency Twitter activity predicted 2016 U.S. election polls

First Monday – Volume 24, Number 7 – 1 July 2019 > Ruck “In 2016, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) deployed thousands of Twitter bots that released hundreds of thousands of English language tweets. It has been hypothesized that this affected public opinion during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Here we test that hypothesis using vector autoregression (VAR) comparing time series of election opinion polling during 2016 versus numbers of re-tweets or ‘likes’ of IRA tweets. We find that changes in opinion poll numbers for one of the candidates were consistently preceded by corresponding changes in IRA re-tweet volume, at an optimum interval of one week before. In contrast, the opinion poll numbers did not correlate with future re-tweets or ‘likes’ of the IRA tweets. We find that the release of these tweets parallel significant political events of 2016 and that approximately every 25,000 additional IRA re-tweets predicted a one percent increase in election opinion polls for one candidate. As these tweets were part of a larger, multimedia campaign, it is plausible that the IRA was successful in influencing U.S. public opinion in 2016.”

Another checklist for my Computer Security students.

https://britishlegalitforum.com/news/cyber-resilience-the-6-biggest-threats-right-now-for-legal-2/

CYBER RESILIENCE – THE 6 BIGGEST THREATS RIGHT NOW FOR LEGAL

The threat constantly evolves and grows – and legal firms are at particular peril. In this article, we look at the 6 biggest current threats as we perceive them.

Because we can?

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43jmnq/how-amazon-and-the-cops-set-up-elaborate-sting-operation-that-accomplished-nothing

How Amazon and the Cops Set Up an Elaborate Sting Operation That Accomplished Nothing

… New documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information request show how Amazon, Ring, a GPS tracking company, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service collaborated on a package sting operation with the Aurora, Colorado Police Department in December. The operation involved equipping fake Amazon packages with GPS trackers, and surveilling doorsteps with Ring doorbell cameras in an effort to catch someone stealing a package on tape.

The documents show the design and implementation of a highly elaborate public relations stunt, which was designed both to endear Amazon and Ring with local law enforcement, and to make local residents fear the place they live. The parties were disappointed when the operation didn’t result in any arrests.

Interesting idea.

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/artificial-intelligence-ethics-social-questions

AI and the Social Sciences Used to Talk More. Now They’ve Drifted Apart.

Artificial intelligence researchers are employing machine learning algorithms to aid tasks as diverse as driving cars, diagnosing medical conditions, and screening job candidates. These applications raise a number of complex new social and ethical issues.

So, in light of these developments, how should social scientists think differently about people, the economy, and society? And how should the engineers who write these algorithms handle the social and ethical dilemmas their creations pose?

“These are the kinds of questions you can’t answer with just the technical solutions,” says Dashun Wang, an associate professor of management and organizations at Kellogg. “These are fundamentally interdisciplinary issues.”

We will need thousands of very specific laws if we go this way.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/deepfake-revenge-porn-distribution-now-a-crime-in-virginia/

Deepfake revenge porn distribution now a crime in Virginia

As of today, Virginia is one of the first states in the country to impose criminal penalties on the distribution of non-consensual "deepfake" images and video.

The new law amends existing law in the Commonwealth that defines distribution of nudes or sexual imagery without the subject's consent —often called revenge porn —as a Class 1 misdemeanor. The new bill updated the law by adding a category of "falsely created videographic or still image" to the text.

New laws in Virginia take effect on July 1.

Pick one (or all five) for your toolkit now, before something goes wrong.

5 Bootable Windows PE-Based Recovery Discs That’ll Save Your System

For Kindle lovers…

How to Get News Updates on Your Kindle Using Calibre

For our programming students?

6 Coding Apps That Make Programming Easier

Paranoia or common sense?

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/when-convenience-meets-surveillance-ai-at-the-corner-store/

When convenience meets surveillance: AI at the corner store

… Before patrons can enter the basic convenience store at the corner of South 38th Street and Pacific Avenue, a camera under a red awning will take a picture and use artificial intelligence (AI) to decide whether the image matches any in a database of known robbers and shoplifters at that location.

“That’s a privacy violation because you should be notified about it,” Diharce said on a recent morning.

… It’s now deactivated after a test last month, but when it’s turned back on, a sign at the front of the store will notify customers that facial recognition technology is in use, and a speaker will ask customers to look at the camera. The door won’t unlock if someone is wearing a mask or if the person has been previously flagged for criminal activity by in-store camera footage.

… The platform is not connected to a criminal database, so a store manager must flag a suspected shoplifter’s image to receive a notification when the person approaches the store again. Names and personal data aren’t gathered by the system, and the company recommends its users only store images of nonflagged customers for 24-48 hours, while suspected shoplifters are kept in the database.

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-t-shaped-factor-an-exposure-to-tech-in-law-school/

The T-Shaped Factor: An Exposure to Tech in Law School

Via LLRX – The T-Shaped Factor: An Exposure to Tech in Law School – Saba Samanian is a recent graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School. She provides her perspective on the future of the legal profession concerning the intersection of law, technology, access to justice, and her responsibility to be technically competent as she enters the profession.

Perspective.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/28/nielsen-reports-a-record-half-a-trillion-on-demand-music-streams-in-u-s-so-far-this-year/

Nielsen reports a record half a trillion on-demand music streams in U.S. so far this year

Music streaming services have already delivered a new high of half a trillion (507.7 billion) on-demand streams in the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen’s mid-year Music Report released this week. This record number — an increase of 31.6% over the first half of last year — was attributed to the success of singles and albums from Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Halsey, Khalid, BTS, Lil Nas X, and Bad Bunny, among other factors.

For example, the report also noted the outsized impact of TikTok and its global audience of 500 million monthly users.

“No emerging app helped break more songs in 2019 than TikTok,” Nielsen said.

(Related) Cute but trivial. Do we even know how to identify the next Mozart? What is the test for an Einstein? Or a Michelangelo?

https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/6/27/18760004/tiktok-old-town-road-memes-music-industry

Memes Are the New Pop Stars: How TikTok Became the Future of the Music Industry

Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ is both a chart-topping phenomenon and a turning point for the music business. Here’s what happens when a social media platform becomes a label.

Wally, in a nutshell.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-07-01

This is not what we meant when we said politicians should learn from Russia’s interference.

https://www.newsweek.com/fake-biden-campaign-website-being-run-secretly-trump-campaign-operative-report-1446693

FAKE BIDEN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE BEING RUN SECRETLY BY TRUMP CAMPAIGN OPERATIVE: REPORT

… The New York Times tracked down the owner of a site with the URL JoeBiden.info, a "parody" campaign website featuring out-of-context quotes from the former vice president and leading 2020 Democratic candidate. The site also includes GIFs of him touching women in ways that others alleged made them uncomfortable.

Makes you wonder if they know what to look for.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/29/wiretap-prosecutors-texas/

With a single wiretap, police collected 9.2 million text messages

For four months in 2018, authorities in Texas collected more than 9.2 million messages under a single court-authorized wiretap order, newly released figures show.

… Little is known about the case, except that 149 individuals involved in the case were targeted by the wiretap. The wiretap expired last year, allowing the judiciary to disclose the case.

To date, no arrests have been made

Trailing behind it was another narcotics investigation in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania saw police obtain a three-month wiretap that collected 9.1 million text message from 45 individuals. No arrests were made either.

[Wiretap Report 2018: https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/wiretap-report-2018

Answers an interesting question, did anyone notice that GDPR thing?

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Privacy-Policy-Landscape-After-the-GDPR-Linden-Harkous/3191469e8031db560264902b4e98d4b992e1954f

The Privacy Policy Landscape After the GDPR

Every new privacy regulation brings along the question of whether it results in improving the privacy for the users. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the most demanding and comprehensive privacy regulations of all time. Hence, a few months after it went into effect, it is natural to study its impact on the landscape of privacy policies online.

… We create a diverse corpus of 3,686 English-language privacy policies for which we fetch the pre-GDPR and the post-GDPR versions. Our user study, with 460 participants on Amazon MTurk, does not indicate a significant change in the visual representation of privacy policies from the users’ perspective. We also find that the readability of privacy policies suffers under the GDPR, due to almost a 23% more sentences and words, despite the efforts to reduce the reliance on passive sentences.

(Related)

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/We-Value-Your-Privacy-...-Now-Take-Some-Cookies%3A-on-Degeling-Utz/bd9cad6654b595c872c5893fc10f06a3a41e4f31

We Value Your Privacy ... Now Take Some Cookies: Measuring the GDPR's Impact on Web Privacy

… Many companies had to adjust their data handling processes, consent forms, and privacy policies to comply with the GDPR’s transparency requirements. We monitored this rare event by analyzing changes on popular websites in all 28 member states of the European Union. For each country, we periodically examined its 500 most popular websites – 6,579 in total – for the presence of and updates to their privacy policy between December 2017 and October 2018.

AI, explain thyself! (Please select one of our ‘pre-written’ explanations.)

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Generating-User-friendly-Explanations-for-Loan-GANs-Srinivasan-Chander/4319bc18f7fdaf420418f754069e0d8acc8bae8e

Generating User-friendly Explanations for Loan Denials using GANs

… State-of-the-art explainable AI systems mostly serve AI engineers and offer little to no value to business decision makers, customers, and other stakeholders. Towards addressing this gap, in this work we consider the scenario of explaining loan denials. We build the first-of-its-kind dataset that is representative of loan-applicant friendly explanations.

Turing asked if a machine could fool a human. Can an Artificial General Intelligence fool another AGI?

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Turing-Test-Revisited%3A-A-Framework-for-an-Ayesh/bf3a6bb7afffadb93013844f64bb9c40911325df

Turing Test Revisited: A Framework for an Alternative

This paper aims to question the suitability of the Turing Test, for testing machine intelligence, in the light of advances made in the last 60 years in science, medicine, and philosophy of mind.

Perspective. Because sticking your head out the window isn’t enough.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/06/24/the-real-cloud-wars-the-6-billion-battle-over-the-future-of-weather-forecasting/#7b6840e4298f

The Real Cloud Wars: The $6 Billion Battle Over The Future Of Weather Forecasting

… Today conservative estimates of AccuWeather’s annual revenues exceed $100 million. Customers include hundreds of TV and radio stations across the country plus major print outlets like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. More than 1,000 companies use Accuweather’s private weather forecasts to improve their bottom lines. Those range from the obvious—railroads and amusement parks like Six Flags—to the less obvious—say, Clemson University’s campus police department and Starbucks.

… For decades, private weather forecasting has been a cozy industry, dominated in the U.S. by AccuWeather, The Weather Company (founded as The Weather Channel in 1982 and bought by IBM for $2.3 billion in 2016) and DTN, which focuses on industrial concerns and was purchased by a Swiss holding company for $900 million in 2017.

But now a perfect storm of macro-trends—ever cheaper processing power, cloud computing, vastly improved AI and a proliferation of low-cost sensors—has opened up the field to a fresh crop of ambitious startups. In aggregate, they have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, who think the incumbents look vulnerable to creative new business models.

They are fighting over a big and growing pie. Recent numbers are hard to come by, but a 2013 article from the Wharton School estimated that overall revenues for climate and weather companies were about $3 billion and that, in aggregate, the industry was worth some $6 billion. A 2017 report from the National Weather Service included a prediction that the sector could quintuple in size.