Inevitable result of training AI on an increasing volume of AI generated data.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/07/class-action-lawsuit-for-scraping-data-without-permission.html

Class-Action Lawsuit for Scraping Data without Permission

I have mixed feelings about this class-action lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming that it “scraped 300 billion words from the internet” without either registering as a data broker or obtaining consent. On the one hand, I want this to be a protected fair use of public data. On the other hand, I want us all to be compensated for our uniquely human ability to generate language.

There’s an interesting wrinkle on this. A recent paper showed that using AI generated text to train another AI invariably “causes irreversible defects.” From a summary:

The tails of the original content distribution disappear. Within a few generations, text becomes garbage, as Gaussian distributions converge and may even become delta functions. We call this effect model collapse.

Just as we’ve strewn the oceans with plastic trash and filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, so we’re about to fill the Internet with blah. This will make it harder to train newer models by scraping the web, giving an advantage to firms which already did that, or which control access to human interfaces at scale. Indeed, we already see AI startups hammering the Internet Archive for training data.

This is the same idea that Ted Chiang wrote about: that ChatGPT is a “blurry JPEG of all the text on the Web.” But the paper includes the math that proves the claim.

What this means is that text from before last year—text that is known human-generated—will become increasingly valuable

Somehow I think Meta will find a way to peek…

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/04/cjeu-meta-superprofiling-decision/

CJEU ruling on Meta referral could close the chapter on surveillance capitalism

Mark your calendar European friends: July 4th could soon be celebrated as independence-from-Meta’s-surveillance-capitalism-day… A long-anticipated judgement handed down today by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) looks to have comprehensively crushed the social media giant’s ability to keep flouting EU privacy law by denying users a free choice over its tracking and profiling.

The ruling tracks back to a pioneering order by Germany’s antitrust watchdog, the Federal Cartel Office (FCO), which spent years investigating Facebook’s business — making the case that privacy harm should be treated as an exploitative competition abuse too.

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/artificial-intelligence-in-science/

Artificial Intelligence in Science

Artificial Intelligence in Science – Challenges, Opportunities and the Future of Research [300 page e-book available free via OECD]: “The rapid advances of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years have led to numerous creative applications in science. Accelerating the productivity of science could be the most economically and socially valuable of all the uses of AI. Utilising AI to accelerate scientific productivity will support the ability of OECD countries to grow, innovate and meet global challenges, from climate change to new contagions. This publication is aimed at a broad readership, including policy makers, the public, and stakeholders in all areas of science. It is written in non-technical language and gathers the perspectives of prominent researchers and practitioners. The book examines various topics, including the current, emerging, and potential future uses of AI in science, where progress is needed to better serve scientific advancements, and changes in scientific productivity. Additionally, it explores measures to expedite the integration of AI into research in developing countries. A distinctive contribution is the book’s examination of policies for AI in science. Policy makers and actors across research systems can do much to deepen AI’s use in science, magnifying its positive effects, while adapting to the fast-changing implications of AI for research governance.”

Ingenious! Identify and locate specific soldiers, see what buildings they enter, learn where they live.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/unsolicited-smartwatches-mailed-to-us-military-personnel-raise-security-concerns/

Unsolicited Smartwatches Mailed to US Military Personnel Raise Security Concerns

The U.S. Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) has warned about unsolicited smartwatches mailed to US military service members by unknown senders.

… Location-enabled smart devices and apps have leaked military personnel’s location in the past, prompting their restriction in protected areas.

The Army CID has warned service members against powering on the smartwatches that auto-connect to Wi-Fi and pair with cell phones unprompted, potentially accessing a myriad of user data.

My data is Google’s data now? After 17 years of blogging, they change the rules? Should I sue for compensation? Perhaps I should start a misinformation campaign. (You know Google was invented by Hitler in 1933 and was used to coordinate the Holocaust.)

https://gizmodo.com/google-says-itll-scrape-everything-you-post-online-for-1850601486

Google Says It'll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI

Google updated its privacy policy over the weekend, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they’re nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot.

“Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public,” the new Google policy says. “For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities.”

Cheaper is gooder? I think I could live with one of these.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/03/jio-bharat-specifications-price-plans/

Ambani’s Jio unveils $12 4G phone with digital pay and streaming

… The Jio Bharat is priced at 999 Indian rupees, or $12.2, Reliance said. The Jio Bharat is designed for 250 million consumers in India who have found the transition to 4G network prohibitively expensive, the Indian giant said. The handset is part of the offering; the other play is the new affordable tariff plan.

Jio Platform unveiled a new monthly plan that costs just 123 Indian rupees, or $1.5 that offers 14GB of data usage for the month and unlimited voice calls. For those subscribing for the year, the plan costs 1,234 Indian rupees, or $15.

Cheaper to shut down rather than comply?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/3/23782776/pornhub-blocks-mississippi-virginia-age-verification-laws

Pornhub blocks access in Mississippi and Virginia over age verification laws

Pornhub is now blocking people in Mississippi and Virginia from visiting its website over laws that would require the service to verify their age. The company says it’s blocking users to protest unfair enforcement of these new laws, claiming that sites enforcing the new rules will lose traffic to “irresponsible platforms” that “don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content.”

Traffic dropped by 80 percent for Pornhub after it began enforcing age verification in Louisiana earlier this year, the company writes. After that experience, it decided to start taking its sites offline instead of enforcing an age gate. In May, it blocked access to users in Utah over a similar law. Techdirt reports that the blackout also applies to other websites operated by Pornhub’s owner, such as RedTube.

Useful overview?

https://www.marktechpost.com/2023/07/03/ai-vs-predictive-analytics-a-comprehensive-analysis/

AI vs. Predictive Analytics: A Comprehensive Analysis

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Predictive Analytics are reshaping the way all businesses operate. In this article, we will key in on engineering applications of AI and Predictive Analytics. We will start with the general concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We’ll go into the details of Predictive Engineering Analytics applied to engineering.

We will give details of Artificial Intelligence approaches such as Machine Learning and Deep Learning. Key differences will be highlighted. By the end of the article, you will understand how innovative Deep Learning technology leverages historical data and accurately forecasts outcomes of lengthy and expensive experimental testing or 3D simulation (CAE).

Tools & Techniques. Everyone can use the first tool!

https://www.makeuseof.com/data-scientists-best-chrome-extensions/

The 5 Best Chrome Extensions for Data Scientists

… As with any complex task, you should look for tools to make your job easier and more enjoyable. Here are some powerful Chrome extensions to help boost your productivity, whether you’re a new or experienced data scientist.

Insider attack? Is Russia falling apart?

https://www.databreaches.net/cyberattack-knocks-out-satellite-communications-for-russian-military/

Cyberattack knocks out satellite communications for Russian military

Joseph Menn reports:

A satellite communications system serving the Russian military was knocked offline by a cyberattack late Wednesday and remained mostly down on Thursday, in an incident reminiscent of an attack on a similar system used by Ukraine at the start of the war between the countries.

Dozor-Teleport, the satellite system’s operator, switched some users to terrestrial networks during the outage, according to JD Work, a cyberspace professor at the National Defense University.

Read more at The Washington Post.

A Wagner-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Vague laws make for many lawsuits?

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/china_espionage_law_update_warning/

US authorities warn on China's new counter-espionage law

Almost anything you download from China could be considered spying, but at least one analyst isn't worried

The United States' National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) has warned that China's updated Counter-Espionage law – which came into effect on July 1 – is dangerously ambiguous and could pose a risk to global business.

The NCSC publishes non-classified bulletins titled "Safeguarding Our Future" on an ad hoc schedule to "provide a brief overview of a specific foreign intelligence threat, as well as impacts of that threat and steps for mitigation."

On June 30 it issued a new one [PDF] titled "US Business Risk: People's Republic of China (PRC) Laws Expand Beijing's Oversight of Foreign and Domestic Companies." The first item discussed is China's recently revised Counter-Espionage Law, on grounds it "Expands the definition of espionage from covering state secrets and intelligence to any documents, data, materials, or items related to national security interests, without defining terms."

That vagueness, the Center argues, means "Any documents, data, materials, or items could be considered relevant to PRC national security due to ambiguities in the law" and adds up to potential "legal risks or uncertainty for foreign companies."

Perspective. Economics as history...

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/7/2/working-with-ai

AI and the automation of work

ChatGPT and generative AI will change how we work, but how different is this to all the other waves of automation of the last 200 years? What does it mean for employment? Disruption? Coal consumption?

… The Lump of Labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work to be done, and that if some work is taken by a machine then there will be less work for people. But if it becomes cheaper to use a machine to make, say, a pair of shoes, then the shoes are cheaper, more people can buy shoes and they have more money to spend on other things besides, and we discover new things we need or want, and new jobs.

… In the 19th century the British navy ran on coal. Britain had a lot of coal (it was the Saudi Arabia of the steam age) but people worried what would happen when the coal ran out. Ah, said the engineers: don’t worry, because the steam engines keep getting more efficient, so we’ll use less coal. No, said Jevons: if we make steam engines more efficient, then they will be cheaper to run, and we will use more of them and use them for new and different things, and so we will use more coal.

We’ve been applying the Jevons Paradox to white collar work for 150 years.

Perspective.

https://www.insideprivacy.com/artificial-intelligence/uk-and-g7-privacy-authorities-warn-of-privacy-risks-raised-by-generative-ai/

UK and G7 Privacy Authorities Warn of Privacy Risks Raised by Generative AI

On 21 June 2023, at the close of a roundtable meeting of the G7 Data Protection and Privacy Authorities, regulators from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada and Japan published a joint “Statement on Generative AI” (“Statement”) (available here ). In the Statement, regulators identify a range of data protection-related concerns they believe are raised by generative AI tools, including legal authority for processing personal information, and transparency, explainability, and security. The group of regulators also call on companies to “embed privacy in the design conception, operation, and management” of generative AI tools.

Interesting. A useful model for other industries?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4488199

Embracing Artificial Intelligence in the Legal Landscape: The Blueprint

This innovative case study outlines a blueprint for strategic transformation based on the example of a real-life law firm operating in Germany, using AI tools and digitalization. Leveraging Kotter's 8-step change model, the research underscores the imperative to adopt AI due to pressing market competition and escalating internal costs. The paper articulates how AI can optimize legal processes and dramatically improve efficiency and client satisfaction, while addressing the firm's readiness to adapt and potential resistance.

By building a coalition of key stakeholders and envisioning the firm's future as a technology-driven entity, this research elucidates a pragmatic roadmap for the firm's digital journey.

The conclusion suggests a pivotal shift toward a culture that celebrates change and fosters growth, strengthening the firm's competitive position and enabling sustainable success in the ever-evolving legal landscape.

Does all the training data have to pass an ethics review before it can be used safely?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-023-02662-7

The human cost of ethical artificial intelligence

Foundational models such as ChatGPT critically depend on vast data scales the internet uniquely enables. This implies exposure to material varying widely in logical sense, factual fidelity, moral value, and even legal status. Whereas data scaling is a technical challenge, soluble with greater computational resource, complex semantic filtering cannot be performed reliably without human intervention: the self-supervision that makes foundational models possible at least in part presupposes the abilities they seek to acquire. This unavoidably introduces the need for large-scale human supervision—not just of training input but also model output—and imbues any model with subjectivity reflecting the beliefs of its creator. The pressure to minimize the cost of the former is in direct conflict with the pressure to maximise the quality of the latter. Moreover, it is unclear how complex semantics, especially in the realm of the moral, could ever be reduced to an objective function any machine could plausibly maximise. We suggest the development of foundational models necessitates urgent innovation in quantitative ethics and outline possible avenues for its realisation.

Tools & Techniques. ChatGPT responds after searching for ‘appropriate’ chunks of data in its training data. If you asked for a ‘new recipe for cornbread’ there might be hundreds of articles with new in the title. How would it ever come up with something really new?

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-get-better-chatgpt-ai-prompt-guide

12 ways to get better at using ChatGPT: Comprehensive prompt guide

… ChatGPT doesn't always produce desirable outcomes, and the tech can be prone to errors and misinformation.

It all comes down to the prompts users put into ChatGPT.

"If you really want to generate something that is going to be useful for you, you need to do more than just write a generic sentence," Jacqueline DeStefano-Tangorra, a consultant who uses ChatGPT to secure new contracts, told Insider.

A first! Holding management accountable?

https://www.databreaches.net/wells-notice-against-solarwinds-ciso-could-be-first-of-its-kind/

Wells Notice Against SolarWinds CISO Could Be First of Its Kind

Com Sivesind writes:

SolarWinds Corporation, which suffered a major breach of its Orion software platform in December 2020, submitted a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on June 23rd, saying the enforcement staff of the SEC provided the company with a Wells Notice related to its investigation into the cyber incident.

A Wells Notice is a letter the SEC generally issues to organizations or individuals when it is planning to take action against them.

Read more at SecureWorld.

[From the article:

"This is a really big deal. It's unprecedented: this is likely the first time a CISO has ever received one of these. And the implications are immense: Wells Notices are no joke. They create massive career hardships—especially if one plans to work for a publicly traded company."

Interesting argument…

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/30/new_jersey_cops_facebook_wiretap/

Cops told: Er, no, you need a wiretap order if you want real-time Facebook snooping

New Jersey cops must apply for a wiretap order — not just a warrant — for near-continual snooping on suspects' Facebook accounts, according to a unanimous ruling by that US state's Supreme Court.

Thursday's decision overturned a lower court's ruling that said a search warrant was sufficient to compel Meta's social network to turn over access to a user's future posts and messages every 15 minutes for a period of 30 days. That's effectively a real-time tapping system, it was argued.

"The state argues that because of the brief 15-minute delay involved, it is obtaining 'stored communications' rather than intercepting live ones, so fewer safeguards apply. We do not agree," the Garden State's Supremes said [PDF ], noting that this would make New Jersey the only state in America to permit this practice.

This type of near-real-time access to Facebook users' communications "invokes heightened privacy protections," the top court argued. "We also find that the nearly contemporaneous acquisition of electronic communications here is the functional equivalent of wiretap surveillance and is therefore entitled to greater constitutional protection."

Congratulations! Your face matches your phony ID! Welcome aboard.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90918235/tsa-facial-recognition-program-privacy

Exclusive: TSA to expand its facial recognition program to over 400 airports

… The pilot program is officially voluntary and uses what’s known as 1:1 facial matching technology to verify that a traveler standing at a checkpoint matches the photo on their physical ID. “The comparison is extremely accurate,” Langston says.

Challenging. How do you identify a fake review?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/30/23779880/ftc-fake-reviews-ban-ai

The FTC wants to put a ban on fake reviews

If you, too, are so very tired of not knowing which reviews to trust on the internet, we may eventually get some peace of mind. That’s because the Federal Trade Commission now wants to penalize companies for engaging in shady review practices. Under the terms of a new rule proposed by the FTC, businesses could face fines for buying fake reviews — to the tune of up to $50,000 for each time a customer sees one.

Perspective.

https://hbr.org/2023/06/13-principles-for-using-ai-responsibly

13 Principles for Using AI Responsibly

The competitive nature of AI development poses a dilemma for organizations, as prioritizing speed may lead to neglecting ethical guidelines, bias detection, and safety measures. Known and emerging concerns associated with AI in the workplace include the spread of misinformation, copyright and intellectual property concerns, cybersecurity, data privacy, as well as navigating rapid and ambiguous regulations. To mitigate these risks, we propose thirteen principles for responsible AI at work.

Something to explore?

https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-foundation-launches-ai-xyz-to-give-people-their-own-ai-assistants/

AI Foundation launches AI.XYZ to give people their own AI assistants

AI Foundation, an AI research lab that gave us virtual Deepak Chopra, has launched AI.XYZ, a platform for people to create their own AI assistants.

… AI.XYZ is available in public beta and can be accessed on the web with an invitation code. Creators can interact with their AIs through text, voice, and video. A free subscription to AI.XYZ allows users to get started creating their own AI, while a premium subscription for $20 per month allows additional capabilities and customization options.

Tools & Techniques. “Hello, I’m an AI and I’m running for President.”

https://www.makeuseof.com/wondershare-virbo-ai-video-content/

Wondershare Virbo: Unleash the Power of AI to Create Stunning Video Content

… Virbo, available for iOS, Android, and Windows, can create realistic videos with different avatars in various languages. What’s more, videos can be synced via the Cloud so you’ll never lose your work.

You give your script or prompt to the app, and it will create a video for you. With many models from different nationalities and a selection of languages, you can make custom videos in minutes for various locations in the world.

This could be interesting…

https://www.bespacific.com/privacy-class-action-claims-chatgpt-is-catastrophic-risk-to-humanity/

‘AI Arms Race’: Privacy Class Action Claims ChatGPT Is ‘Catastrophic Risk to Humanity’

Law.com – The lawsuit likens Open AI’s alleged privacy violations to complaints against Clearview AI for scraping photos off the internet for commercial gain: “A proposed class action lawsuit against Open AI and ChatGPT investor Microsoft Corp. is seeking a court order requiring the generative artificial-intelligence platform to stop its alleged secret “harvesting” of personal data, and to immediately put in place safeguards to protect society from “potentially catastrophic risk.” The 151-page complaint, surfaced by Law.com Radar and filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that ChatGPT scrapes personal information on the internet without consent, and also gathers user data from their products, including the OpenAI website and other APIs and plug-ins…”

The downside of “We gotta do something!”

https://www.databreaches.net/high-school-changes-every-students-password-to-chngeme/

High school changes every student’s password to ‘Ch@ngeme!’

File this in your “You did WHAT?!” file.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports that after a cybersecurity audit mistakenly reset everyone’s password, Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois did a global replace, changing all students’ passwords to “Ch@ngeme!” to prompt them to change their password.

What could possibly go wrong if you now know every student’s password, right?

Read more at TechCrunch.

My AI found this article interesting.

https://ipwatchdog.com/2023/06/29/u-s-copyright-office-generative-ai-event-three-key-takeaways/id=162771/

U.S. Copyright Office Generative AI Event: Three Key Takeaways

On Wednesday, June 28, the United States Copyright Office (USCO) hosted a virtual event exploring guidance for registration of works containing generative artificial intelligence (AI) content. The hour-long event included a recap of the USCO’s previously released policy guidance and the Zarya of the Dawn partial registration refusal, staff walking through numerous examples of how AI technologies are being used, and a Q&A session consisting of pre-planned and live audience discussion.

Here are three key takeaways from the event.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-to-use-new-bing-with-chatgpt-and-what-you-can-do-with-it/

How to use the new Bing with ChatGPT and what you can do with it

Tom’s Guide – Here’s how to use the new AI-supercharged Bing search: “This could be the beginning of a new era of searching the web, one in which you tell your search engine what you want in a far more natural and intuitive way. I’ve been using Microsoft’s new Bing with ChatGPT, and after exploring it for some time I’m ready to walk you through the process of how to use Bing with ChatGPT to full effect. Also, be sure to check out our guide on 9 helpful things Bing with ChatGPT can do for you to get the most out of the chatbot. But beware, Microsoft Edge is sending all your visited pages to Bing — here’s how to turn it off if you’d rather it didn’t…”

So much for the Turing test…

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23775311/gpt-3-ai-language-models-twitter-disinformation-study

AI-generated tweets might be more convincing than real people, research finds

People apparently find tweets more convincing when they’re written by AI language models. At least, that was the case in a new study comparing content created by humans to language generated by OpenAI’s model GPT-3.

The authors of the new research surveyed people to see if they could discern whether a tweet was written by another person or by GPT-3. The result? People couldn’t really do it. The survey also asked them to decide whether the information in each tweet was true or not. This is where things get even dicier, especially since the content focused on science topics like vaccines and climate change that are subject to a lot of misinformation campaigns online.

Turns out, study participants had a harder time recognizing disinformation if it was written by the language model than if it was written by another person. Along the same lines, they were also better able to correctly identify accurate information if it was written by GPT-3 rather than by a human.

...and Sony is a technology company?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microsoft-confidential-documents-marker-pen-scanner-oops

Sony’s confidential PlayStation secrets just spilled because of a Sharpie

Sony highly confidential information about its PlayStation business has just been revealed by mistake. As part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, Sony supplied a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games.

It looks like someone redacted the documents with a black Sharpie — but when you scan them in, it’s easy to see some of the redactions. Oops.

The court has scrambled to remove the document, but the damage is done; reporters and Sony’s competition have already downloaded all the documents while they were in the public domain.

Resource.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2023/06/29/microsoft-free-generative-ai-skills-courses/

Microsoft is Now Offering Free Generative AI Skills & Training Courses

In a move that reflects the growing impact of generative AI technology, Microsoft has unveiled a comprehensive training program aimed at equipping workers with the necessary skills to harness the power of artificial intelligence. Announced as part of Microsoft’s “Skills for the Jobs” initiative, the program offers free online courses and certificates to help individuals master the fundamental concepts and applications of AI.

LinkedIn, a subsidiary of Microsoft, has developed a series of online courses that cover introductory knowledge of AI and provide a “framework for responsible AI.” These courses when completed will grant a professional certificate, which is the first of its kind in generative AI available on the online learning scenario.

Would you have to explain the step by step decryption process to each jury?

https://apnews.com/article/encrypted-phones-crime-encrochat-drugs-arrests-3ccc15ef095c201eb9fe55837bfdd886

A 3-year probe of encrypted phones led to the seizure of hundreds of tons of drugs, prosecutors say

Investigations triggered by the cracking of encrypted phones three years ago have so far led to more than 6,500 arrests worldwide and the seizure of hundreds of tons of drugs, French, Dutch and European Union prosecutors said Tuesday.

… The French and Dutch investigation gained access to more than 115 million encrypted communications between some 60,000 criminals via servers in the northern French town of Roubaix, prosecutors said at a news conference in the nearby city of Lille.

As a result, 6,558 suspects have been arrested worldwide, including 197 “high-value targets.” Seized drugs included 30.5 million pills, 103.5 metric tons (114 tons) of cocaine, 163.4 metric tons (180 tons) of cannabis and 3.3 metric tons (3.6 tons) of heroin. The investigations also led to nearly 740 million euros ($809 million) in cash being recovered and assets or bank accounts worth another 154 million euros ($168 million) frozen.

So I have to ask, couldn’t you type exculpatory notes as easily?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/06/typing-incriminating-evidence-in-the-memo-field.html

Typing Incriminating Evidence in the Memo Field

Don’t do it:

Recently, the manager of the Harvard Med School morgue was accused of stealing and selling human body parts. Cedric Lodge and his wife Denise were among a half-dozen people arrested for some pretty grotesque crimes. This part is also at least a little bit funny though:

Over a three-year period, Taylor appeared to pay Denise Lodge more than $37,000 for human remains. One payment, for $1,000 included the memo “head number 7.” Another, for $200, read “braiiiiiins.”

It’s so easy to think that you won’t get caught.

No one is dumb enough to do that. (Think of them as lemmings, following their leader off the cliff.)

https://www.bespacific.com/review-of-the-intelligence-failures-in-advance-of-january-6-2021/

Planned in Plain Sight: A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of January 6th, 2021

“U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a new report detailing the results of his investigation examining intelligence failures by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) in the lead-up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The report found that FBI and I&A received numerous tips and were aware of significant online posts threatening violence at the Capitol, yet they failed to accurately assess this intelligence and share the information with law enforcement partners. Peters’ investigation found that these missteps contributed to the security planning failures that left frontline officers unprepared for the violent mob that breached the Capitol and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. The findings build on a bipartisan investigation and report Peters led in 2021 detailing security, planning and response failures related to the attack. The report released by Peters today addresses previously unanswered questions about how the FBI and I&A severely misjudged the threat level. “Despite the high volume of tips and online traffic about the potential for violence – some of which the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis were aware of as early as December 2020 – these agencies failed to sound the alarm and share critical intelligence information that could have helped law enforcement better prepare for the events of January 6, 2021,” said Senator Peters…”

• READ THE FULL REPORT: Planned in Plain Sight: A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of January 6th, 2021

• READ THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-wintoys-guide/

What Is Wintoys? A Short Guide to a Powerful Windows Tool

… As per its developer Bogdan Pătrăucean, Wintoys lets you experience Windows your way and keeps it fresh every day. T he app gives you control to set up, debloat, optimize, repair, and tweak your operating system in a simple, time-saving, yet safe approach.

Indeed, Wintoys is that and more, depending on how you apply it to Windows. It's perfect to keep your system running smoothly while tweaking it to do what you want, the way you want. And the best part is that it's all at your easily accessible in one place.

Getting Wintoys is a matter of clicks too. It's free and you can search for it on the Microsoft Store on your PC or download and install the app from its official Microsoft Store page.