Big Brother will keep you safe, forever.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/16/australia_contact_tracing_review_payment_recommendation/

Australia to track Coronavirus encounters with payment card records

Australia will develop the capability to use payment records in the service of coronavirus contact tracing.

A National Contact Tracing Review released last Friday called for a raft of information technology responses to the pandemic, on grounds that containment of the novel coronavirus will be needed even after a vaccine emerges. The report notes that Australia has generally done very well managing the pandemic, but that some contact tracing efforts still rely on handwritten records and contact details are inconsistently recorded in public venues such as restaurants.

Contrast with the Russian standard (You disagree? You need help!) Is this why Trump moved to Florida?

S.D.N.Y.: Mental health detentions don’t require actual showing of dangerous behavior; probability enough

From FourthAmendment.com:

A mental health detention requires “requires only a ‘probability or substantial chance’ of dangerous behavior, not an actual showing of such behavior.’” … Probable cause for involuntary hospitalization may be established from ‘information gleaned from informants[,] … normally the putative victim or eyewitness, unless the circumstances raise doubt as to the person’s veracity.’ … “However, the ‘harm to self or others’ standard is not met by evidence suggesting merely that the person is emotionally disturbed. See Myers, 819 F.3d at 634 (‘A person may be annoyed, uncooperative, and irrational without presenting a danger to herself or of violence to others.’).” “Insofar as plaintiff contends that the undisputed evidence assembled by defendants does not warrant summary judgment under the ‘harm to self or others’ standard, she is correct. Defendants do not identify, nor has the Court found, any cases holding that probable cause existed for a mental health seizure on facts similar to the ones in this case. To the contrary: courts in the Second Circuit generally find probable cause for a mental health seizure only where there were threats of harm to others, suicidal threats, clear evidence of self-harm, the possession of a firearm or other dangerous weapon by a mentally disturbed person, or some combination of those factors. ….” Guan v. City of New York, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 212611 (S.D. N.Y. Sept. 18, 2020).

For my researchers.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/info#

Google Books Ngram Viewer

When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., "British English", "English Fiction", "French") over the selected years.

[Try searching for “facial recognition” here: https://books.google.com/ngrams Bob]

A ‘culture break’ for shut ins.

https://www.bespacific.com/virtual-art-museums-and-online-exhibits-you-can-visit-during-pandemic/

Virtual art museums and online exhibits you can visit during pandemic

Rappler – “In the months we’ve been in lockdown due to the pandemic, a means of escape has been through art. Whether it be books, songs, films, or a newfound passion for painting, art has been our solace. To celebrate Go To An Art Museum Day on November 9, we’ve curated a list of museums you can visit in the comfort of your homes and at your own pace.…”

Where does this sit on the scale of pandemic response? A police enforced prescription? I suppose it could be worse: Army hunting anyone outside their homes with flame throwers.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-lockdown-greece-text-authorization-sms-message-authorities-reason-leave-home

Coronavirus lockdown in Greece requires people to text authorities before leaving home

The lockdown will start at daybreak Saturday and last until the end of the month. With infections surging across the country, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he acted before patients overwhelm hospitals.

… As part of the lockdown, all retail stores except those selling essential items such as food, medication, and fuel will be closed.

… People will only be allowed to leave their homes for work, physical exercise or medical reasons, and only after sending a text message to authorities.

Perspective.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2020/11/15/its-managers-not-workers-who-are-losing-jobs-to-ai-and-robots-study-shows/?sh=7517092a20d5

It’s Managers, Not Workers, Who Are Losing Jobs To AI And Robots, Study Shows

Managers, not lower-level employees, are seeing their ranks diminished with the onset of artificial intelligence and robots, a new study out of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School finds. That’s because as AI and robotics expands within a business, managers can oversee a wider breadth of operations.

In a recent podcast discussion, Lynn Wu, professor at The Wharton School and AIB Affiliated Faculty, points out that “contrary to the popular notion that robots will replace human labor, we find robot-adopting firms employed more people over time. Any displacement of labor came from firms that did not adopt robots. These non-adopting firms actually lost their competitiveness — and they had to lay off workers.” Details of Wu’s study, based on looking at the performance of firms that purchased AI and robots over a 20-year period in Canada, will be published in the INFORMS journal Management Science.

Semantics?

http://www.dvkjournals.in/index.php/ah/article/view/3203

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE COMPLEXITY OF ETHICS

While reflecting upon artificial intelligence, one of its characteristics is often highlighted: its complexity. Sometimes the complexity of artificial intelligence is even used as an argument against holding humans responsible for it. At the same time, surprisingly the complexity of ethics is usually perceived with a reductionist understanding of ethics. In this article, the concept “artificial intelligence” itself is critically reviewed resulting in the introduction of a more adequate term: “databased systems.” Beyond that, I argue against the possibility of “ethical” databased systems and in favour of databased systems with ethics. Finally, the complexity of ethics and its consequences for the ethical dimension of technology-based innovation will be in the focus.

Another view…

https://jurnal.unej.ac.id/index.php/eJLH/article/view/18380

Legal Aspect of Artificial Intelligence on Automated Decision Making: Indonesia, the European Union, the United States and China

This paper analyzes the urgency of a comprehensive legal framework of automated decision-making as part of Artificial Intelligence in Indonesia by comparing it in the European Union, the United States, and China. More importantly, this paper inquires about the status quo of the legal protection of automated decision-making In Indonesia. Besides, this paper will also highlight the involvement of profiling in an automated decision-making system and discuss personal data protection implementation. Members of the European Union set out a law in the General Data Protection Regulation that prohibits Automated Decision-Making to a certain extent. Whereas in the United States, the practice of automated decision-making is rather usual. Lastly, China takes rather an exceptional measure and develops a social credit system. The analysis asserts how Indonesia has weak legal protection towards personal data and profiling that could essentially facilitate automated decision-making. The provision of automated decision-making and Profiling is the absolute bare minimum on the newest Personal Data Protection Regulation Draft. It does not give enough legal certainty towards the matter of automated decision-making and profiling. Thus, it is paramount for the lawmaker to comprise a comprehensive regulation on automated decision-making, including profiling, by adopting the legal framework of the General Data Protection Regulation.

A mere nibble (as fines go) but multiply this by the number of countries in the world…

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1763111/business-economy

Turkish competition board hits Google with $25m fine

Google has been hit with a 196.7 million Turkish lira ($25.6 million) fine by the Turkish Competition Board as part of an investigation against the company.

The decision comes amid growing government control of Internet in the country.

… Google is accused of breaching the law by complicating search results in the content services market by placing text ads at the top of organic search results. Therefore, some companies do not show up in searches if they do not generate advertisement revenue for Google.

A strategic consideration. Enough here to get you thinking...

https://www.makeuseof.com/cloud-storage-vs-local-backups/

Forget Cloud Storage: Here's Why You Should Switch to Local Backups

… If you're considering switching to local backup, here's everything you need to know.

A new and elegant approach? Will the average computer user take the time to consider each request? Or will they rely on a “click here to give me access’ button I provide?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/11/inrupts-solid-announcement.html

Inrupt’s Solid Announcement

Earlier this year, I announced that I had joined Inrupt, the company commercializing Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid specification:

The idea behind Solid is both simple and extraordinarily powerful. Your data lives in a pod that is controlled by you. Data generated by your things — your computer, your phone, your IoT whatever — is written to your pod. You authorize granular access to that pod to whoever you want for whatever reason you want. Your data is no longer in a bazillion places on the Internet, controlled by you-have-no-idea-who. It’s yours. If you want your insurance company to have access to your fitness data, you grant it through your pod. If you want your friends to have access to your vacation photos, you grant it through your pod. If you want your thermostat to share data with your air conditioner, you give both of them access through your pod.

This week, Inrupt announced the availability of the commercial-grade Enterprise Solid Server, along with a small but impressive list of initial customers of the product and the specification (like the UK National Health Service ). This is a significant step forward to realizing Tim’s vision:

Never was?

https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

Your Computer Isn't Yours

I’m speaking, of course, of the world that Richard Stallman predicted in 1997, The one Cory Doctorow also warned us about,

On modern versions of macOS, you simply can’t power on your computer, launch a text editor or eBook reader, and write or read, without a log of your activity being transmitted and stored.

It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. Lots of people didn’t realize this, because it’s silent and invisible and it fails instantly and gracefully when you’re offline, but today the server got really slow and it didn’t hit the fail-fast code path, and everyone’s apps failed to open if they were connected to the internet.

Because it does this using the internet, the server sees your IP, of course, and knows what time the request came in. An IP address allows for coarse, city-level and ISP-level geolocation, and allows for a table that has the following headings:

Date, Time, Computer, ISP, City, State, Application Hash

… This means that Apple knows when you’re at home. When you’re at work. What apps you open there, and how often. They know when you open Premiere over at a friend’s house on their Wi-Fi, and they know when you open Tor Browser in a hotel on a trip to another city.

… Well, it’s not just Apple. This information doesn’t stay with them:

Know how that AI thinks!

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pursuing-Open-Source-Development-of-Predictive-The-Waggoner-Macmillen/93d65a4447804dc3116169f15f6618a82e137d21

Pursuing Open-Source Development of Predictive Algorithms: The Case of Criminal Sentencing Algorithms

Currently, there is uncertainty surrounding the merits of open-source versus proprietary algorithm development. Though justification in favor of each exists, we argue that open-source algorithm development should be the standard in highly consequential contexts that affect people’s lives for reasons of transparency and collaboration, which contribute to greater predictive accuracy and enjoy the additional advantage of cost-effectiveness. To make this case, we focus on criminal sentencing algorithms, as criminal sentencing is highly consequential, and impacts society and individual people. Further, the popularity of this topic has surged in the wake of recent studies uncovering racial bias in proprietary sentencing algorithms among other issues of over-fitting and model complexity. We suggest these issues are exacerbated by the proprietary and expensive nature of virtually all widely used criminal sentencing algorithms. Upon replicating a major algorithm using real criminal profiles, we fit three penalized regressions and demonstrate an increase in predictive power of these open-source and relatively computationally inexpensive options. The result is a data-driven suggestion that if judges who are making sentencing decisions want to craft appropriate sentences based on a high degree of accuracy and at low costs, then they should be pursuing open-source options.

Perspective.

https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/11/14/we-currently-have-no-smart-cities-by-2025-therell-be-26-syndication/

We currently have no smart cities — by 2025 there’ll be 26

Spending on smart city technology is expected to reach US$327 billion by 2025, up from US$96 billion in 2019, according to a new forecast from Frost & Sullivan.

The analyst company said an uncertain post-pandemic situation will compel cities to focus on developing collaborative, data-driven infrastructure for use in healthcare, public security services and more.

… Cities have already invested in contact-tracing wearables and apps, open data platforms, autonomous drones and crowd analytics to fight COVID-19, according to the report, and smart grids, intelligent traffic management, autonomous vehicles, smart lighting and e-governance services are expected to gain traction when the pandemic passes.

Have we crossed from defiant to delusional? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-loses-string-of-election-results-lawsuits/ar-BB1b07iS

Trump Loses String of Election Results Lawsuits

In quick succession, Mr. Trump was handed defeats in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan, where a state judge in Detroit rejected an unusual Republican attempt to halt the certification of the vote in Wayne County pending an audit of the count.

...and yet I can’t prove that my vote was recorded correctly, or at all. Funny that.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-november-3rd-election-was-the-most-secure-in-american-history/

The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history

Wider jurisdiction and wider scope of defamation?

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/12/facebook-loses-final-appeal-in-defamation-takedown-case-must-remove-same-and-similar-hate-posts-globally/

Facebook loses final appeal in defamation takedown case, must remove same and similar hate posts globally

Austria’s Supreme Court has dismissed Facebook’s appeal in a long running speech takedown case — ruling it must remove references to defamatory comments made about a local politician worldwide for as long as the injunction lasts. [Does it then have to put them back? Bob]

… Questions were referred up to the EU’s Court of Justice. And in a key judgement last year the CJEU decided platforms can be instructed to hunt for and remove illegal speech worldwide without falling foul of European rules that preclude platforms from being saddled with a “general content monitoring obligation”. Today’s Austrian Supreme Court ruling flows naturally from that.

Austrian newspaper Der Standard reports that the court confirmed the injunction applies worldwide, both to identical postings or those that carry the same essential meaning as the original defamatory posting. [So, would this article have to be suppressed? How about if I posted it in place of the original? Bob]

Also more work from home. What will that tracking show?

https://onezero.medium.com/welcome-back-to-the-office-please-wear-this-tracking-device-98747a66750f

Welcome Back to the Office. Please Wear This Tracking Device

A boom in contact tracing devices could herald a new era of worker surveillance

I doubt anyone has THE answer, yet. Keep trying.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-state-could-be-the-2021-battleground-for-internet-privacy-11605177001

Washington State Could Be the 2021 Battleground for Internet Privacy

A senior lawmaker in Washington believes the state can be the next hub for consumer privacy legislation in the U.S., following California’s lead. But he faces continued opposition from within his own party over how it should be enforced.

State Sen. Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat who chairs the Washington state Senate’s Environment, Energy & Technology Committee, said he is evaluating the recently approved California Privacy Rights Act with an eye toward updating the Washington Privacy Act in the coming weeks in preparation for the next legislative session beginning in January.

… Similar to data protections in the CPRA, Mr. Carlyle’s draft 2021 bill would give residents the right to request companies to delete or correct their personal data. The proposal would also allow consumers to opt out of data processing for certain purposes, such as targeted advertising, and require businesses to conduct data-protection assessments.

The key sticking point is enforcement, state officials say, namely whether to create a private right of action that would allow individuals to sue companies for alleged violations.

“I do not support that position in any way,” Mr. Carlyle said, warning of frivolous lawsuits and citing opposition from the business community. “I strongly believe state-level [attorney general] enforcement is the way you can most effectively enforce the bill.”

Some other state officials, including Attorney General Bob Ferguson, argue that such a private right of action is crucial.

“Last year’s data privacy bill was unenforceable,” Mr. Ferguson, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The bill prohibited individuals from going to court to protect their rights, and failed to give my office the tools we need to ensure compliance.”

(Related) If not an answer, a strong suggestion.

https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2020/11/12/european-commission-publishes-draft-of-new-standard-contractual-clauses/

European Commission Publishes Draft of New Standard Contractual Clauses

On November 12, 2020, the European Commission published a draft implementing decision on standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data to third countries pursuant to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) along with its draft set of new standard contractual clauses (the “New SCCs”).

Should be informative.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/introducing-how-fix-internet-new-podcast-eff

Introducing “How to Fix the Internet,” a New Podcast from EFF

Today EFF is launching How to Fix the Internet, a new podcast mini-series to examine potential solutions to six ills facing the modern digital landscape.

… We are launching the podcast with two episodes: The Secret Court Approving Secret Surveillance, featuring the Cato Institute’s specialist in surveillance legal policy Julian Sanchez; and Why Does My Internet Suck?, featuring Gigi Sohn, one of the nation’s leading advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks. Future episodes will be released on Tuesdays.

We’ve also created a hub page for How to Fix the Internet. This page includes links to all of our episodes, ways to subscribe, and detailed show notes. In the show notes, we’ve included all the books mentioned in each podcast, as well as substantial legal resources—including key opinions in the cases we talk about, briefs filed by EFF, bios of our guests, and a full transcript of every episode.

You can subscribe to How to Fix the Internet via RSS. Stitcher, TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify and through any of the other podcast places.

If the music companies can do it, the ISPs must also.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/internet-service-provider-isp-cox-communications-found-liable-to-tune-1-billion

Internet Service Provider (ISP) Cox Communications Found Liable to the Tune of $1 Billion For Allowing Users to Illegally Share Music Files on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Recently, the Eastern District of Virginia upheld a music piracy jury verdict against the internet service provider Cox Communications. See Sony Music Ent. v. Cox Commc’ns, Case No. 1:18-cv-950-LO-JFA, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105071 (E.D. Va. June 2, 2020). The jury returned a $1 billion damage award against Cox Communications who was accused of knowingly allowing subscribers to share and download infringing songs via peer-to-peer sharing platforms such as BitTorrent. Holding an internet service provider liable for the infringing acts of its users, this case sets the stage for a closely watched appeal.

… The jury found Cox failed to address the copyright infringement despite receiving information from the copyright owners about the time, place, and IP addresses responsible for illegally distributing and reproducing music files over Cox’s network. The court agreed there was enough evidence to find the technology used to detect the infringement was reliable, Cox had the right and ability to supervise the infringement committed by its subscribers, and Cox gained a financial benefit from the infringement. There was sufficient basis for the jury to find Cox liable for vicarious copyright infringement, and because Cox failed to address the specific notices of infringement, for contributory infringement as well.

Perspective. I suspect the President’s insistence that ‘employees’ “do what I want, ignore the facts” will inform most of the post-presidential investigations of his business dealings. By the way, Krebs was fired.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-officials-exclusive-idUSKBN27S2YI

Exclusive: Top official on U.S. election cybersecurity tells associates he expects to be fired

Top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, who worked on protecting the election from hackers but drew the ire of the Trump White House over efforts to debunk disinformation, has told associates he expects to be fired, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Another change in strategic Computer Security thinking.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-urges-users-to-stop-using-phone-based-multi-factor-authentication/

Microsoft urges users to stop using phone-based multi-factor authentication

… The Microsoft exec cites several known security issues, not with MFA, but with the state of the telephone networks today.

Weinert says that both SMS and voice calls are transmitted in cleartext and can be easily intercepted by determined attackers, using techniques and tools like software-defined-radios, FEMTO cells, or SS7 intercept services.

Too much disclosure to catch on? Perhaps California could add this to their next Privacy law update…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/11/privacy-nutrition-labels-in-apples-app-store.html

“Privacy Nutrition Labels” in Apple’s App Store

Apple will start requiring standardized privacy labels for apps in its app store, starting in December:

Apple allows data disclosure to be optional if all of the following conditions apply: if it’s not used for tracking, advertising or marketing; if it’s not shared with a data broker; if collection is infrequent, unrelated to the app’s primary function, and optional; and if the user chooses to provide the data in conjunction with clear disclosure, the user’s name or account name is prominently displayed with the submission.

Otherwise, the privacy labeling is mandatory and requires a fair amount of detail. Developers must disclose the use of contact information, health and financial data, location data, user content, browsing history, search history, identifiers, usage data, diagnostics, and more. If a software maker is collecting the user’s data to display first or third-party adverts, this has to be disclosed.

These disclosures then get translated to a card-style interface displayed with app product pages in the platform-appropriate App Store.

The concept of a privacy nutrition label isn’t new, and has been well-explored at CyLab at Carnegie Mellon University.

Settle yes, but what should you settle for?

The FTC Zoom Case: Does the FTC Need a New Approach?

As I mentioned yesterday on DataBreaches.net in noting the FTC settlement with Zoom, two commissioners dissented from the settlement — and they dissented because they felt that the settlement didn’t do enough to protect or serve consumers.

Prominent privacy scholars Daniel Solove and Woody (Woodrow) Hartzog have written about their dissents and the settlement in a new piece, The FTC Zoom Case: Does the FTC Need a New Approach?

As scholars who have been supportive of the FTC’s approach in the past, they continue to support the use of settlements as opposed to costly and protracted litigation, but they do agree with the dissenting commissioners that certain recommendations should be implemented.

Read their commentary on LinkedIn.

A very interesting perspective.

JAIC Chief Asks: Can AI Prevent Another 1914?

What does the three-star director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center worry about? “Let me start in 1914,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Groen.

“Yes, 1914 – I see the look on your face,” Groen told the moderator of an online forum Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

1914 was the last time great powers went to war after decades of relative peace, using radically new technology they didn’t really understand. Back then, Groen said, the result was infantry with bayonets and cavalry with lances trying to charge machine gun nests, futilely pitting muscle power against mechanical power. In the 21^st century, he fears, “the Information Age equivalent of… lancers riding into machine guns” is using traditional command, control, and planning processes against an adversary using artificial intelligence, pitting human brainpower against machine speed.

(Related)

https://www.militaryaerospace.com/sensors/article/14187088/radar-jet-fighter-artificial-intelligence

Britain's Tempest sixth-generation jet fighter will have high-speed radar, artificial intelligence (AI)

The companies building the United Kingdom's Tempest sixth-generation fighter aircraft have revealed some of the enabling technologies that be part of the new plane, including a radar system designed to handle as much data per second as a city.

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

11 Nov. 2020 – Under development for the Royal Air Force (RAF), the Tempest will be one of the first sixth-generation jet fighter aircraft. It's designed to complement current combat craft like the F-35 Lightning II and the Typhoon fighters starting in the mid-2030s until the older warplanes are retired in the 2040s.

The stealth fighter will be able to carry hypersonic missiles and control drone swarms, and produce large amounts of electricity so it can power laser weapons.

Along with this, the twin-engine, delta-wing Tempest will have reconfigurable artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber-hardened communications that enable it to act as a flying command and control center, where the pilot acts more as a supervisor than as a dog fighter.

Because gold is boring?

https://www.bespacific.com/retail-might-be-struggling-but-the-rich-are-buying-rare-books/

Retail Might Be Struggling, But the Rich Are Buying Rare Books

Bloomberg via MSN: “Even as independent bookstores struggle to survive, rare books and manuscripts have proven a rare bright spot in the industry. “It’s almost like two businesses,” says Kenneth Gloss, the owner of Brattle Book Shop in Boston. “As far as the general used-book business, it’s been off.” His third floor of rare and antiquarian books, though, is doing nearly as well as it ever has. “People are at home, the stock market is doing well, so people with spare funds are sitting home, bored and buying a lot of books,” Gloss says. The same phenomenon has occurred in categories as disparate as jewelry and classic cars. Rich people are still rich, and they’re still spending serious amounts of money on things that bring them joy—and perhaps, a return on investment later. The market for extremely rare books has been healthy for years, dealers say, but quantifying its ups and downs is difficult, because “if you’re talking about a book with many comparables over time, you’ve missed the top of the market,” says Darren Sutherland, a specialist in Bonham’s rare books department in New York.”