If you steal cash, it’s gone after one use. IP is a gift that keeps on giving.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3660631/chinas-cyber-espionage-focus-is-intellectual-property-theft.html#tk.rss_all

China's cyber espionage focus: intellectual property theft

The recently uncovered Operation CuckooBees campaign shows how serious China is about using IP theft as a competitive advantage. Protect IP now or chase it later.

Why do they assume no one is ready to do this? If all it takes is cash, think China, Russia, etc.

https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/ai-ml-ransomware-cyberattacks-automation

Ransomware is already out of control. AI-powered ransomware could be 'terrifying.'

Hiring AI experts to automate ransomware could be the next step for well-endowed ransomware groups that are seeking to scale up their attacks.

In the perpetual battle between cybercriminals and defenders, the latter have always had one largely unchallenged advantage: The use of AI and machine learning allows them to automate a lot of what they do, especially around detecting and responding to attacks. This leg-up hasn't been nearly enough to keep ransomware at bay, but it has still been far more than what cybercriminals have ever been able to muster in terms of AI and automation.

That’s because deploying AI-powered ransomware would require AI expertise. And the ransomware gangs don’t have it. At least not yet.

But given the wealth accumulated by a number of ransomware gangs in recent years, it may not be long before attackers do bring aboard AI experts of their own, prominent cybersecurity authority Mikko Hyppönen said.

Some of these groups have so much cash — or bitcoin, rather — that they could now potentially compete with legit security firms for talent in AI and machine learning, according to Hyppönen, the chief research officer at cybersecurity firm WithSecure.

For those facing this for the first time.

https://www.bespacific.com/a-tale-of-two-functions-business-and-legal-considerations-after-a-data-breach/

A Tale of Two Functions: Business and Legal Considerations after a Data Breach

ABA Litigation Group – “Analyzing how best to preserve attorney-client privilege and work product protections over data breach investigatory reports in light of changing trends. In-house counsel faced with a data breach encounter a difficult balancing act. On one hand, it is critical to determine the cause of the breach and generate a plan to bolster security systems to reduce the likelihood of similar occurrences in the future. On the other hand, these same reports, usually performed by third-party consulting companies, can generate damning evidence for affected parties in ensuing litigation. Whether such reports are subject to production in litigation often turns on a handful of minutiae, such as the primary purpose of the report’s creation and whether the company maintains a clear line between business and legal functions. As a matter of practicality and necessity, that line often becomes blurred quite quickly, and several recent case decisions demonstrate the pitfalls that can result in inadvertent production of these reports in litigation. One of the earlier reported decisions involved Target’s successful objection to production of a data breach report on the basis of privilege in class-action litigation. See In re Target Corp. Customer Data Sec. Breach Litig., No. MDL142522PAMJJK, 2015 WL 6777384 (D. Minn. Oct. 23, 2015). Unlike many of the cases that followed, Target succeeded in protecting its data breach investigatory report from production in litigation. Following the Target decision, the tide has turned significantly regarding the production of data breach reports in litigation. These cases all tend to have similar threads: whether, and to what extent, these reports are generated for the purpose of providing legal advice or in anticipation of litigation and, most importantly, whether the company can prove either of those prongs…”

Ensuring free speech or training the next shooter?

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/16/did-twitch-violate-texas-social-media-law-by-removing-mass-murderers-live-stream-of-his-killing-spree/

Did Twitch Violate Texas’ Social Media Law By Removing Mass Murderer’s Live Stream Of His Killing Spree?

As you’ve no doubt heard, on Saturday there was yet another horrific shooting, this one in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding more. From all current evidence, the shooter, a teenager, was a brainwashed white nationalist, spewing nonsense and hate in a long manifesto that repeated bigoted propaganda found in darker corners of the internet… and on Fox News’ evening shows. He also streamed the shooting rampage live on Twitch, and apparently communicated some of his plans via Discord and 4chan.

Twitch quickly took down the stream and Discord is apparently investigating. All of this is horrible, of course. But, it seems worth noting that it’s quite possible Twitch’s removal could violate Texas’ ridiculously fucked up social media law.

I did not consult my AI before deciding to include this article.

https://fpf.org/blog/fpf-report-automated-decision-making-under-the-gdpr-a-comprehensive-case-law-analysis/

FPF REPORT: AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING UNDER THE GDPR – A COMPREHENSIVE CASE-LAW ANALYSIS

Today, the Future of Privacy Forum launched a comprehensive Report analyzing case-law under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applied to real-life cases involving Automated Decision Making (ADM). The Report is informed by extensive research covering more than 70 Court judgments, decisions from Data Protection Authorities (DPAs), specific Guidance and other policy documents issued by regulators.

How effective could a small lobbying effort be?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/17/american-edge-facebook-regulation/

Facebook quietly bankrolled small, grassroots groups to fight its battles in Washington

Records show Facebook-funded American Edge backed minority interest groups, conservative think tanks and small business groups to create the appearance of grassroots opposition to antitrust regulation

(Related) Perhaps the effort wasn’t even needed?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/13/support-for-more-regulation-of-tech-companies-has-declined-in-u-s-especially-among-republicans/

Support for more regulation of tech companies has declined in U.S., especially among Republicans

A declining share of Americans favor more government regulation of major technology companies, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Still, a plurality of U.S. adults favor greater regulation of these companies, and a large majority believe it is at least somewhat likely that social media sites censor political viewpoints they find objectionable.

Overall, 44% of Americans think major technology companies should be regulated more than they are now, down from 56% in April 2021. Conversely, the share of Americans who say they want less government regulation of major technology companies has roughly doubled, from about one-in-ten (9%) in previous years to one-in-five today.

Imagine a small urban garden that provides 90% of your food needs.

https://grist.org/article/although-the-data-is-thin-advocates-say-robotics-and-ai-will-soon-revolutionize-agriculture/

Although the data is thin, advocates say robotics and AI will soon revolutionize agriculture

… Right now, he says, most farmers focus on yield, defining success as growing more on the same amount of land. The result: horizon-to-horizon, industrial monocultures saturated with chemicals and tended by massive and increasingly expensive machinery. With the help of his robots, Chowdhary foresees a future, instead, of smaller farms living more in harmony with nature, growing a diversity of higher value crops with fewer chemicals.

“The biggest thing we can do is make it easier for farmers to focus on profit, and not just on yield,” Chowdhary wrote in an email to Undark. “Management tools that help reduce fertilizer and herbicide costs while improving the quality of land and keeping yield up will help farmers realize more profit through fundamentally more sustainable techniques.”

Keep this up and LinkedIn could become useful!

https://www.bespacific.com/linkedin-new-tools-to-discover-share-insights-expertise-accessibility/

LinkedIn – new tools to discover & share insights & expertise, accessibility

5 Need to Know New Products (1) Searching for the best knowledge across LinkedIn – “Every minute incredible conversations are taking place on LinkedIn. Millions of professionals around the world come together to share & exchange ideas in pursuit of their professional goals & aspirations. From discussing macroeconomic trends to career conversations, experts and like-minded professionals across all industries and geographies come to share their unique experiences and insights. To help members find the most valuable conversations, we have been investing heavily in content search and discovery. Now, when you search for news, topics, or trends you’ll see posts from people you’re connected with or following, as well as, relevant creators on LinkedIn. If you’re interested in a particular topic (such as web3 or Elon Musk Twitter deal ) when you search for it you’ll see the latest insights, expert opinions, and other breaking news. From finding the right people, communities, companies, jobs, or content, you can now make progress on any professional goal by simply searching for the topic you have in mind. We also hear from members that they want to re-discover posts they’ve seen, and we made it much easier. If you’re looking for something that you’ve seen before on Feed, you can now search with the creator’s name and keywords in their post…

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/7-ways-to-find-all-accounts-linked-to-your-email-address-or-phone-number/

7 Ways to Find All Accounts Linked to Your Email Address or Phone Number

MakeUseOf: “Over the course of our long and storied lives online, most of us have signed up for many online accounts, only to have them fall by the wayside, unused forever. Now, the email address or a phone number you surrendered for registration can be misused. It’s time to ask yourself, “How do I find all accounts linked to my email address?” It’s best to revisit all your accounts to update your credentials or deactivate them, but it’s not always as easy as hitting the “Find My Account” button. Here are some ways you can find all accounts linked to your email address or phone number.”

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mobile-apps-book-lovers/

11 Must-Have Apps for Book Lovers

Love to read? You need these apps designed for bookworms. They’ll help you find new books, connect with others, and more.

Yeah, but they often work!

https://www.pogowasright.org/geofence-warrants-and-reverse-keyword-warrants-are-so-invasive-even-big-tech-wants-to-ban-them/

Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants are So Invasive, Even Big Tech Wants to Ban Them

Geofence and reverse keyword warrants are some of the most dangerous, civil-liberties-infringing and reviled tools in law enforcement agencies’ digital toolbox. It turns out that these warrants are so invasive of user privacy that big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are willing to support banning them. The three tech giants have issued a public statement through a trade organization,“Reform Government Surveillance,” that they will support a bill before the New York State legislature. The Reverse Location Search Prohibition Act, A. 84 / S. 296, would prohibit government use of geofence warrants and reverse warrants, a bill that EFF also supports. Their support is welcome, especially since we’ve been calling on companies like Google, which have a lot of resources and a lot of lawyers, to do more to resist these kinds of government requests.

Under the Fourth Amendment, if police can demonstrate probable cause that searching a particular person or place will reveal evidence of a crime, they can obtain a warrant from a court authorizing a limited search for this evidence. In cases involving digital evidence stored with a tech company, this typically involves sending the warrant to the company and demanding they turn over the suspect’s digital data.

Geofence and reverse keyword warrants completely circumvent the limits set by the Fourth Amendment. If police are investigating a crime–anything from vandalism to arson–they instead submit requests that do not identify a single suspect or particular user account. Instead, with geofence warrants, they draw a box on a map, and compel the company to identify every digital device within that drawn boundary during a given time period. Similarly, with a “keyword” warrant, police compel the company to hand over the identities of anyone who may have searched for a specific term, such as a victim’s name or a particular address where a crime has occurred.

These reverse warrants have serious implications for civil liberties. Their increasingly common use means that anyone whose commute takes them goes by the scene of a crime might suddenly become vulnerable to suspicion, surveillance, and harassment by police. It means that an idle Google search for an address that corresponds to the scene of a robbery could make you a suspect. It also means that with one document, companies would be compelled to turn over identifying information on every phone that appeared in the vicinity of a protest, as happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin during a protest against police violence. And, as EFF has argued in amicus briefs, it violates the Fourth Amendment because it results in an overbroad fishing-expedition against unspecified targets, the majority of whom have no connection to any crime.

In the statement released by the companies, they write that, “This bill, if passed into law, would be the first of its kind to address the increasing use of law enforcement requests that, instead of relying on individual suspicion, request data pertaining to individuals who may have been in a specific vicinity or used a certain search term.” This is an undoubtedly positive step for companies that have a checkered history of being cavalier with users’ data and enabling large-scale government surveillance. But they can do even more than support legislation in one state. Companies can still resist complying with geofence warrants across the country, be much more transparent about the geofence warrants it receives, provide all affected users with notice, and give users meaningful choice and control over their private data.

This article originally appeared at EFF.

Over-privitization? Are there situations that require the removal of privacy protections? Could this be trusted to independent third parties?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4104823

Using Sensitive Data to Prevent Discrimination by AI: Does the GDPR Need a New Exception?

Organisations can use artificial intelligence to make decisions about people for a variety of reasons, for instance, to select the best candidates from many job applications. However, AI systems can have discriminatory effects when used for decision-making. To illustrate, an AI system could reject applications of people with a certain ethnicity, while the organisation did not plan such ethnicity discrimination. But in Europe, an organisation runs into a problem when it wants to assess whether its AI system accidentally leads to ethnicity discrimination: the organisation may not know the applicants’ ethnicity. In principle, the GDPR bans the use of certain ‘special categories of data’ (sometimes called ‘sensitive data’), which include data on ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference. The proposal for an AI Act of the European Commission includes a provision that would enable organisations to use of special categories of data for their auditing AI systems. This paper asks whether the GDPR’s rules on special categories of personal data hinder the prevention of AIdriven discrimination. We argue that the GDPR does prohibit such use of special category data in many circumstances. We also map out the arguments for and against creating an exception to the GDPR’s ban on using special categories of personal data, to enable preventing discrimination by AI systems. The paper discusses European law, but the paper can be relevant outside Europe too, as many policymakers in the world grapple with the tension between privacy and non-discrimination policy.

Feel free to express yourself.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/12/just-how-incredibly-fucked-up-is-texas-social-media-content-moderation-law/

Just How Incredibly Fucked Up Is Texas’ Social Media Content Moderation Law?

So, I already had a quick post on the bizarre decision by the 5th Circuit to reinstate Texas’ social media content moderation law just two days after a bizarrely stupid hearing on it. However, I don’t think most people actually understand just how truly fucked up and obviously unconstitutional the law is. Indeed, there are so many obvious problems with it, I’m not even sure I can do them adequate justice in a single post. I’ve seen some people say that it’s easy to comply with, but that’s wrong. There is no possible way to comply with this bill. You can read the full law here, but let’s go through the details.

The law declares social media platforms as “common carriers” and this was a big part of the hearing on Monday, even though it’s not at all clear what that actually means and whether or not a state can just magically declare a website a common carrier (as we’ve explained, that’s not how any of this works). But, it’s mainly weird because it doesn’t really seem to mean anything under Texas law. The law could have been written entirely without declaring them “common carriers” and I’m not sure how it would matter.

We are going to do it, so we should probably get it right. (What if we had to convince an AI that our war was just?)

https://philpapers.org/rec/UMBDFD

Designed for Death: Controlling Killer Robots

Autonomous weapons systems, often referred to as ‘killer robots’, have been a hallmark of popular imagination for decades. However, with the inexorable advance of artificial intelligence systems (AI) and robotics, killer robots are quickly becoming a reality. These lethal technologies can learn, adapt, and potentially make life and death decisions on the battlefield with little-to-no human involvement. This naturally leads to not only legal but ethical concerns as to whether we can meaningful control such machines, and if so, then how. Such concerns are made even more poignant by the ever-present fear that something may go wrong, and the machine may carry out some action(s) violating the ethics or laws of war. Researchers, policymakers, and designers are caught in the quagmire of how to approach these highly controversial systems and to figure out what exactly it means to have meaningful human control over them, if at all. In Designed for Death, Dr Steven Umbrello aims to not only produce a realistic but also an optimistic guide for how, with human values in mind, we can begin to design killer robots. Drawing on the value sensitive design (VSD) approach to technology innovation, Umbrello argues that context is king and that a middle path for designing killer robots is possible if we consider both ethics and design as fundamentally linked. Umbrello moves beyond the binary debates of whether or not to prohibit killer robots and instead offers a more nuanced perspective of which types of killer robots may be both legally and ethically acceptable, when they would be acceptable, and how to design for them.

We need more of this…

http://shura.shu.ac.uk/30207/

Citizen Perspectives on Necessary Safeguards to the Use of AI by Law Enforcement Agencies

In the light of modern technological advances, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is relied upon to enhance performance, increase efficiency, and maximize gains. For Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), it can prove valuable in optimizing evidence analysis and establishing proactive prevention measures. Nevertheless, citizens raise legitimate concerns around privacy invasions, biases, inequalities, and inaccurate decisions. This study explores the views of 111 citizens across eight countries towards AI use by police through interviews and integrates societal concerns along with propositions of safeguards from negative effects of AI use by LEAs in the context of cybercrime and terrorism.

Interesting conjecture. Stop thinking of self-driving cars and start thinking of on-demand transportation?

https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/14/the-problem-with-self-driving-cars/

The problem with self-driving cars

… We have achieved things in computer vision, natural language processing and speech recognition that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. By all accounts, the accuracy of our AI systems exceeds the wildest imaginations of yesteryear.

And yet, it’s not enough.

We were wrong about the future. Every prediction about self-driving cars has been wrong. We are not living in a future of autonomous cyborgs, and something else has come into focus.

(Related)

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-34293-7_7

Summary and Discussion

The automotive industry is in the progress of a fundamental change, as they no longer meet mobility requirements, especially in urban areas. As a result, many predict a disruptive change. Responses to this are new innovative developments. One answer to this are automated driving systems that offer great potential for increasing safety, comfort, environmental pollution and efficiency in road traffic.

It was hard not to pay the ransom when it was only your children being kidnapped. Now it’s your entire business!

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/13/organizations_pay_ransomware/

Most organizations hit by ransomware would pay up if hit again

Almost nine in 10 organizations that have suffered a ransomware attack would choose to pay the ransom if hit again, according to a new report, compared with two-thirds of those that have not experienced an attack.

The findings come from a report titled "How business executives perceive ransomware threat" by security company Kaspersky, which states that ransomware has become an ever-present threat, with 64 percent of companies surveyed already having suffered an attack, but more worryingly, that executives seem to believe that paying the ransom is a reliable way of addressing the issue.

The report, available here, is based on research involving 900 respondents across North America, South America, Africa, Russia, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. The respondents were in senior non-IT management roles at companies between 50 and 1,000 employees.

Overly free speech?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tech-firms-ask-us-supreme-court-block-texas-social-media-law-rcna28853

Tech groups ask Supreme Court to block Texas social media law

… The law forbids social media companies with more than 50 million active users per month from banning members based on their political views and requires them to publicly disclose how they moderate content.

… Internet lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a lawsuit against the measure, and U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin, Texas, issued a preliminary injunction in December.

Pitman had found that the law would harm social media companies’ free speech rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The tech groups, in their emergency request, asked the Supreme Court to “allow the District Court’s careful reasoning to remain in effect while an orderly appellate process plays out.”

Interesting. All this well before Russia invaded Ukraine.

https://executivegov.com/2022/05/study-no-unbridgeable-divide-between-dod-silicon-valley-on-military-use-of-ai/

Study Finds No Unbridgeable Divide Between Pentagon, Silicon Valley Over Military Use of AI

A RAND Corp. study found no unbridgeable gap between the Department of Defense and Silicon Valley and showed more similarities in attitudes across Silicon Valley employees, defense industrial base and alumni of universities with regard to the military use of artificial intelligence.

RAND surveyed 1,178 software engineers from traditional defense contractors, Silicon Valley and alumni of computer science universities between December 2020 and April 2021 and found that at least 33 percent of respondents from three large software companies feel uncomfortable with lethal use cases for AI.

The study found that over 66 percent of respondents in each population considered cyberattacks as critical threats to the U.S. and more than 75 percent from all three survey populations thought of Russia and China as serious threats to the U.S.

According to the report, nearly 90 percent of participants said they believe the use of military force would be justified to defend the U.S. and NATO allies against foreign aggression.

...and this from the city of Brotherly Love.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/philadelphia-inquirer-editorial-board-says-gop-are-too-insane-to-endorse-anyone-for-governor-or-senate

Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board Says GOP Candidates Are Too Nuts to Endorse

Pennsylvania will be holding primaries for governor and senator on Tuesday, but The Philadelphia Inquirer won’t be endorsing any Republicans this year because the paper says none are “operating in the same reality.” In a blistering editorial on Friday, the board said that while it has historically leaned toward Democrats, it has also endorsed Republicans “even when a candidate’s views didn’t exactly align” with their own. However, when sending out surveys to Pennsylvania GOP candidates in the Senate primary, only one would even acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. “How do you find points of agreement when you can’t reach common ground on facts so basic that they could be used in a field sobriety test?” the editorial board wrote. And although the GOPers in this year’s gubernatorial primary conceded that Trump’s lie about winning was, and continues to be, a lie, their extreme views on abortion were dubbed a “sad state of affairs” by the editorial board.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/14/eternity-project-malware-sale/

Shopping for malware: $260 gets you a password stealer. $90 for a crypto-miner…

A Tor-hidden website dubbed the Eternity Project is offering a toolkit of malware, including ransomware, worms, and – coming soon – distributed denial-of-service programs, at low prices.

According to researchers at cyber-intelligence outfit Cyble, the Eternity site's operators also have a channel on Telegram, where they provide videos detailing features and functions of the Windows malware. Once bought, it's up to the buyer how victims' computers are infected; we'll leave that to your imagination.

The Telegram channel has about 500 subscribers, Team Cyble documented this week. Once someone decides to purchase of one or more of Eternity's malware components, they have the option to customize the final binary executable for whatever crimes they want to commit.

Even a cliché has power…

https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-05-14

Interesting how laws that do not directly address privacy can still be of concern to privacy advocates.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-a-digital-abortion-footprint-could-lead-to-criminal-charges/

How a Digital Abortion Footprint Could Lead to Criminal Charges

TIME: “Getting away with breaking the law in the digital age is tricky. Almost everything one does—whether it’s making a Google search for “how to clean up a crime scene,” purchasing suspicious items on Amazon, or merely having been in the proximity of a crime scene with a cell phone that had its location services turned on—can be discovered via court-issued warrant and lead to charges and convictions. If Roe v. Wade is overturned—as a draft of a Supreme Court opinion signaled it might be— soon having or helping procure an abortion could become a crime in some states. And that means individuals’ personal internet data could be collected and used against them if they seek or facilitate a pregnancy termination. “Your geolocation data, apps for contraception, web searches, phone records—all of it is open season for generating data to weaponize the personal information of women across the country,” Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and longtime proponent of digital privacy reform, tells TIME. In states that not only outlaw but criminalize abortion—a move that Louisiana is considering adopting after a final decision from the Supreme Court —a pregnant woman’s digital search of abortion-inducing medication, online purchase of pregnancy tests, or email request for financial support to a pro-abortion resource group could be deployed against her in criminal proceedings. In states that criminalize assisting in abortions, data revealing frequent trips to a reproductive health clinic could also be used. “Everything we do is traceable,” says Bennett Capers, a visiting criminal law professor at Yale University and full professor at Fordham’s law school. “Once getting an abortion is illegal, then attempting to get an abortion is also illegal.” In recent years, several Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation to bring America’s digital privacy laws into the 21st century and enshrine safeguards against the unfettered collection of individuals’ personal data by governments and companies for criminal surveillance and corporate profit. Now, Wyden and his colleagues are pushing with renewed urgency to get those bills passed, hoping the leak of the draft opinion spurs Congress to action with the Supreme Court’s final decision anticipated to come down in the next two months. “A lot of privacy rules are from the Dark Ages,” Wyden says. “The SCOTUS prospects certainly drive home the real world consequences of the law not keeping up with the time.”…

Your face on Post Office walls throughout America?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-cities-are-backing-off-banning-facial-recognition-crime-rises-2022-05-12/

U.S. cities are backing off banning facial recognition as crime rises

Facial recognition is making a comeback in the United States as bans to thwart the technology and curb racial bias in policing come under threat amid a surge in crime and increased lobbying from developers.

Virginia in July will eliminate its prohibition on local police use of facial recognition a year after approving it, and California and the city of New Orleans as soon as this month could be next to hit the undo button.

… Efforts to get bans in place are meeting resistance in jurisdictions big and small from New York and Colorado to West Lafayette, Indiana. Even Vermont, the last state left with a near-100% ban against police facial-recognition use, chipped away at its law last year to allow for investigating child sex crimes.

Not all bangs are gunshots? Imagine that.

https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/news/shotspotters-deafening-impact/

ShotSpotter’s deafening impact

Before last March, you might not have heard of ShotSpotter. That month, news of 13-year-old Adam Toledo’s killing by a police officer in Little Village rang through Chicago just as resoundingly as the alleged noise of gunshots that brought cops to his location in the first place.

Almost as soon as the news of Toledo’s death broke, activists began raising questions about the private gunshot-detection system that summoned police to the scene. That summer, the activists’ voices grew even louder when it became public that the city had quietly extended its $33 million, three-year contract with ShotSpotter by another two years, through August 2023.

ShotSpotter markets its technology as a “proactive” tool that hears gunshots and gets police to potential crime scenes faster than 911 calls.

But sound is a tricky thing. It travels, echoes, and reverberates, and can be muffled, distorted, or unclear. How can ShotSpotter sensors tell the difference between a gunshot or firework? They apparently can’t—at least not as accurately as the company has publicly asserted. And there is little evidence to suggest that the Chicago police (CPD) or ShotSpotter test the devices to see how they register different loud noises once deployed.

ShotSpotter’s primary purpose is to hear gunshots, but according to a report published by the city’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) last August, only 9.1 percent of alerts generated between January 1, 2020, and May 31, 2021, actually resulted in police finding evidence of a gun crime. And a 2011 study commissioned by the company found that trucks, motorcycles, helicopters, fireworks, construction, trash pickup, and church bells, among other sounds, have all triggered false positive alerts, mistaking these sounds for gunshots.

Clearly true?

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/12/why-mark-cuban-predicts-ai-will-dominate-the-future-workplace.html

Mark Cuban predicts AI will dominate the future workplace: To be successful, ‘you’re going to have to understand it’

… “There’s two types of companies: those who are great at AI and everybody else,” Cuban said. “And you don’t necessarily have to be great at AI to start a company, but at some point, you’re going to have to understand it. It’s just like the early days of PCs. You didn’t have to be good at PCs, but it helped. Then networks, then the internet, then mobile.”

In Ye Olden Days (when I was working as an Analyst) Open Source always seemed to come after our other sources. Perhaps the Internet changed that?

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/intelligence-community/2022/05/spy-agencies-look-to-standardize-use-of-open-source-intelligence/

Spy agencies look to standardize use of open source intelligence

Intelligence agencies are starting to coalesce around a set of common standards and data for using open source intelligence, but challenges remain in boosting the use of OSINT throughout the intelligence community.

Patrice Tibbs, chief of community open source at the CIA, said open source has “proven itself over and over,” especially given current events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. OSINT is generally defined as unclassified information, often publicly available, like data gleaned from social media feeds.

… “I think more and more of our customers and personnel realize the value of open source,” he said. “They also get it first, frankly, in many cases. It’s very immediate. . . . It wasn’t possible 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, for information to be that widespread, immediately available to anyone who has a mobile device, or computer at their desk. So I think a lot of our customers, and our all source analysts and other collectors are getting much more comfortable with relying on open source early and often.”

(Related)

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/13/cyberspace_is_first_theatre_of_war/

'Peacetime in cyberspace is a chaotic environment' says senior US advisor

The internet is now the first battleground of any new war – before the shooting starts

Cyber war has become an emerged aspect of broader armed conflicts, commencing before the first shot is fired, cybersecurity expert Kenneth Geers told the audience at the Black Hat Asia conference on Friday.

… Geers said the Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates how electronic and kinetic conflicts interact. Ahead of the Ukraine invasion, Russia severed network cables, commandeered satellites, whitewashed Wikipedia, and targeted military ops via mobile phone geolocations.

Geers highlighted that Russia's DDoS attack on the Ukraine began 10 days before its soldiers invaded on February 24. A day before the official war began, Russian cybersecurity operations began to execute wiper attacks, targeting Ukrainian systems and deleting its data.

That same day, February 23, the "psyops" began. These psychological operations included misinformation in the form text messages sent to Ukrainian soldiers that they should surrender, messages to citizens about non-functioning ATMs creating bank panic, and even deepfakes of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky surrendering.

Speech, with a Texas accent?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/11/23067002/texas-netchoice-paxton-hb20-social-media-law-fifth-circuit-appeals-court-grant-stay-ruling?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

Court lets Texas restrictions on social platform content moderation take effect

The controversial Texas social media law HB 20 will take effect following a ruling today from a US appeals court. The tech industry trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) managed to block HB 20 in court last year, but that victory has been undone by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which today granted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request for a stay in NetChoice and CCIA v. Paxton. NetChoice and the CCIA were successful in blocking a similar law in Florida last year.

HB 20 allows Paxton’s office or Texas residents to sue social networks that moderate based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person,” among other offenses — language that potentially makes basic moderation decisions legally risky.

The ruling follows a confusing hearing where a Fifth Circuit judge claimed web services like Twitter “are not websites” and compared them to phone companies like Verizon, which are governed under specific common carrier rules set by the FCC. NetChoice and the CCIA can choose to mount an emergency appeal, but without quick intervention from a higher level like the Supreme Court, the law is now in force.

I guess this is cheaper than putting a camera on every street corner…

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dw8x/san-francisco-police-are-using-driverless-cars-as-mobile-surveillance-cameras

San Francisco Police Are Using Driverless Cars as Mobile Surveillance Cameras

… “Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads,” says a San Francisco Police department training document obtained by Motherboard via a public records request. “Investigations has already done this several times.”

The document released to Motherboard is a three-page guide for how officers should interact with autonomous vehicles (AVs), especially ones that have no human driver inside. It outlines basic procedures such as how to interact with the vehicles (”Do not open the vehicle for non-emergency issues” and ”Do not pull vehicles over unless a legitimate law enforcement action exists”) as well as whether to issue a citation for a moving violation for a car with no human driver (”No citation can be issued at this time if the vehicle has no one in the driver’s seat” but an incident report should be written instead). And the section titled “Investigations” has two bullet points advising officers of their usefulness in collecting footage.

Privacy advocates say the revelation that police are actively using AV footage is cause for alarm.

(Related)

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2022/05/11/akron-considers-flock-license-plate-readers-part-expanding-network/7399179001/

Akron preparing to join expanding traffic surveillance network; police say cameras with AI help solve crimes

The city of Akron is taking steps to become part of a national network of traffic surveillance cameras that has been growing in Northeast Ohio.

A recent demonstration of the system's capabilities came last month, when a police chase in Macedonia ended with the arrest of two people who police said had arrived in town to shoplift at a local store.

An automated license plate reader (ALPR) installed last fall by Georgia-based Flock Safety alerted police as a stolen vehicle entered town around 8:30 a.m. on April 21. Officers located the car minutes later in the local Target parking lot, they said, just as a thief and driver took off down state Route 82 with a stolen vacuum cleaner.