Something
for my Computer Security students.
I'm at Carnegie Mellon University, at the eleventh
Workshop
on Security and Human Behavior.
SHB is a small invitational gathering of people
studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized
each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, and myself. The 50
or so people in the room include psychologists, economists, computer
security researchers, sociologists, political scientists,
neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists,
business school professors, and a smattering of others. It's not
just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are
individually interdisciplinary.
The goal is to maximize discussion and
interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting
talks to 7-10 minutes. The rest of the time is left to open
discussion. Four hour-and-a-half panels per day over two days equals
eight panels; six people per panel means that 48 people get to speak.
We also have lunches, dinners, and receptions – all designed so
people from different disciplines talk to each other.
I invariably find this to be the most
intellectually stimulating conference of my year. It influences my
thinking in many different, and sometimes surprising, ways.
This year's program is here.
This
page lists the participants and includes links to some of their
work. As he does every year, Ross Anderson is liveblogging
the talks. (Ross also maintains a good webpage of psychology
and security resources.)
Here are my posts on the first,
second,
third,
fourth,
fifth,
sixth,
seventh,
eighth,
ninth,
and tenth
SHB workshops. Follow
those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio
recordings of the various workshops.
Next year, I'll be hosting the event at Harvard.
Is
this a Facebook issue or a Darwinian elimination of candidates who
can’t read and follow simple instructions?
Facebook’s
new political ad rules could upend June 5th primaries
Facebook introduced new
disclosure rules for political advertisements this week designed to
block bad actors from meddling in elections. But in the meantime,
the rules are blocking legitimate candidates from buying Facebook ads
— and at least one congressional candidate in Mississippi says it
could tip the election toward his opponent.
The rules that Facebook
implemented in the United States this week require anyone wishing to
buy a political ad to verify their identity. To do so, Facebook
mails a card to their physical location containing an authorization
code. Only after the candidate or advocacy group enters that
authorization code on Facebook can they purchase political ads.
Facebook began allowing
political advertisers to start the verification process on
April 23rd. The company promoted the new process with a blog
post and messages inside Facebook directed at administrators of
political pages. In May, it also sent emails to page administrators
advising them of the changes.
But not everyone got the
message — and now some are scrambling to come up with a Plan B
ahead of June 5th primary elections.
… Yesterday, Rose’s
campaign planned to buy 500 different Facebook ads. The first batch
were approved shortly before the new rules took effect. But when
Rose went to buy the remainder, he received a message from Facebook
saying his ads had not been authorized. Rose filled out the required
online forms attesting to his identity. At the end, Facebook said it
would send Rose an authorization code in the mail. He
was told it would arrive in 12 to 15 days — by which point the
election would be over.
…
Richard Boyanton, who is mounting a primary challenge to Republican
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), also found himself stymied by the new
rules. … Then yesterday, Facebook informed him he would need to
verify his identity before he could buy more ads. He had received a
message from the company two or three weeks ago, he said, but
he did not realize that he would be prevented from running ads if he
did not follow the steps laid out in the message.
Deciding what to block is hard. Maybe.
Leaked
Documents Show Facebook’s Post-Charlottesville Reckoning with
American Nazis
… In January, 5 months after Charlottesville,
Facebook added slides discussing the company’s position on white
nationalism, supremacy, and separatism. While it says Facebook does
not allow praise, support, or representation of white supremacy, it
does allow the same sort of positions for white nationalism and
separatism, according to one of the slides obtained by Motherboard.
Explaining its motivation, another section of the
document reads that nationalism is an “extreme right movement and
ideology, but it doesn't seem to be always associated with racism (at
least not explicitly).” Facebook then acknowledges that “In
fact, some white nationalists carefully avoid the term supremacy
because it has negative connotations.”
… Facebook classifies hate groups,
individuals, and high profile figures based on “strong, medium, and
weak signals,” according to one of the documents focused on hate
speech in America. A strong signal would be if the individual is a
founder or prominent member of a hate organization (or, “h8 org”,
in Facebook parlance); medium would include the name or symbol of a
banned hate group, or using dehumanizing language against certain
groups of people. Partnership or some form of alliance with a banned
hate organization—including participating in rallies together, of
particular relevance to events like Charlottesville—Facebook sees
as a weak signal, as well as an individual receiving a guilty verdict
for distributing forbidden propaganda material.
Perspective.
‘Crush
Them’: An Oral History of the Lawsuit That Upended Silicon Valley
Twenty years ago, Microsoft tried to eliminate its competition in the race for the future of the internet. The government had other ideas.
Could be amusing in my Statistics class.
Turn CSV
Files Into Heat Maps
Heat
Map Tool is a tool for easily creating heat maps or incident maps
from a CSV
file. To create a heat map all you need to do is upload a CSV
file then specify your desired display attributes like scale, colors,
and opacity. You can edit the display attributes of your map
whenever you like. If you're wondering how to create a CSV file you
can do so by exporting from a spreadsheet in Google Documents or
exporting from an Excel file. Click
here for directions on exporting from Excel. The free version of
Heat Map Tool allows you to have up to 100 data points on your map
and up to 500 hits per day on your map.
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