Here’s what they did last time. Are we ready
this time?
Six Big
Takeaways from Mueller’s Indictment of Russian Intel Officers
Special Counsel
Robert Mueller released an
indictment today of
12 Russian intelligence officers, accusing them of hacking the
Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Hillary Clinton campaign and
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
The document contained
an extraordinary amount of detail about how Russian intelligence
carried out its operation.
(Related)
Inside
Facebook, Twitter and Google's AI battle over your social lives
When you sign up for Facebook
on your phone, the app isn't just giving you the latest updates and
photos from your friends and family. In the background, it's
utilizing the phone's gyroscope to detect subtle movements
that come from breathing. It's measuring how quickly you
tap on the screen, and even looking at what angle the phone is being
held.
Sound creepy? These are just some of the ways
that Facebook is verifying
that you're actually human and not one of the tens of
millions of bots
attempting to invade the social network each day.
That Facebook would go to such lengths underscores
the escalation of the war between tech companies and bots that can
cause
chaos in politics and damage public
trust . Facebook isn't alone. Twitter
on Wednesday began removing
millions of blocked accounts, and Google
is looking to stamp out malicious trolls on YouTube.
A podcast for my Disaster Recovery lecture.
‘It Won’t
Happen to Me’: Why People Don’t Prepare for Disasters
Knowledge@Wharton: How often do
people forget the fact that they went through a storm previously, yet
they don’t prepare for the next one?
Robert Meyer: This is a question
we study an awful lot. People actually have a really good memory of
past storms that they’ve been through, but what people tend to
forget, which often causes laxness in protection or preparation, is
what it really felt like to go through these storms. Everyone will
remember the storm. You look in the news, and [reports] remind you
of it. But what tends to fade quickly is what it really felt like to
go through these things. I think it’s part of human evolution that
we tend to have a really short memory for pain. As a consequence, it
seems really bad at the time, and you have people thinking, “Next
time, I’m going to really fully prepare; I never want to go through
this again.” Then three or four months later, you remember the
event but forget what it felt like.
Interesting.
Microsoft
Executive: Facial Recognition Tech Should Be Regulated
Microsoft
President Brad Smith ... said in a blog post on Friday that Microsoft
believes there should be “thoughtful government regulation” of
the controversial technology that can automatically recognize a
person’s face. He also said that there should be standards
created—via both the public and private sectors—“for the
development of norms around acceptable uses.”
… Smith acknowledges that the use of facial
recognition technology can be “both positive and potentially even
profound” and cites hypothetical scenarios in which computers could
more easily find missing children or help law enforcement identify
terrorists.
… It’s in other more controversial uses of
the technology that Smith calls “more sobering,” and he believes
the government should step in with regulation. He
cites scenarios like people being monitored in political rallies or
shopping mall vendors scanning people’s faces and sharing that data
with others without permission.
“This has long been the stuff of science fiction
and popular movies – like Minority Report, Enemy of the State
and even 1984—but now it’s on the verge of becoming
possible,” Smith said. “Perhaps as much as any advance, facial
recognition raises a critical question: what role do we want this
type of technology to play in everyday society?”
… Some of the questions Smith wants the
government to discuss are:
Should law enforcement use of facial recognition be subject to human oversight and controls, including restrictions on the use of unaided facial recognition technology as evidence of an individual’s guilt or innocence of a crime?
Similarly, should we ensure there is civilian oversight and accountability for the use of facial recognition as part of governmental national security technology practices?
What types of legal measures can prevent use of facial recognition for racial profiling and other violations of rights while still permitting the beneficial uses of the technology?
Looks like they could have been doing this all
along, but chose not to. I wonder how many organizations monitor
continuously.
Uber begins
monitoring U.S. driver background checks continuously
As part of a plan to improve safety for its
riders, Uber is rolling out ongoing background checks for its
drivers, the company tells Axios. Uber has partnered with its
background check provider, Checkr, and Appriss, which provides safety
data.
Why it matters: Over the years,
Uber has been plagued with incidents of driver violence or unsafe
behavior. Once a driver had a clean initial background check, the
company couldn't always track later violations or problems.
How it works: Through Appriss’s
real-time collection of data, Uber will be notified if a driver is
newly charged with a criminal offense. From there, Uber can decide
if it wants to suspend a driver from its service to prevent unsafe
behavior.
Perhaps Facebook is not doing “everything” it
can.
Facebook
Groups widely used for sharing pirated Hollywood movies
Facebook Groups has a piracy problem — and the
company says there's nothing it can do about it.
The social network is awash with groups devoted to
freely sharing pirated Hollywood movies with hundreds of thousands of
users, Business Insider has found.
With names like "Full HD English Movie"
and "Free full movies 2018," these Facebook
groups make no attempt to hide their purpose or to conceal catalogs
brimming with the latest blockbusters like "Ant Man and the
Wasp" and "A Quiet Place." Business
Insider found them by simply searching for "free movies"
on Facebook.
These groups, some of which are years old, exist
despite Facebook's army of human content moderators and automated
software meant to detect copyright-infringing content, raising
questions about the effectiveness
of Facebook's content-policing systems.
Reached for comment, a Facebook representative
said it wasn't the company's responsibility to take down such content
unless asked to by the
content's rights holders, even if the videos seem clearly
stolen, because otherwise Facebook can't be sure it is being
illegally shared.
Perspective.
Amazon’s
share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%, or 5% of all retail
spend
Amazon
has already been in the crosshairs of the White House when it
comes to threats
of antitrust investigations, and while some say this is simply
Trumpian bluster
that has a slim
chance of going anywhere, some new numbers out from the
researchers at eMarketer could
prove to be a fan to the flames.
Amazon is set to clear $258.22 billion in US
retail sales in 2018, according to eMarketer’s figures, which will
work out to 49.1 percent of all online retail spend in the
country, and 5 percent of all retail sales.
… Now, it is fast approaching a tipping point
where more people will be spending money online with Amazon, than
with all other retailers — combined. Amazon’s next-closest
competitor, eBay, a very, very distant second at 6.6 percent, and
Apple in third at 3.9 percent. Walmart, the world’s biggest
retailer when counting physical stores, has yet to really hit the
right note in e-commerce and comes in behind Apple with 3.7 percent
of online sales in the US.
