Gosh,
what a surprise!
‘Sustained
and ongoing’ disinformation assault targets Dem presidential
candidates
A
wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020
candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that
foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity.
The main targets appear to be Sens. Kamala Harris
(D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), four of the most prominent
announced or prospective candidates for president.
A
POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other
platforms, as well as interviews with data scientists and digital
campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of the coordinated
barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the
dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions of
their positions. But the divisive nature of many of the posts also
hints at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the
Democratic presidential primary.
Keeping
up with the hackers.
Alyssa Newcomb reports:
Every month, thousands of retail websites are targeted by cyber criminals, who insert a small piece of malicious code that allows them to snatch customers’ credit card information. The hacking technique is called formjacking, and it’s the virtual equivalent of putting a device on an ATM to skim debit card numbers.
Affecting an average of 4,800 websites per month, formjacking is one of the newest favorite ways for hackers to steal personal data, according to security company Symantec’s annual Internet Security Threat Report.
Read more on Fortune.
Why would this be new or surprising?
Privacy
Practices Cited as New Source of Risk in Alphabet Annual Report
For the past 12 months, Silicon Valley tech giants
like Facebook and Google have been coming under increasing scrutiny
from regulators, investors and consumers for their controversial
privacy practices. Finally, it looks like those concerns are
starting to be taken seriously by Google. In the Alphabet annual
report for 2018, Google’s parent company provided additional
guidance on how their privacy practices could impact the company’s
overall business model, and hence, its ability to churn out billions
of dollars of revenue each quarter.
Of course, previous 10K filings from Alphabet have
cited privacy concerns as potential risk factors. But that was
primarily legal boilerplate added to the Alphabet annual report –
the type of vaguely worded statements designed to protect Alphabet
from potential lawsuits from investors. So the additional insertion
of detailed new language about privacy practices into the Alphabet
annual report is worth paying attention to – it signals, at the
very least, that Alphabet’s top executives are finally starting to
wake up to the prospect of advertisers and consumers walking away
from the company, or the U.S. government imposing fines or additional
regulation upon the company.
Did
Johnathan go easy on Mark, or was he handing him more rope?
Zittrain
and Zuckerberg discuss encryption ‘information fiduciaries’ and
targeted advertisements
Harvard
Law Today: “Should Facebook be considered an “information
fiduciary” when it comes to the privacy of its clients? How should
we weigh the pros and cons of encryption schemes which might bolster
privacy and data security at the risk of shutting out law
enforcement? And why shouldn’t Facebook tell users how much
advertising revenue their respective data generates on a daily basis?
Those were some of the questions Facebook Co-founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg discussed with Jonathan
Zittrain ’95, HLS’s George Bemis Professor of International
Law, in a conversation among students at Harvard Law School on Feb.
11.
The nearly two-hour discussion was part of a
series of study sessions for Harvard’s Techtopia
initiative, a program for students across the University to explore
problems in technology and governance, and it included participants
from Zittrain’s course on Internet & Society: The Technologies
and Politics of Control. Zittrain launched the conversation at HLS
by raising the question of whether Facebook and other data-hungry
internet companies should become “information fiduciaries.”
Developed with Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin, the concept involves
making such companies abide by a duty of loyalty to their users when
handling sensitive data–including putting the user’s interests in
front of profits–much the same way a lawyer or doctor must protect
a client’s confidentiality…”
Know
what they do, it’s what you have to undo.
How tech
companies use dark patterns to discourage us from exercising our
rights to privacy
Dark
Patterns – How tech companies use dark patterns to discourage us
from exercising our rights to privacy. The Norwegian Consumer
Council (the Forbrukerrådet or NCC) report criticizes “features of
interface design crafted to trick users into doing things that they
might not want to do, but which benefit the business in question.”
“In this report, we analyze a sample of settings
in Facebook, Google and Windows 10, and show how default settings and
dark patterns, techniques and features of interface design meant to
manipulate users, are used to nudge users towards privacy intrusive
options. The findings include privacy intrusive default settings,
misleading wording, giving users an illusion of control, hiding away
privacy-friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices, and choice
architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires
more effort for the users. Facebook and Google have privacy
intrusive defaults, where users who want the privacy friendly option
have to go through a significantly longer process. They even obscure
some of these settings so that the user cannot know that the more
privacy intrusive option was pre-selected. The popups from Facebook,
Google and Windows 10 have design, symbols and wording that nudge
users away from the privacy friendly choices. Choices are worded to
compel users to make certain choices, while key information is
omitted or downplayed. None of them lets the user freely postpone
decisions. Also, Facebook and Google threaten users with loss of
functionality or deletion of the user account if the user does not
choose the privacy intrusive option. The
GDPR settings from Facebook, Google and Windows 10 provide users with
granular choices regarding the collection and use of personal data.
At the same time, we find that the service providers employ numerous
tactics in order to nudge or push consumers toward sharing as much
data as possible.”
My students thought this was addressed in the
“cars talk to each other” strategy.
Someday
Your Self-Driving Car Will Pull Over for Police
Driverless cars
won’t be able to take over until automakers, engineers, lawmakers
and police work through a series of thorny problems.
For
my Architecture students. It’s is obvious, if you take the time to
think about it.
How
to Break Down Work into Tasks That Can Be Automated
Repetitive
vs. Variable Work
Repetitive work is often predictable, routine, and determined by predefined criteria while more variable work is unpredictable, changing, and requiring adaptive criteria and decision rules.
Repetitive work is often predictable, routine, and determined by predefined criteria while more variable work is unpredictable, changing, and requiring adaptive criteria and decision rules.
Independent
vs. Interactive Work
Independent work requires little or no collaboration or communication with others, while work performed interactively involves more collaboration and communication with others, and relies on communication skills and empathy.
Independent work requires little or no collaboration or communication with others, while work performed interactively involves more collaboration and communication with others, and relies on communication skills and empathy.
Physical
vs. Mental Work
Physical work is work that is primarily manual in nature, requiring manual dexterity and, often, strength while mental work requires one’s cognitive abilities.
Physical work is work that is primarily manual in nature, requiring manual dexterity and, often, strength while mental work requires one’s cognitive abilities.
Might make an overview more memorable?
A
Beginner’s List of Links for those interested in visuals + law
Open
Law Lab Blog – Margaret Hagan: “I was having a conversation
with a professor this morning who is interested in amplifying her
work in doing diagramming, drawing, and visualizations in law. We
had a great conversation, and I pulled in a range of links for her to
explore what’s going on in the world of visual design, law, and
public interest work. I share these links here in case they might be
helpful starters for others!..”
Tuesday’s visitors.
Looks like I’m an international wonder! (I know that can’t be
right.)
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