The
question should be: Is this something new or are they just playing
catch-up?
China’s
Next Naval Target Is the Internet’s Underwater Cables
As
the West considers the threat posed by China’s naval ambitions,
there is a natural tendency to place overarching attention on the
South China Sea. This is understandable: Consolidating it would
provide Beijing with a huge windfall of oil and natural gas, and a
potential chokehold over up to 40 percent of the world’s shipping.
But
this is only the most obvious manifestation of Chinese maritime
strategy. Another key element, one that’s far harder to discern,
is Beijing’s increasing influence in constructing and repairing the
undersea cables that move virtually all the information on the
internet. To understand the totality of China’s “Great Game”
at sea, you have to look down to ocean floor.
While
people tend think of satellites and cell towers as the heart of the
internet, the most vital component is the 380
submerged cables that
carry more than 95 percent of all data and voice traffic between the
continents.
… But
now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm
working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea.
Under its Huawei
Marine Networks component,
it is constructing or improving nearly 100
submarine cables around
the world.
I
can’t help asking what China may have learned from this incident.
What happened while the Secret Service was concentrating on her?
Attorney:
Mar-a-Lago Infiltrator Had Hidden-Camera Detector
Assistant
U.S. Attorney Rolando Garcia told Magistrate Judge William Matthewman
during a bond hearing that “there are a lot of questions that
remain” about 32-year-old Yujing Zhang
He
said the FBI is still investigating whether Zhang is a spy.
[Consider her a
distraction. Bob]
(Related)
Hey
Secret Service: Don't Plug Suspect USB Sticks into Random Computers
I
just noticed this
bit from
the incredibly weird story of the Chinese woman arrested at
Mar-a-Lago:
Secret
Service agent Samuel Ivanovich, who interviewed Zhang on the day of
her arrest, testified at the hearing. He stated that when another
agent put Zhang's thumb drive into his computer, it immediately began
to install files, a "very out-of-the-ordinary"
event that he had never seen happen before during this kind of
analysis. The agent had to immediately stop the analysis to halt any
further corruption of his computer, Ivanovich testified. The
analysis is ongoing but still inconclusive, he said.
This
is what passes for forensics at the Secret Service? I expect better.
The
can of worms has been opened.
Leap
in Cyber Attacks Against Elections in OECD Countries: Canada
Cyber
attackers targeted half the member states of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development that held national elections in
2018, the agency that monitors Canada's telecoms networks said
Monday.
"The
proportion of elections targeted by cyber threat activity has more
than tripled" since 2015, said the Canadian Security
Establishment (CSE), which warned of a further spike this year.
"A
small number of nation-states have undertaken most cyber threat
activity against democratic processes worldwide," the center
said, mostly pointing the finger at Russia.
… "This
shift seems to have started in 2016, which is likely due in part to
the perceived success among cyber threat actors of Russia's cyber
interference activity against the 2016 United States presidential
election," the report said.
(Related)
Preparing
for Upcoming Indian Elections
As
Indians prepare to vote in the General Election for the 17th Lok
Sabha, Facebook and our family of apps continue our efforts to help
make sure the elections are fair and free from interference, both
foreign and domestic.
… We’ve
also gotten better at using artificial intelligence and machine
learning to fight interference. For example, these tools help us
block or remove approximately one million accounts a day. They also
help us, at a large scale, identify abusive or violating content,
quickly locate it across the platform and remove it in bulk. This
dramatically reduces its ability to spread. We continue to expand on
this initiative, adding 24 new languages — including 16 for India —
to our automatic translation system.
And
last week
we removed nearly 700 Pages, Groups and accounts in India for
violating Facebook’s policies on coordinated
inauthentic behavior and
spam.
Maury
Nichols adds to yesterday’s post about ‘alternative data’
collected by credit bureaus.
In
regards to data related to one’s voice, cellular, cable TV, etc.
there actually is a credit reporting agency named National
Consumer Telecommunications & Utilities Exchange (“NCTUE”).
They share data amongst their telecommunication peers so if one
was to move from Denver to San Diego and both cities were member of
this organization the telecommunication provider in San Diego could
get a fairly comprehensive view on how the person in Denver treated
Comcast, CenturyLink, Dish, etc. Or if a person in Denver
wishes to change carriers it is quite likely that the carrier will
check the NCTUE database. So, if one did not pay their early
termination fee it may or it may not appear on one’s credit report
from the big three agencies (today); but that data would certainly be
available to those telecommunication firms that are members of this
rather niche credit bureau.
While
NCTUE is “managed” by Equifax, at this point-in-time the
data collected by NCTUE does not appear to be utilized by Equifax
in calculating one’s credit score.
If
interested, see:
http://www.specialtycreditreports.com/request/nctue-disclosure-report-national-consumer-telecommunications-utilities-exchange/
Still
looks like a GDPR for an “ex” EU member.
The
UK’s online laws could be the future of the internet—and that’s
got people worried
Technology
giants will be forced to have a “duty of care” for their users,
if a proposal announced by the government on Monday becomes law.
The
proposal—a “white paper,” in UK legal parlance, which is one of
the first stages of a formal government policy—is, on the surface
at least, sweeping in scope and is a serious shot across the bows for
big
tech companies.
But it has also raised some serious concerns about how it will be
implemented and the possible consequences it might have on citizens'
free
speech.
Aiming
to tackle well-defined harms such as hate crime, stalking, and
terrorist activity alongside issues such as trolling and
disinformation, the UK government proposes
combining work done across eight or more separate regulators into
one.
This
new "super-regulator" could have powers to fine technology
companies according
to their revenue, or even to block them. It could also be able to
prosecute individual executives.
… The
plans also shift the government view away from any idea that the
technology industry is somehow stateless or ungovernable—judging
instead, likely rightly, that the UK market is large and wealthy
enough to give the industry a powerful interest in complying even
with legislation they loathed.
“Delete
my data, but provide a transcript?”
Beyond
FERPA: The California Consumer Privacy Act’s New Rules for Privacy
in the Education Sector
… While
the CCPA does not apply to nonprofit educational institutions, it may
apply to certain for-profit educational institutions, third-party
service providers, and others in the education space. If an
educational entity meets the threshold requirements below or it
processes information on behalf of such an entity, it should prepare
for CCPA implementation by January 2020.
… Business
entities are not allowed to discriminate against consumers who
exercise their rights under the CCPA. However, businesses are
permitted to offer financial incentives for consumers to provide
consent for the collection, sale, or deletion of their personal
information.
Nothing
written by lawyers will be obfuscation free. Can we find a use for
this?
The
Market for Data Privacy
Ramadorai,
Tarun and Uettwiller, Antoine and Walther, Ansgar, The Market for
Data Privacy (March 13, 2019). Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3352175
or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3352175
“We
scrape a comprehensive set of US firms’ privacy policies to
facilitate research on the supply of data privacy. We analyze these
data with the help of expert legal evaluations, and also acquire data
on firms’ web tracking activities. We find considerable and
systematic variation in privacy policies along multiple dimensions
including ease of access, length, readability, and quality, both
within and between industries. Motivated by a simple theory of big
data acquisition and usage, we analyze the relationship between firm
size, knowledge capital intensity, and privacy supply. We find that
large firms with intermediate data intensity have longer, legally
watertight policies, but are more likely to share user data with
third parties.”
Take
that, young whippersnappers! Actually, I read this as fake news. I
might have another opinion if the headline was “The Favorite Target
of Internet Scammers is Old People.”
The Future
Of The Internet Is Old People
BuzzFeedNews
–
“There will soon be more people aged 65+ in the US than in any
other demographic, and it will stay that way for decades. I’ve
spent months collecting data on the online habits of older people,
with a particular focus on how they interact with false content. I
just published
a new story that dives deep into this — here
are some of the most compelling points:
Four recent studies found that those over 65 are more likely to consume and share fake news on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and the web.
They don’t have a good understanding of the role algorithms play in determining what content we see online.
They have a harder time differentiating between news and opinion.
They are often targeted with ads from hyperpartisan and fake news sites.
They’re also targeted by online scams, malware, and other internet ills. Just last month, the Department of Justice announced “the largest coordinated sweep of elder fraud cases in history.”
My students
expect tedious. Could this be the future of textbooks?
Want to
learn about lithium-ion batteries? An AI has written a tedious book
on the subject
On
Monday, Springer Nature published what it claims is the first
machine-generated book from an academic publisher, titled
"Lithium-Ion
Batteries
A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research."
… The
book for battery boffins, available
as a free download,
provides an overview of lithium-ion battery research, summarizing
more than 150 research papers published between 2016 and 2018.
… As
a one-stop shop for lithium-ion battery research, "Lithium-ion
batteries" is possibly functional, not so much for reading as
for finding reference links to academic papers. But even for that,
Bigham suggests concentrating a list of Google
Scholar search results might
work just as well.
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