Tuesday, June 25, 2019


Are the courts thinking about GDPR and similar laws as they make these rulings?
Facebook fails to kill class-action lawsuit over data breach
A proposed class action lawsuit against Facebook will move forward after a judge disagreed with the company’s contention it should not be held liable for failing to protect users’ information.
Facebook last year announced that a data breach allowed hackers to make off with information about some 30 million people. A vulnerability in Facebook’s code enabled outsiders to access to users’ digital access tokens, which make it possible to visit the site without logging in each time.
The company had previously claimed that some of the plaintiffs’ information was not “sensitive” because it was accessible on a public Facebook profile and no real harm had been done because attackers had failed to steal users’ financial information and passwords. Additionally, the company said it should be absolved from responsibility due to the sophistication of the hack.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup disagreed, ruling on June 21 that the evidence-gathering phase of the case should proceed “with alacrity.”
Judge Alsup previously warned Facebook’s legal team he would authorize a “bone-crushing” discovery process on behalf of affected users, according to Law360. Alsup also said user concerns are worth “real money,” rather than “some cosmetic injunctive relief.”
This is one of the many legal matters besieging Facebook. The Silicon Valley giant’s data-sharing deals with technology companies are under criminal investigation, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, the company is preparing to pay a reported $5 billion to settle a Federal Trade Commission probe into whether it improperly shared information about tens of millions of users with Cambridge Analytica.


(Related)
A Judge Just Ruled You Can Sue The Media Over Facebook Comments From Readers
Dylan Voller, the Aboriginal man who was shown restrained and wearing a spit hood at age 17 in shocking CCTV footage from an adult prison, has been given the green light to sue media companies over Facebook comments written by their readers.
Voller claims a number of comments on the post defamed him by falsely suggesting, among other things, that he "savagely bashed" a Salvation Army officer, causing him serious injury, and that he is a rapist.
These comments were written by readers.
Before Voller's case went to trial, Justice Stephen Rothman considered whether the media companies could be considered liable for the reader comments.
The three companies argued they were not liable during a three-day hearing in February, in which social media managers took the stand and were questioned about how they monitored and moderated Facebook comments.
Rothman ruled in Voller's favour on Monday afternoon, finding that the media companies were the publishers, in a legal sense, of the comments.




The original, please.
Amol Rajan: What kind of internet do you want?
In recent months I have been influenced by a paper on The Geopolitics of Digital Governance by two University of Southampton academics, Kieron O'Hara and Dame Wendy Hall. The paper popularised, but didn't invent, the idea of the "splinternet" - namely, that there is not one internet, but four.
These four internets are, broadly:
the open, universalist version envisioned by the web's pioneers;
the current, largely Californian internet dominated by a few tech giants (Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook);
a more regulated, European internet; and
an authoritarian, walled-garden approach, of the kind seen in China, which has its own tech giants (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent).




Philosophy from a psychologist? Not sure I agree with him, but I guess it’s a start.
How to Build Ethical Artificial Intelligence
The field of artificial intelligence is exploding
… Because of the increasing impact of AI on people's lives, concern is growing about how to take a sound ethical approach to future developments. Building ethical artificial intelligence requires both a moral approach to building AI systems and a plan for making AI systems themselves ethical.




How to make money with technology? List and Infographic.
Internet of Things Leads Second Annual Top 10 List from CompTIA Emerging Technology Community
Rankings based on near-term business and financial opportunities for companies working in the business of technology
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the emerging technology that offers the most immediate opportunities to generate new business and revenues, according to the Emerging Technology Community at CompTIA, the leading trade association for the global tech industry.
The community has released its second annual Top 10 Emerging Technologies list, ranked according to the near-term business and financial opportunities the solutions offer to IT channel firms and other companies working in the business of technology.




Big and not-so-big data. Now “Moneyball” is everywhere!
How the Seattle Seahawks use data to win — on and off the field
… The Seahawks were the first NFL franchise to establish a sports science group seven years ago, an effort spearheaded by general manager John Schneider and head coach Pete Carroll.
Fast forward to today, and almost every major league sports team has some type of sports science or analytics arm.
The Seahawks are also using data to improve the fan experience — and, as a result, the team’s bottom line.
For example, fans take surveys that gauge their level of happiness with everything from concession stand options to WiFi connections. Recent results showed complaints about stadium audio issues — but only when the Seahawks created a heat map of the data did they figure out that the issues were relegated to the four corners.
Fans were telling us this information, but we never visualized it,” Dunn said.
It turned out that speakers were never actually installed in those corners when the stadium was built in 2002.
Instead of replacing the stadium’s entire audio system, the team was able to spend a fraction to fix the issues that the data visualization surfaced, and used the saved costs on other more pressing capital expenditures.



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