Monday, June 03, 2019


These are lawyer words, so you have to take them with a pillar of salt.
Facebook lawyer says 'there is no privacy,' hinting at the challenges of Zuckerberg's pivot
A lawyer for Facebook argued on Wednesday that its users had no expectation of privacy when using the social network, pushing for a judge to throw out a class-action lawsuit related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy,” on Facebook or any other social media site, company attorney Orin Snyder told U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.
his lawyer’s line of reasoning in court echoes what the company and Zuckerberg previously said both publicly and privately in past years — and explains how the company built an online advertising business that is now rivaled only by Google.
And while some changes to Facebook, such as a broad embrace of encrypted messaging, have been welcomed by privacy advocates, others remain concerned that Zuckerberg’s “privacy-focused vision” leaves the company’s core business of data-targeted ads mostly unscathed.


(Related) On the other hand, many who should know better assume you have no privacy.
Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems. The Results Are Alarming
Last December, early on a Sunday morning, Amanda Lafrenais tweeted about her cats.
I would die for you,” the 31-year old comic book artist from Clute, Texas wrote.
To human eyes, the post seems innocuous.
But in an age of heightened fear about mass school shootings, it tripped invisible alarms.
The local Brazosport Independent School District had recently hired a company called Social Sentinel to monitor public posts from all users, including adults, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. The company’s algorithms flagged Lafrenais’s tweet as a potential threat. Automated alerts were sent to the district’s superintendent, chief of police, director of student services, and director of guidance. All told, nearly 140 such alerts were delivered to Brazosport officials during the first eight months of this school year, according to documents obtained by Education Week.
Social media monitoring companies track the posts of everyone in the areas surrounding schools, including adults. Other companies scan the private digital content of millions of students using district-issued computers and accounts. Those services are complemented with tip-reporting apps, facial-recognition software, and other new technology systems.
Florida offers a glimpse of where it all may head: Lawmakers there are pushing for a state database that would combine individuals’ educational, criminal justice, and social-service records with their social media data, then share it all with law enforcement.




More than selling encrypted phones.
Canadian sentenced for selling encrypted phones to criminals
A Canadian man who sold encrypted Blackberry smartphones to criminals worldwide that enabled them to sell drugs and even plan murders while avoiding the prying eyes of law enforcement was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison.
Vincent Ramos, 41, of Richmond in the Vancouver area was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in San Diego. He pleaded guilty last fall to one count of racketeering conspiracy.
Ramos also was told to forfeit $80 million in earnings, which included homes, international bank account holdings, cryptocurrency and gold coins.
Ramos ran a company called Phantom Secure that offered gutted, uncrackable smartphones that, for a subscription, could send encrypted text messages through a secure network based in Panama and Hong Kong.
The company also could wipe the phones remotely if they were seized.
It was the first U.S. conviction involving someone who provided encryption technology to criminal organizations.




The next GDPR?
Michael Hollander, William Johnson, Phyllis Sumner of King & Spalding write:
New York’s State Senate is considering a bill that would impose sweeping new requirements upon companies that collect and process consumer data, including a fiduciary-like duty to protect such data. On May 9, 2019, New York State Senator Kevin Thomas introduced S. 5642, the New York Privacy Act (“NYPA”), which has been referred to the New York State Senate Consumer Protection Committee. If enacted, the NYPA will roll out strict rules for the collection, use, control, processing, and transfer of data by entities that conduct business in New York or produce products or services intentionally targeted at New York residents.
Of particular interest is the NYPA’s proposed definition of “personal data,” which references a whole host of data points including mother’s maiden name, records of personal property, biometric information, internet search history, certain education records, and even thermal and olfactory data. Similar to the sweeping definition of personal data provided by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), the NYPA’s definition of “personal data” also includes a catch-all for “inference[s] drawn from any of the information described in [the NYPA’s definition of personal data] to create a profile about an individual reflecting the individual’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, preferences [sic], predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, or aptitudes.” The bill also contains a provision that would create a private right of action for consumers to sue companies for violations of the law and seek injunctive and compensatory relief.
Read more details on JDSupra.




Sure they could, but to what purpose?
The Army is eyeing facial recognition tech for its next-generation rifle
The Army may request iterative prototyping efforts to achieve higher-level performance capabilities such as:
    • Advanced camera-based capabilities such as automatic target recognition, target tracking and facial recognition.




How does this play against GDPR? Data is entered by the App user, not the person identified.
Betrayed by an app she had never heard of” – How TrueCaller is endangering journalists
While TrueCaller may have laudable intentions, the privacy implications for people who end up in their database raise concerns. When a number is tagged, the person who is tagged ends up having their name and phone number stored on the TrueCaller database, despite not having consented – or even being aware – that their data was collected.




Toward robo-lawyer?
Reviewing 35 AI Applications for Law
Emerj (via Joe Hodnicki) – AI in Law and Legal Practice – A Comprehensive View of 35 Current Applications. “Artificial intelligence (AI) companies continue to find ways of developing technology that will manage laborious tasks in different industries for better speed and accuracy. In the legal profession, AI has already found its way into supporting lawyers and clients alike. The growing interest in applying AI in law is said to be slowly transforming the profession and closing in on the work of paralegals, legal researchers, and litigators.
In this article, we’ll discuss the different ways in which AI is currently applied in the legal profession and how technology providers are trying to streamline work processes. We break down AI’s current legal applications into the following categories of applications:
  • Helping lawyers perform due diligence and research
  • Providing additional insights and “shortcuts” through analytics
  • Automating creative processes (including some writing) in legal work
Because of the breadth of our research (and hence the length of this article), we encourage readers to feel free to skip ahead to the applications areas of greatest interest for them. We’ll conclude this article with some thoughts on AI’s promise and limitations across the legal industry…”




Something to think on...
Less Like Us: An Alternate Theory of Artificial General Intelligence
The question of whether an artificial general intelligence will be developed in the future—and, if so, when it might arrive —is controversial. One (very uncertain) estimate suggests 2070 might be the earliest we could expect to see such technology.
Some futurists point to Moore’s Law and the increasing capacity of machine learning algorithms to suggest that a more general breakthrough is just around the corner. Others suggest that extrapolating exponential improvements in hardware is unwise, and that creating narrow algorithms that can beat humans at specialized tasks brings us no closer to a “general intelligence.”
But evolution has produced minds like the human mind at least once. Surely we could create artificial intelligence simply by copying nature, either by guided evolution of simple algorithms or wholesale emulation of the human brain.




For the Forensics toolkit.
Stanford Univ – ePADD – Open Source Downloadable Software for Archival Analysis
ePADD is free and open source software developed by Stanford University’s Special Collections & University Archives that supports the appraisal, processing, preservation, discovery, and delivery of historical email archives.
Visit the Discovery Module for Stanford University’s Special Collections & University Archives to see ePADD in action.
ePADD has been awarded a National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute of Museum & Library Studies (IMLS) to build out functionality that furthers the development of a National Digital Platform. Phase 2 of ePADD development commenced on November 1, 2015. Additional information can be found on the About page and in the IMLS announcement …”



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