Could this be anything but surveillance and control?

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084188/russia-law-local-apps-smartphones-2020

From 2020, all devices sold in Russia will come with local apps pre-installed

… The rules state that there must be Russian alternatives to the stock software - but it remains up to the individual as to which ones they use.

However, that has raised the eternal question of back doors and other rogue payloads being included, effectively leaving the Western software as sitting ducks for nation-state hacking attempts.

The new rules won't just affect phones and laptops, but all smart devices including Smart TVs and audio streaming devices.

For my Computer Security students.

https://cyware.com/news/a-brief-look-at-exploits-f44fedae

A Brief Look at Exploits

(Ditto)

How to Comply With YouTube’s New COPPA Rules for Children

… In September 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is responsible for enforcing COPPA, brought a $170 million fine against YouTube for COPPA violations. This is by far the largest fine ever paid for breaking this law.

The company’s primary offense was knowingly using the viewing history of children under 13 to show them targeted advertisements on videos. Because YouTube did not obtain parental permission to track this data, it was breaking the rules of COPPA.

In addition to the monetary penalty, the FTC’s settlement with Google requires the company to set up a new system on its platform.

Will this only apply as you enter the Republic of Massachusetts?

https://www.insideprivacy.com/uncategorized/district-of-massachusetts-holds-that-suspicionless-searches-of-travelers-electronic-devices-at-u-s-ports-of-entry-violates-the-fourth-amendment/

District of Massachusetts Holds that Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Electronic Devices at U.S. Ports of Entry Violates the Fourth Amendment

Last week, in Alasaad v. McAleenan. the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable suspicion that a traveler is carrying contraband in order to search a traveler’s smartphone or laptop at airports and other U.S. ports of entry. Judge Denise J. Casper’s decision relied on Riley v. California, in which the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment generally requires the government to obtain a warrant to search cell phones incident to arrest, to bar suspicionless or random searches of electronic devices at the border. Judge Casper reasoned that while “the government’s interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the border,” this interest must be balanced against the “substantial personal privacy interests” implicated by the searches of electronic devices.

Inevitable.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/silicon-valley-lawmakers-introduce-new-federal-privacy-law/

Silicon Valley Lawmakers Introduce New Federal Privacy Law

On November 5, two Silicon Valley congresswomen – Democratic representatives Anna G. Eshoo of Palo Alto and Zoe Lofgen of San Jose – introduced a new bill called the Online Privacy Act. While the Online Privacy Act still needs to pass a vote in both the House and Senate before it can be officially signed into law, it is yet more proof that a federal privacy law could be coming to the United States as early as next year. According to the two backers of the Online Privacy Act, it will be more stringent than the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which will go into effect on January 1, 2020.

Click here to download the full text of the bill.

Who owns the patent?

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/ai-machine-learning/

Machine Programming: What Lies Ahead?

Intel’s Justin Gottschlich discusses how machine programming is at an inflection point.

Imagine software that creates its own software. That is what machine programming is all about. Like other fields of artificial intelligence, machine programming has been around since the 1950s, but it is now at an inflection point.

Use will explode when someone wins because of analytics.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/getting-law-firms-to-use-analytics/

The Next Legal Challenge: Getting Law Firms to Use Analytics

Wharton's Raghuram Iyengar and Dave Walton from Cozen O'Connor talk about the challenges and benefits of applying analytics to the legal field.

Some interesting bits…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2019/11/22/top-artificial-intelligence-ai-predictions-for-2020-from-idc-and-forrester/#708e272f315a

Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Predictions For 2020 From IDC and Forrester

IDC and Forrester issued recently their predictions for artificial intelligence (AI) in 2020 and beyond. While external “market events” may make companies cautious about AI, says Forrester, “courageous ones” will continue to invest and expand the initial “timid” steps they took in 2019.

… by 2024, AI will be integral to every part of the business, resulting in 25% of the overall spend on AI solutions as “Outcomes-as-a-service” that drive innovation at scale and superior business value. AI will become the new UI by redefining user experiences where over 50% of user touches will be augmented by computer vision, speech, natural language and AR/VR. Over the next several years, we will see AI and the emerging user interfaces of computer vision, natural language processing, and gesture, embedded in every type of product and device.

… IDC predicts that by 2022, possibly as a result of a few high-profile PR disasters, over 70% of G2000 companies will have formal programs to monitor their 'digital trustworthiness' as digital trust becomes a critical corporate asset.

Will I be allowed to bring my own AI to speak for me?

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/artificial-intelligence-video-interview-act-privacy-implications-illinois-s-ai

The Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act: Privacy Implications of Illinois’s AI Statute

It’s time for employers to start preparing for legislation recently signed into law in Illinois, the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act. The new law, which takes effect on January 1, 2020, regulates Illinois employers’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the interview and hiring process.

Under the AI Video Interview Act, employers that record video interviews and use AI technology to analyze applicants’ suitability for employment must:

1. inform applicants that AI technology may be used to evaluate their interviews;
2. provide applicants with a written explanation of the technology’s mechanics, including the traits that will be reviewed and analyzed by AI and the characteristics the AI program uses to evaluate applicants; and
3. acquire applicants’ prior consent to be assessed by AI technology.

To philosophize or not to philosophize, that is the new question.

https://qz.com/1734381/why-tech-companies-need-to-hire-philosophers/

Why tech companies need philosophers—and how I convinced Google to hire them

… The vast majority of cutting-edge AI research is carried out in companies. The problem is that most of the people who lead these companies don’t know that they are radically reinventing our definition of what it means to be human. They think of themselves as just people who work at tech companies.

One of the major ambitions of my work is to change this. I want these labs and companies to understand their enormous philosophical responsibility: the self-aware design of new possibilities of being human and of living together.

One of these is probably really cool. Finding that one seems impossible.

https://sensortower.com/blog/top-one-percent-downloads

The Top 1% of App Publishers Generate 80% of All New Installs

… There were more than 3.4 million apps available globally across the App Store and Google Play in 2018, an increase of 65 percent from the 2.2 million apps available in 2014.

An audit sampling tool, not a security guarantee.

https://www.securityweek.com/cisa-announces-open-source-post-election-auditing-tool

CISA Announces Open Source Post-Election Auditing Tool

… Called Arlo, the newly introduced auditing tool is being created by non-partisan, non-profit firm VotingWorks, which is committed to developing secure election technology. The tool includes support for various types of post-election audits across numerous voting systems, including major vendors.

Arlo is built on auditing work performed by Colorado, which in 2017 implemented rigorous Risk-Limiting Audits (RLAs) and conducted audits in over 50 of its 64 counties.

… The Arlo open source software is being offered for free to state and local election officials, and their private sector partners. State and local jurisdictions can also use a hosted Software-as-a-Service version of the tool, for a fee.

“Arlo provides an easy way to perform the calculations needed for the audit: determining how many ballots to audit, randomly selecting which ballots will be audited, comparing audited votes to tabulated votes, and knowing when the audit is complete,” CISA says.

Another pendulum swing!

https://www.bespacific.com/pa-supreme-court-police-cant-force-you-to-tell-them-your-password/

PA Supreme Court – Police Can’t Force You to Tell Them Your Password

EFF: “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a forceful opinion today holding that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects individuals from being forced to disclose the passcode to their devices to the police. In a 4-3 decision in Commonwealth v. Davis, the court found that disclosing a password is “testimony” protected by the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination.

EFF filed an amicus brief in Davis, and we were gratified that the court’s opinion closely parallels our arguments. The Fifth Amendment privilege prohibits the government from coercing a confession or forcing a suspect to lead police to incriminating evidence. We argue that unlocking and decrypting a smartphone or computer is the modern equivalent of these forms of self-incrimination…”

What happens when “double secret probation” goes public?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/california-stepping-up-its-probe-into-facebook-privacy-practices/

California Stepping Up Its Probe Into Facebook Privacy Practices

In a new lawsuit, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is accusing Facebook of failing to adequately comply with information and subpoena requests related to the company’s privacy practices. The investigation into Facebook privacy practices has been ongoing since 2018, but had never before been publicly disclosed until now. The state attorney general’s office had been working on a private investigation, but had been repeatedly stonewalled by Facebook for key documents and information, and had no other recourse than to make the investigation public.

Is there a polite way to surveil you employees and customers? Just an extension of “This call may be monitored for training purposes?”

https://www.bespacific.com/uber-embraces-videotaping-rides-raising-privacy-concerns/

Uber Embraces Videotaping Rides, Raising Privacy Concerns

The New York Times – “The company says it is increasing the recording of rides to settle disputes between drivers and passengers and to improve safety… Uber began the video recording program in Texas in July, and is conducting smaller tests of the program in Florida and Tennessee. In November, it announced a similar effort in Brazil and Mexico to allow riders and drivers to record audio during a trip. The audio recording feature, first reported by Reuters, is managed by Uber, and begins a recording if either the rider or driver requests it. At the end of the trip, the rider or driver has the option to send the recording to Uber for review, but cannot save it themselves, a safeguard Uber built to prevent riders and drivers from recording each other and posting the clips online, the company said. Uber’s video recording feature is a partnership with Nauto, a technology company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze video from vehicles…”

Interesting ways to look at AI as it evolves.

https://www.iotforall.com/ai-business-intelligence/

The Role of AI in the Future of Business Intelligence

Today’s businesses leverage the power of AI in many ways, from call centers deploying AI-based chatbots to banks using deep learning to analyze countless data points in seconds and detect fraud.

… AI also has the potential to change the dynamics of analytics. Conventional data analytics focused on descriptive analytics or analyzing data to report what happened. The present generation of AI-enabled analytics tools enable predictive analytics or using data to decipher future insights. This, however, is based on “best guesses” with behavioral and historical data used to guess probabilities.

Prescriptive analytics is all set to take over in the near future. AI-powered prescriptive analytics tools would scour through vast swathes of data and enable users to prescribe various possible actions and advise viable solutions. Prescriptive analytics not just predicts, but offers sound advice as well, and explains why things will happen the way it will or does.

Texas again. I thought the National Guard was on the job? Didn’t they warn this District?

https://www.govtech.com/security/Texas-School-District-Pays-Ransom-to-Regain-Access-to-Files.html

Texas School District Pays Ransom to Regain Access to Files

Port Neches-Groves ISD in the Beaumont, Texas, area paid an undisclosed amount of money via Bitcoin to a suspected overseas cyberattacker who encrypted millions of the district’s files and issued a four-day deadline to respond to the criminal demands.

… As the file access is returned, district officials are still investigating how and where the attackers got into the system.

… Moving forward, the district is looking to implement new preventative measures to stop similar attacks in the future.

“We have a few getting ready to install now. One of those is a program to pretest email on the URL side, which would help prevent any of those viruses from coming in,” Fontenot said.

There is strategy and then there is politics. One makes sense, the other make nonsense.

https://www.defensenews.com/international/2019/11/20/here-are-the-problems-offensive-cyber-poses-for-nato/

Here are the problems offensive cyber poses for NATO

NATO has declared cyberspace a domain of warfare it must operate in and called on the integration of cyber alongside operations. However, as a defensive alliance, it has declared it won’t seek offensive cyber capabilities itself, instead relying on the capabilities of voluntary member states.

“The idea of sovereign cyber effects provided voluntarily by allies is good. But … that will not fall under the command and control of the actual NATO commander,” David Bailey, senior national security law advisor for Army Cyber Command, said Nov. 19 at the 2019 International Conference on Cyber Conflict U.S. (CyCon U.S.) in Arlington. “It will still fall under the command and control of the country that contributes. In my mind, it’s going to be difficult to achieve that level of coordination that we’re used to in military operations, even in a NATO context.”

If you waited this long, you’re cooked.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/preparing-for-compliance-under-californias-privacy-law/

Preparing for Compliance Under California’s Privacy Law

Organizations around the globe are now thinking about the California legislature’s passage of its sweeping data privacy law, which will become effective January 1, and the impact it will have on their operations in the Golden State.

(Related) Service by the lip?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/microsoft-throws-its-support-behind-ccpa-and-tougher-privacy-laws/

Microsoft Throws Its Support Behind CCPA and Tougher Privacy Laws

With the stringent new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which goes into effect on January 1, 2020, the top technology companies in the United States are starting to position themselves for a completely new operating environment in less than two months. Seattle-based Microsoft is now the first major tech company that says it plans to abide by the new CCPA not just in California, but also in every state where it operates in the United States. In a strongly worded blog post, Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Julie Brill called privacy a “fundamental human right,” and explained that Microsoft was ready to honor California’s digital privacy law all through the U.S.

An architecture for AI?

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/accenture-only-16-of-companies-have-figured-out-how-to-make-ai-work-at-scale/

Accenture: Only 16% of companies have figured out how to make AI work at scale

"AI: Built to Scale” shows how difficult this transformation is as well as what it takes to do it successfully.

"In a nutshell, what our report found is that the majority of companies are really struggling to scale AI," said Bob Berkey, MD, Accenture Applied Intelligence. "They're stuck in the Proof of Concept Factory, conducting AI experiments and pilots but achieving a low scaling success rate and a low return on their AI investments."

… The Accenture analysts found a positive correlation between successfully scaling AI and three key measures of financial valuation: Enterprise value/revenue ratio, price/earnings ratio, and price/sales ratio. Companies that got this right saw an average lift of 32% on each of these metrics.

Honest.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/11/20/how-to-deal-with-machine-learning-papers

How To Deal With Machine Learning Papers

Here’s a very useful article in JAMA on how to read an article that uses machine learning to propose a diagnostic model. It’s especially good for that topic, but it’s also worth going over for the rest of us who may not be diagnosing patients but who would like to evaluate new papers that claim an interesting machine-learning result. I would definitely recommend reading it, and also this one on appropriate controls in the field. The latter is a bit more technical, but it has some valuable suggestions to people running such models, and you can check to see if those are implemented yet. Edit: I should definitely mention Pat Walters’ perspective on this, too!

The new article has a pretty clear basic introduction to the ML field, and frankly, if you take it on board you’ll already be able to at least sound more knowledgeable than the majority of your colleagues. That’s the not-so-hidden secret of the whole ML field as applied to biomedical and chemical knowledge: there are some people who understand it pretty well, a few people who understand it a bit, and a great big massive crowd of people who don’t understand it at all. So here’s your chance to move into the “understand it a bit” classification, which for now, and probably for some time to come, will still be a relatively elite category (!)

… All that work has also exposed some of the pitfalls of image recognition – see this recent article for a quick overview.

For my students.

How to Message Recruiters on LinkedIn the Right Way

Not quite an act of war, but unlikely to be welcomed either.

https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-us-and-eu-could-facilitate-a-free-internet-for-iran/a-51313314

How the US and EU could facilitate a free internet for Iran

US Ambassador Richard Grenell's tweet suggesting that the United States and European Union could restore the internet for Iranians has drawn attention.

… The backbone of a contemporary system in Iran and other countries with authoritarian governments would be the hundreds of thousands or even millions of smartphones that people carry around with them.

An app could create a network out of the devices of people who take part: Each of those phones would become a server and connect with other phones nearby. A massive parallel internet would emerge through which users could communicate with each other.

Could be a very useful tool!

https://fortune.com/2019/11/19/asheem-chandna-abnormal-security-business-email-compromise/

How an Ex-Twitter Adman Plans to Squash Business Email Compromise, One of Tech’s Most Pernicious Threats

… Chandna—who specializes, ironically enough, in cybersecurity—was the target of an increasingly prevalent internet scam called “business email compromise.” The ploy involves fraudsters impersonating targets, whether by hacking or spoofing email accounts, and then tricking their contacts into forking over loot. Frequent prizes include unauthorized transfers of funds or documents such as wage and tax forms.

The compromises have gotten so out of control that the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a September bulletin that between May 2018 and June 2019 actual and attempted losses reported by victims doubled. Between June 2016 and July 2019, tens of thousands of companies have reported more than 160,000 incidents totaling $26 billion in actual and attempted losses, the bureau said. (And those figures only include publicly reported cases, meaning they’re likely conservative.)

… “We suck up all the data inside an IT security system to create profiles of who employees are and what is their expected behavior, to look for suspicious behaviors indicative of frauds or scams.”

The tells are many. Abnormal uses machine learning-based algorithms to sort data into three buckets—identity, content, and relationships. Some key clues for sussing out imposters include unfamiliar domain names or IP addresses (identity), uncharacteristic writing styles or urgent payment requests (content), and frequency and type of communications expected between various contacts (relationships).

Saves all the time and effort required to get a warrant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/19/police-can-keep-ring-camera-video-forever-share-with-whomever-theyd-like-company-tells-senator/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-technology%3Ahomepage%2Fcard-ans

Police can keep Ring camera video forever and share with whomever they’d like, Amazon tells senator

Police officers who download videos captured by homeowners’ Ring doorbell cameras can keep them forever and share them with whomever they’d like without providing evidence of a crime, the Amazon-owned firm told a lawmaker this month.

More than 600 police forces across the country have entered into partnerships with the camera giant, allowing them to quickly request and download video recorded by Ring’s motion-detecting, Internet-connected cameras inside and around Americans’ homes.

“I guess you didn’t notice that we have had the power since 1885.”

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/19/india-intercept-monitor-citizen-computers/

India says law permits agencies to snoop on citizen’s devices

The Indian government said on Tuesday that it is “empowered” to intercept, monitor, or decrypt any digital communication “generated, transmitted, received, or stored” on a citizen’s device in the country in the interest of national security or to maintain friendly relations with foreign states.

Citing section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and section 5 of the Telegraph Act, 1885, Minister of State for Home Affairs G. Kishan Reddy said local law empowers federal and state government to “intercept, monitor or decrypt or cause to be intercepted or monitored or decrypted any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above or for investigation of any offence.”

Reddy’s remarks were in response to the parliament, where a lawmaker had asked if the government had snooped on citizens’ WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber, and Google calls and messages.

… A report published today by New Delhi-based Software Law and Freedom Centre (SFLC) found that more than 100,000 telephone interception are issued by the federal government alone every year.

“On adding the surveillance orders issued by the state governments to this, it becomes clear that India routinely surveils her citizens’ communications on a truly staggering scale,” the report said.

How AI could change the world?

https://qz.com/work/1742847/pymetrics-ceo-frida-polli-on-the-ai-solution-to-hiring-bias/

People are terrible judges of talent. Can algorithms do better?

… As a cognitive scientist turned entrepreneur who’s held fellowships with Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Polli possesses the kind of pedigree and gravitas that tends to open professional doors. She has the put-together but attainable look of a startup leader who is unafraid of hard work. But these are exactly the types of observations she wants to uproot from the frameworks we commonly use to evaluate people in the working world.

“Companies have a whole set of prejudices,” she says. “‘I want someone from Princeton, I want someone who’s worked in this industry before.’ Have you even reality-checked that those things are important?”

Polli has. And her conclusions helped turn her into a steadfast if unlikely messenger of the idea that resumes and personal polish are outdated ways of judging a person’s qualifications.

For my security students.

What Is Creative Commons and Non-Commercial Use?

Hacker tourism? Travel around the world looking for vulnerable systems.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/turkish-cybercriminals-hack-atms-in-tripura-steal-huge-cash/article30010268.ece

Turkish cybercriminals hack ATMs in Tripura, steal huge cash

After Assam, suspected cybercriminals from Turkey have stolen huge amounts of cash from ATMs through ATM-cloning devices installed in Tripura’s capital Agartala, police said on Monday.

… SBI’s Regional Manager Dibyendu Chowdhury said that they have so far received complains from 45 customers that they lost their money due to the ATM hacking.

… According to a cyber-technology expert, the ATM card cloning system comprises a spy camera, a memory card and a small data device to gather ATM and account details of bank customers.

Incidents of stealing money of a large number of bank customers from ATMs through ATM cloning devices took place in different parts of the country including Kolkata and Guwahati.

Because suspects are not trustworthy.

California Court Upholds Warrantless GoPro Seizure

The Newspaper.com reports:

California cops may grab your dashcam video without first obtaining a warrant under a state Court of Appeal ruling published last week. A three-judge panel considered the case of motorist Robert Kien Tran, 39, who was driving his Volkswagen Golf on Palomar Mountain Road on November 6, 2016. This twisty route in San Diego County is a favorite for motorcyclists and car enthusiasts, so Tran had GoPro cameras recording his ascent from both the front and rear of the Golf.

Read more on TheNewspaper.com.

[From the article:

"Here the data from Tran's dashboard camera was not viewed or downloaded until after a warrant was obtained," Judge Huffman wrote. "Moreover, Tran had possession of the camera, and Palmer expressed concern that he could destroy the camera or the SD card from the camera…

The appellate court found that taking the camera was justified to preserve the potential evidence.

A copy of the ruling is available in a 150k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: California v. Tran (Court of Appeal, State of California, 11/13/2019)

Consider the capabilities of the technology. The police are inside their target’s computer before they encrypt anything or after they decrypt.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/with-new-surveillance-technology-are-encryption-backdoors-still-needed/

With New Surveillance Technology, Are Encryption Backdoors Still Needed?

… Much of this new surveillance technology is now being sold by a handful of surveillance technology companies, such as Cellebrite and NSO Group, both of them based in Israel. For its part, Cellebrite sells hacking hardware that enables law enforcement authorities to hack open locked and encrypted smartphones. As long as law enforcement officials have the actual smartphone in their possession and are willing to abide by a few ground rules (such as only unlocking smartphones in a secure, designated location), they have the ability to unlock encrypted phones – something that previously was impossible to do without the assistance of the phone manufacturer. When law enforcement authorities tried to get access to the locked iPhone of the infamous San Bernadino mass shooter, they ran into a brick wall when Apple refused to unlock the phone for them. With Cellebrite, though, law enforcement now has access to surveillance technology for unlocking any Android or iPhone.

NSO Group takes a different approach than Cellebrite. Instead of hacking hardware, NSO Group uses “lawful access” software that is implanted on the phone of a criminal suspect or terrorist. Once the software has been implanted, it works like malware, in that it goes to work infecting smartphone and grabbing the images, encrypted data, or contact lists it needs. And NSO Group has even found a way to infiltrate the strong end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp by exploiting a known security vulnerability. In one high-profile case, NSO Group enabled more than 1,400 people to be tracked and monitored as soon as they received a WhatsApp video call. Even if they didn’t answer the video call, the security vulnerability enabled malware to be loaded onto the phones.

… The problem here, of course, is that surveillance technology designed with law enforcement agencies in mind is often used for other purposes and by less savory individuals.

Wide ranging article.

https://readwrite.com/2019/11/18/ai-is-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-technology/

AI is the Fourth Industrial Revolution Technology

Moving from the third to the fourth industrial revolution is going to open a new chapter in human development – incorporating the extraordinary technological advances. These advanced technologies are emerging and will continue to merge in the business world. We see the fourth industrial revolution changing the digital, physical, and biological worlds. It is creating novel opportunities and promises of a better future.

… Economists say the fourth industrial revolution has a significant tendency to improve the lifestyle of the people all across the globe by raising global income levels. For now, consumers are the ones who are taking the most advantage from the digital world because of AI-powered products and services.

… The fourth industrial revolution mainly represents a confluence of different technologies – artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented, and virtual reality. Internet of things into innovative products, services, and industries.

The Identity verification market is an excellent example of this new AI-powered technology. The impact of these advanced technologies is all set to bring revolution to the business world.

… The fourth industrial revolution is expected to profoundly impact national and international security by affecting the nature of conflict and increased probability. Warfare isn’t just a single concept of the traditional battlefield. Now it relies on technological innovations.

Are you smarter than an AI? A bias article.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2019/11/18/getting-your-resume-past-the-ai-gatekeepers/#74d2da21d284

How To Get Your Résumé Past The Artificial Intelligence Gatekeepers

It’s no longer a secret that getting past the robot résumé readers to a human – let alone land an interview – can seem like trying to get in to see the Wizard of Oz. As the résumés of highly qualified applicants are rejected by the initial automated screening, job seekers suddenly find themselves having to learn résumé submission optimization to please the algorithms and beat the bots for a meeting with the Wizard.

(Related) Getting my students employed.

How to Upload Your Resume to LinkedIn the Right Way

Cyber is becoming part of the military arsenal, but what exists now is probably spread too thin.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/u-s-national-guards-evolving-mission-includes-assisting-local-governments-experiencing-cyber-attacks/

U.S. National Guard’s Evolving Mission Includes Assisting Local Governments Experiencing Cyber Attacks

Cyber attacks on municipalities have been on the rise in the past year, particularly in smaller cities that have inadequate resources to deal with them. In the smallest of towns and cities, local government relies on state and federal resources to deal with remediation in the wake of a breach. For some, those resources now include the National Guard.

… As little as a few years ago, cyber defense was not even on the radar of most National Guard agencies. In the past two years, cyber brigades have begun to spring up around the country as the need for proactive defense and response to nation-state cyber attacks has become clear.

Though each state has its own National Guard agency, many of these cyber brigades are responsible for covering multiple states. For example, the Army Nation Guard’s 91st Cyber Brigade is based in Virginia but is tasked with overseeing cyber response units in 30 states.

AI hates my face.

https://www.bespacific.com/who-stole-my-face-the-risks-of-law-enforcement-use-of-facial-recognition-software/

Who Stole My Face? The Risks Of Law Enforcement Use Of Facial Recognition Software

Via LLRX – Who Stole My Face? The Risks Of Law Enforcement Use Of Facial Recognition Software – Lawyer and Legal Technology Evangelist Nicole L. Black discusses the “reckless social experiment” that facial surveillance represents across all aspects of life in America. It is the norm on social media, in air travel, as a mechanism for state, local and federal government to identify location and means of travel (car, train, bus), in banking and financial transactions (smile next time you use your ATM), and as a security feature to unlock your phone, to name but some of its applications. You cannot opt-out of the use of your data nor the multifaceted ways that it impacts your diminishing privacy and civil liberties.

Perspective. Rumba today, much more tomorrow?

https://www.eastlaketimes.com/50695-internet-of-robotic-things-iort-market-will-generate-massive-revenue-in-future-abb-kuka-ag-fanuc-corporation-amazon-web-services-inc-google-cisco/

Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) Market will Generate Massive Revenue in Future | ABB; KUKA AG; FANUC CORPORATION; Amazon Web Services, Inc.; Google; Cisco

The Internet-of-Robotic-Things (IoRT) is an emerging paradigm that brings together autonomous robotic systems with the Internet of Things (IoT) vision of connected sensors and smart objects pervasively embedded in everyday environments. This merger can enable novel applications in almost every sector where cooperation between robots and IoT technology can be imagined: From assisted living, to precision farming, to packaging and dispatching goods in manufacturing and logistic applications, to cleaning and maintenance of civil infrastructure, to waste collection and recycling, to mapping, inspection, repair and dismantling in offshore and nuclear facilities.

Perspective.

https://www.cnet.com/news/tiktok-hits-1-5-billion-downloads-report-says/

TikTok hits 1.5 billion downloads, report says

TikTok has passed 1.5 billion downloads worldwide on the App Store and Google Play, according to a Thursday report from mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The social video app is currently the third most downloaded non-gaming app of the year, after WhatsApp at No. 1 and Messenger at No. 2, according to the firm. Facebook and Instagram rank in fourth and fifth place, respectively, the survey says.

Perspective.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/deutsche-bank-replacing-18000-jobs-with-ai-machine-learning-fn-report-2019-11-1028696144

Deutsche Bank says robots are already replacing workers as it ramps up a plan to axe 18,000 jobs

Deutsche Bank is using robots to replace the 18,000 staff it plans to cut, according to Financial News.

… Matthews told FN that the machine learning tools helped to save "680,000 hours of manual work" and that it "so far used bots to process 5 million transactions in its corporate bank and perform 3.4 million checks within its investment bank."

One of the very few trends I saw coming.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90432191/telecoms-wield-enormous-power-over-the-internet-but-cities-are-fighting-back

Should the internet be a public utility? Hundreds of cities are saying yes

… A different vision of how the internet could operate is already taking shape across the United States. In recent years, many cities and towns around the country have built their own broadband networks. These communities are often seeking to provide affordable high-speed internet service to neighborhoods that the for-profit network providers aren’t adequately serving.

One of the best-known efforts is in the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, which built its own high-speed fiber-optic internet network in 2009.

Chattanooga’s experiment has been an unequivocal success: According to a 2018 survey conducted by Consumer Reports, Chattanooga’s municipal broadband network is the top-rated internet provider in the entire U.S.

More than 500 other communities around the country operate publicly owned internet networks. In general, these networks are cheaper, faster, and more transparent in their pricing than their private sector counterparts, despite lacking Comcast and Verizon’s gigantic economies of scale. Because the people operating municipal broadband networks serve communities rather than large shareholders on Wall Street, they have a vested interest in respecting net neutrality principles.

No SciFi category? Perhaps I’ll make my own list.

https://www.bespacific.com/time-the-100-must-read-books-of-2019/

TIME – The 100 Must-Read Books of 2019

The 100 Must-Read Books of 2019 – Stirring novels and short stories, thought-provoking histories, affecting memoirs and more. These are the books that captured our attention

Some definitions for my Security students.

https://cyware.com/news/understanding-the-difference-between-risk-threat-and-vulnerability-c5210e89

Understanding the difference between risk, threat, and vulnerability

(Ditto)

https://cyware.com/news/what-is-the-difference-between-encoding-encryption-and-hashing-4cf660d6/

What is the difference between encoding, encryption, and hashing?