While there is a lot here about the damage done, I would be more concerned that the victim did not disable the accounts (passwords) of the employee who left.

https://www.databreaches.net/ticketmaster-pays-10-million-criminal-fine-for-intrusions-into-competitors-computer-systems/

Ticketmaster Pays $10 Million Criminal Fine for Intrusions into Competitor’s Computer Systems

Ticketmaster Used Passwords Unlawfully Retained by a Former Employee of a Competitor to Access Computer Systems in Scheme to “Choke Off” the Victim’s Business

Earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, Ticketmaster L.L.C. (Ticketmaster or the Company) agreed to pay a $10 million fine to resolve charges that it repeatedly accessed without authorization the computer systems of a competitor. The fine is part of a deferred prosecution agreement that Ticketmaster has entered with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York to resolve a five-count criminal information filed today charging computer intrusion and fraud offenses.

Doorbells is dangerous!

https://threatpost.com/fbi-warn-home-security-devices-swatting/162678/

FBI Warn Hackers are Using Hijacked Home Security Devices for ‘Swatting’

Stolen email passwords are being used to hijack smart home security systems to “swat” unsuspecting users, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned this week. The announcement comes after concerned device manufacturers alerted law enforcement about the issue.

Swatting is a dangerous prank where police are called to a home with a fake emergency.

… By accessing a targeted home security device an attacker can initiate a call for help to authorities and watch remotely as the swat occurs. The FBI points out that by initiating a call for help from the actual security device lends authenticity and anonymity to the hacker.

I can see this type of lawsuit as a can (barrel) of worms waiting to explode. “I think you had a secret security breach, so I’m gonna sue you.” Perhaps an attempt to get paid to go away?

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/data-breach-litigation-without-data-breach-not-so-fast-walmart-says

Data Breach Litigation Without a Data Breach? Not So Fast Walmart Says…

The Lavarious Gardiner v. Walmart Inc. et al. case is anything but typical.

As a re-cap, back in July 2020, plaintiff filed a class action complaint against Walmart alleging that Walmart suffered a data breach which they never disclosed. As evidence of the breach, plaintiff presented claims that the personal information associated with his Walmart account had been discovered on the dark web and presented the results of security scans performed on Walmart’s website, which allegedly show certain vulnerabilities.

In other words, plaintiff filed suit on the suspicion that Walmart’s systems had been breached, which Walmart denies.

On December 12, Walmart filed a Motion to Dismiss all plaintiff’s claims, (which include, among others, a claim under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and a claim under California Unfair Competition Law (‘UCL’)) arguing that plaintiff failed to state viable claims. In addition to the specific arguments discussed below for the CCPA and UCL claims, the motion presents several additional arguments, including the allegation that plaintiff “cannot make the requisite showing of cognizable harm.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide!”

https://www.pogowasright.org/privacy-schmivacy-2-in-3-americans-dont-care-if-their-smart-devices-are-recording-them/

Privacy, schmivacy: 2 in 3 Americans don’t care if their smart devices are recording them

Chris Melore reports:

Are the ads popping up in your smart device a little too spot on? Is it an eerie coincidence or are your smartphones and smart speakers listening in on everything you say in private? Privacy issues are a constant concern when it comes to digital technology, but a new survey finds many Americans are simply accepting they may not be alone in their own home. Researchers say two in three U.S. adults “don’t care” if their smart devices are always listening to what they say.

The report by Safety.com finds 66.7 percent of U.S. residents over 18 wouldn’t have a problem finding out a home gadget is listening in on what’s going on inside their home. Researchers polled nearly 1,100 people between the ages of 18 and 64 during December of 2020.

Read more on Study Finds.

Does this reflect a uniform strategy?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/tech-giants-rally-behind-whatsapp-in-case-against-pegasus-cyber-surveillance-tools/

Tech Giants Rally Behind WhatsApp in Case Against Pegasus Cyber Surveillance Tools

WhatsApp (and parent company Facebook) has been in a year-long battle against Israeli firm NSO Group over unauthorized use of its cyber surveillance tools on the platform. That case received an injection of support from fellow Silicon Valley firms as Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems among others have filed an amicus brief in support of WhatsApp.

The brief provides expert testimony as to the cybersecurity risks created by allowing such cyber surveillance tools to be used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies on social media and e-commerce platforms. It is filed in counter to NSO Group’s request for sovereign immunity, arguing that setting such a precedent would allow foreign governments to violate United States law and create openings for criminal parties to engage in espionage.

Oh dear, another parental (and congressional?) fear debunked. (again) Of course it may be possible that only hyper-agressive kids play violent video games and therefore no increase is measured.

https://gamesage.net/blogs/news/ten-year-long-study-confirms-no-link-between-playing-violent-video-games-as-early-as-ten-years-old-and-aggressive-behavior-later-in-life

TEN-YEAR LONG STUDY CONFIRMS NO LINK BETWEEN PLAYING VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES AS EARLY AS TEN YEARS OLD AND AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR LATER IN LIFE

A ten-year longitudinal study published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking on a group in early adolescence from as young as ten years old, investigated how playing violent video games at an early age would translate into adulthood behavior (23 years of age). Titled "Growing Up with Grand Theft Auto: A 10-Year Study of Longitudinal Growth of Violent Video Game Play in Adolescents" the study found no correlation between growing up playing video games and increased levels of aggression ten years later.

For us stay-at-home bloggers.

https://www.bespacific.com/does-working-from-home-make-employees-more-productive/

Does working from home make employees more productive?

The Economist [paywall] – “Yes, according to new research, and they should be paid accordingly. Remote working, relatively uncommon before the pandemic, has gone mainstream. Before covid-19 roughly 5% of Americans worked from home. By May the figure had risen to 62%. By October 40% were still shunning the office. Both employers and employees have grumbled that the shift to home-working has been disruptive. But according to new research by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, two doctoral students in economics at Harvard, firms may be better off…” From the paper “Working” Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market Provision of Remote Work:

“Why was remote work so rare prior to Covid-19’s lockdown? One possibility is that working remotely reduces productivity. Another is that remote work attracts unobservably less productive workers. In our setting of call-center workers at a Fortune 500 retailer, two natural experiments reveal positive productivity effects of remote work. When Covid-19 closed down the retailer’s on-site call-centers, a difference-in-difference design suggests the transition from on-site to remote work increased the productivity of formerly on-site workers by 8% to 10% relative to their already remote peers. Similarly, when previously on-site workers took up opportunities to go remote in 2018-2019, their productivity rose by 7%. These two natural experiments also reveal negative selection into remote work. While all workers were remote due to Covid-19, those who were hired into remote jobs were 12% less productive than those hired into on-site jobs. Extending remote opportunities to on-site workers similarly attracted less productive workers to on-site jobs. Our model allows us to characterize the counterfactual in which remote workers were not adversely selected. Without adverse selection, the retailer would have hired 57% more remote workers and worker surplus from remote work would have been 32% greater. Given the central role of selection, Covid-19’s effect on remote work will persist if the lockdown disproportionately causes more productive workers to be willing to work remotely.”

In case you missed one. Really geeky!

https://github.com/louisfb01/Best_AI_paper_2020#2020-a-year-full-of-amazing-ai-papers--a-review

2020: A Year Full of Amazing AI papers- A Review

A curated list of the latest breakthroughs in AI by release date with a clear video explanation, link to a more in-depth article, and code

… The complete reference to each paper is listed at the end of this repository.

Summary and warning.

https://www.wired.com/story/ransomware-2020-headed-down-dire-path/

Ransomware Is Headed Down a Dire Path

… Though some researchers say that the scale and severity of ransomware attacks crossed a bright line in 2020, others describe this year as simply the next step in a gradual and, unfortunately, predictable devolution. After years spent honing their techniques, attackers are growing bolder. They’ve begun to incorporate other types of extortion like blackmail into their arsenals, by exfiltrating an organization’s data and then threatening to release it if the victim doesn’t pay an additional fee. Most significantly, ransomware attackers have transitioned from a model in which they hit lots of individuals and accumulated many small ransom payments to one where they carefully plan attacks against a smaller group of large targets from which they can demand massive ransoms. The antivirus firm Emsisoft found that the average requested fee has increased from about $5,000 in 2018 to about $200,000 this year.

Start planning now, avoid the panic later (soon?)

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/eus-new-digital-markets-and-digital-services-act-increase-antitrust-pressure-on-big-tech/

EU’s New Digital Markets and Digital Services Act Increase Antitrust Pressure on Big Tech

Already facing a number of investigations and fines under the existing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules, the Big Tech companies are feeling even more pressure in Europe with the proposal of two new antitrust policies. Together the “Digital Markets Act” and “Digital Services Act” would limit use of personal data and require social media platforms to do more policing of user-created content.

… The Digital Services Act and its companion bill would collectively give regulators the ability to increase fines on Big Tech companies, and would introduce the prospect of requiring them to break up or be banned from the EU entirely if they commit repeat offenses.

The Digital Services Act addresses user content hosted on Big Tech’s various platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Firms of this size would be required to be much more active in policing their own territories for illegal content: the sale of illegal goods and services, human trafficking, terrorism, child abuse and things of that nature. The Digital Markets Act addresses the increasing concentration of social media and e-commerce power in the hands of a relative few major online players. These Big Tech heavyweights are branded “gatekeepers” by the Act and would be subject to a new package of rules to prevent anticompetitive behavior, such as being limited in their use of information of business users to develop and deploy competing services.

And industry security… (Podcast)

https://www.nextgov.com/podcasts/2020/12/critical-update-why-having-artificial-intelligence-talent-national-security-issue/170976/

Critical Update: Why Having Artificial Intelligence Talent is a National Security Issue

… Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University and a member of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, told Nextgov’s Critical Update podcast that beefing up the federal workforce’s AI capabilities is more than imperative—it’s an urgent national security concern.

The U.S. is competing with China when it comes to AI, Griffiths said, describing China as “all in” on ramping up AI capabilities to support economic security and establish a military advantage.

… Listen to the full episode below or download and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Perspective.

https://www.eweek.com/big-data-and-analytics/industry-perspective-how-ai-is-revolutionizing-business-processes

Industry Perspective: How AI is Revolutionizing Business Processes

eWEEK EXPERT Q&A: We're seeing more AI in more apps in more places than we've ever seen before: wearables, cars, productivity apps, military, health care, home entertainment--the list is lengthy. This expert explains how and why.

‘cause lawyers are becoming more technical…

https://www.bespacific.com/top-5-legal-technology-stories-of-2020/

Top 5 legal technology stories of 2020

Via LLRX – Top 5 legal technology stories of 2020 – Nicole L. Black discusses the wide ranging effects on the legal technology space from the pandemic across all corners of the legal technology world. The shift to remote work had a dramatic impact on both the practice of law and the business of law, resulting in the rapid—and singularly remarkable—adoption of technology at rates never before seen. In some cases, the transition was a smooth one, and in others, it was a spectacular disaster. Good or bad, the results of the pandemic’s impact were undoubtedly notable—and newsworthy. In her article Black focuses on a few topics that especially resonated with her tech savvy readers and colleagues.

Perspective.

https://www.vox.com/recode/22204578/2020-ecommerce-growth-retail-shopping-changed-forever?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

The year shopping changed forever

… At the end of last year, only around 13 percent of retail purchases — excluding auto and gas sales — were made online, according to Mastercard. By the end of 2020, that figure stands at around 20 percent, or $1 out of every $5. During normal recent years, when e-commerce growth rates averaged between 12 percent and 16 percent, that kind of jump would have taken several years to happen. But US e-commerce sales will have grown more than 30 percent in 2020, and there’s no going back.

Amazon, unsurprisingly, has been a huge winner of this dramatic shift, growing its US retail business an estimated 39 percent this year and increasing its market share to 39 percent of all online retail in the US, according to eMarketer.

(Related)

https://www.ft.com/content/095d73d5-a7a6-4acc-9dcc-9ee3e3d1fff4

Amazon’s advertising business booms in pandemic

The surge in online shopping triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic has put Amazon on course for its first-ever $100bn quarter, but it has also boosted an overlooked part of the company’s business: advertising.

As more and more merchants cram on to Amazon’s vast marketplace, brands that want to stand out are spending heavily on ads.

As a result, Amazon’s “other” business unit, which is made up almost entirely of its ads business, is growing faster than its retail, cloud computing and Prime subscription divisions.

According to FactSet, a financial data company, Amazon’s “other” unit will make $21bn in revenue in 2020, a 47 per cent jump on last year.

When Mr Zillman creates a list, it is usually exhaustive. Always something unique to find.

https://www.bespacific.com/financial-sources-on-the-internet-2021/

Financial Sources on the Internet 2021

Via LLRX – Financial Sources on the Internet 2021 – Marcus P. Zillman, new guide comprises a list of actionable financial resources from the U.S. and abroad, organized by four subject areas: Corporate Conference Calls Resources, Financial Sources, Financial Sources Search Engines, and Venture Capital Sources. Content includes: sources for news and updates on business, corporations and marketplaces; sources from the NGO/IGO sectors; data, databases and charts; search applications; resources for investors and money management; and market analysis tools.

Tools for the hackers tool chest.

https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/latest-web-hacking-tools-q4-2020

Latest web hacking tools – Q4 2020

Here’s our roundup of the latest hacking tools for the fourth quarter of 2020:

Not much news during the holidays.

What could go wrong?

https://www.nj.com/middlesex/2020/12/he-spent-10-days-in-jail-after-facial-recognition-software-led-to-the-arrest-of-the-wrong-man-lawsuit-says.html

He spent 10 days in jail after facial recognition software led to the arrest of the wrong man, lawsuit says

… Investigators relied on facial recognition software that has since been banned in New Jersey to identify Parks as a suspect in crimes that occurred the afternoon of Jan. 26, 2019, at the Hampton Inn hotel on Route 9 North in Woodbridge.

The software, which was created by Clearview Al, was criticized for its heavy reliance on billions of social media photos to identify criminal suspects.

… After three or four court appearances over a year, Parks said a Superior Court judge began pressuring the prosecutor’s office to produce more evidence in the case beyond just the facial recognition software.

“She told them she didn’t want to come back to court until they had solid evidence,” Parks said. A few months after that hearing, Parks said he received a letter from the prosecutor’s office dismissing the charges.

Gosh Big Brother, what did you get for Christmas?

https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/police-phone-surveillance-dragnet-cellhawk/

POWERFUL MOBILE PHONE SURVEILLANCE TOOL OPERATES IN OBSCURITY ACROSS THE COUNTRY

UNTIL NOW, the Bartonville, Texas, company Hawk Analytics and its product CellHawk have largely escaped public scrutiny. CellHawk has been in wide use by law enforcement, helping police departments, the FBI, and private investigators around the United States convert information collected by cellular providers into maps of people’s locations, movements, and relationships. Police records obtained by The Intercept reveal a troublingly powerful surveillance tool operated in obscurity, with scant oversight.

… Police use CellHawk to process datasets they routinely receive from cell carriers like AT&T and Verizon, typically in vast spreadsheets and often without a warrant. This is in sharp contrast to a better known phone surveillance technology, the stingray: a mobile device that spies on cellular devices by impersonating carriers’ towers, tricking phones into connecting, and then intercepting their communications. Unlike the stingray, CellHawk does not require such subterfuge or for police to position a device near people of interest. Instead, it helps them exploit information already collected by private telecommunications providers and other third parties.

… The company has touted features that make CellHawk sound more like a tool for automated, continuous surveillance than for just processing the occasional spreadsheet from a cellular company. CellHawk’s website touts the ability to send email and text alerts “to surveillance teams” when a target moves, or enters or exits a particular “location or Geozone (e.g. your entire county border).”

What would impress you?

https://www.fastcompany.com/90590042/turing-test-obsolete-ai-benchmark-amazon-alexa

The Turing Test is obsolete. It’s time to build a new barometer for AI

This year marks 70 years since Alan Turing published his paper introducing the concept of the Turing Test in response to the question, “Can machines think?” The test’s goal was to determine if a machine can exhibit conversational behavior indistinguishable from a human. Turing predicted that by the year 2000, an average human would have less than a 70% chance of distinguishing an AI from a human in an imitation game where who is responding—a human or an AI—is hidden from the evaluator.

Why haven’t we as an industry been able to achieve that goal, 20 years past that mark? I believe the goal put forth by Turing is not a useful one for AI scientists like myself to work toward. The Turing Test is fraught with limitations, some of which Turing himself debated in his seminal paper. With AI now ubiquitously integrated into our phones, cars, and homes, it’s become increasingly obvious that people care much more that their interactions with machines be useful, seamless and transparent—and that the concept of machines being indistinguishable from a human is out of touch. Therefore, it is time to retire the lore that has served as an inspiration for seven decades, and set a new challenge that inspires researchers and practitioners equally.

Perspective.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-propelled-businesses-into-the-future-ready-or-not-11608958806?mod=djemalertNEWS

Covid-19 Propelled Businesses Into the Future. Ready or Not.

… “Covid has acted like a time machine: it brought 2030 to 2020,” said Loren Padelford, vice president at Shopify Inc. “All those trends, where organizations thought they had more time, got rapidly accelerated.”

… In many ways, digitization is simply the next chapter of a process under way for a century: the dematerialization of the economy. As agriculture gave way to manufacturing and then services, the share of economic value derived from tangible material and muscle shrunk while the share derived from information and brains grew. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan liked to note that economic output has steadily gotten lighter.

… In 1850, he said, “the only way to listen to music was physical presence at a concert or play it yourself.” Then came player piano rolls, vinyl records, CDs and now streaming, innovations that whittled the tangible contribution to music down to almost nothing.

At least a third of the value in a record, cassette or compact disc once went toward tangible capital: the manufacturers and distributors such as retail stores. Today, almost all of the value of a streamed or downloaded song goes toward intangible capital: the artist, the songwriter, the label, the publisher or the platform (such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes or Spotify Technology SA ) that distributes it.

… The shift from physical to virtual commerce went hand-in-hand with the rise of remote and contactless payments and the decline of cash.

… Until the pandemic, many merchants had resisted moving online believing “it took a lot of time, money, and technical capability,” said Shopify’s Mr. Padelford. “In fact, it doesn’t. The average company can be online in a single day,” and pay as little as $29 a month.

Alternate tools. Are we sure this is a good thing?

https://www.ft.com/content/24efc152-a65d-4c48-9032-ee349a2c885b

Search engine start-ups try to take on Google

A new batch of search engine start-ups positioning themselves as potential rivals to Google is hoping that growing regulatory pressure will finally reverse two decades of the search giant’s dominance.

The latest challengers include Neeva, launched by two former Google executives, and You.com, founded by Salesforce.com’s former chief scientist, as well as Mojeek, a UK-based start-up with growing ambitions to build its own index of billions of web pages.

Yeah, we thought of that centuries ago.

http://iculture.spb.ru/index.php/stucult/article/view/1266

CONFUCIANISM AND THE ETHICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The article examines ethical issues related to the development of artificial intelligence from the point of view of Confucianism. Artificial intelligence (AI) is by far the hottest topic in the world, and related ethical issues are also major issues discussed in the field of philosophy and cultural studies. Despite its antiquity, there are judgments in Confucian teaching that can be interpreted as conceptual support and formulation of guidelines for the ethics of artificial intelligence. First, through the definition of “human” in Confucianism, the possibility of determining the social status of artificial intelligence is offered. Secondly, in Confucianism, positions are formulated in relation to the discourse on the standardization of ethics for artificial intelligence. Thirdly, Confucian teachings contain the basis for the study of a hybrid existence that combines artificial intelligence and the human body. It is concluded that the contribution of Confucianism in this area lies in its indirectly normative principle, within the framework of the idea “you need to correct people with the help of people until they change

Ethically legal or legally ethical?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1023263X20981566

Artificial intelligence and human rights: Between law and ethics

The ethics and law of AI address the same domain, namely, the present and future impacts of AI on individuals, society, and the environment. Both are meant to provide normative guidance, proposing rules and values on which basis to govern human action and determine the constrains, structures and functions of AI-enabled socio-technical systems. This article examines the way in which AI is addressed by ethical and legal rules, principles and arguments. It considers the extent to which the demands of law and ethics may pull in different directions or rather overlap, and examines how they can be coordinated, while remaining in a productive dialectical tension. In particular, it argues that human/fundamental rights and social values are central to both ethics and law. Even though can be framed in different ways, they can provide a useful normative reference for linking ethics and law in addressing the normative issues arising in connection with AI.

Probably not funded by certain large tech firms.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Antitrust-and-Artificial-Intelligence-(AAI)%3A-and-AI-Eliot/3e3444ee9c01cc56263bced7c65b810f5876d2b6

Antitrust and Artificial Intelligence (AAI): Antitrust Vigilance Lifecycle and AI Legal Reasoning Autonomy

There is an increasing interest in the entwining of the field of antitrust with the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), frequently referred to jointly as Antitrust and AI (AAI) in the research literature. This study focuses on the synergies entangling antitrust and AI, doing so to extend the literature by proffering the primary ways that these two fields intersect, consisting of: (1) the application of antitrust to AI, and (2) the application of AI to antitrust. To date, most of the existing research on this intermixing has concentrated on the former, namely the application of antitrust to AI, entailing how the marketplace will be altered by the advent of AI and the potential for adverse antitrust behaviors arising accordingly. Opting to explore more deeply the other side of this coin, this research closely examines the application of AI to antitrust and establishes an antitrust vigilance lifecycle to which AI is predicted to be substantively infused for purposes of enabling and bolstering antitrust detection, enforcement, and post enforcement monitoring. Furthermore, a gradual and incremental injection of AI into antitrust vigilance is anticipated to occur as significant advances emerge amidst the Levels of Autonomy (LoA) for AI Legal Reasoning (AILR).

What does not kill us makes us stronger?

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2781/invited1.pdf

Rethinking Democracy in the “Pandemic Society” A journey in search of the governance with, of and by AI

The COVID-19 outbreak had a swift and severe impact on our lives, and a subtle transformation is affecting Democracy as we are used to knowing it. In this paper I argue that the “Pandemic Society” we are now experiencing magnifies a dilemma already evident in the recent evolution of digital government and governance: securing citizens’ privacy or delivering better services – now including the protection of personal health. In this scenario, while human interactions are being permanently modified by the mediation of technologies, and in particular the accelerated adoption of Artificial Intelligence, a fundamental question to be addressed is how to ensure digital resilience and collective well-being while safeguarding liberal democracy and individual rights. Finding an answer to this challenge requires innovating the democratic settings and functioning of global governance arrangements in the digital age. Yet too little is known about the chances and the conditions for AI to become supportive of the needed quantity and quality of democratic innovation in the forthcoming decades. I thus elaborate on the quest for redesigning institutional frameworks to rethink and innovate our democratic systems and instruments for deliberation, where the AI phenomenon - under wide scrutiny now also at policy and public service levels – becomes crucial. I conclude suggesting directions for further research and new avenues for policy design and governance in the age of digital transformation.

Tips on investing?

https://econpapers.repec.org/article/slsipmsls/v_3a39_3ay_3a2020_3a6.htm

The Impact of Digitalization on the Economy: A Review Article on the NBER Volume "Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda"

Digitalization is affecting every aspect of our economy and our society. A set of new technologies are behind this latest surge - robotic process automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), big data, cloud computing, the internet of things and blockchain. This volume, {The Economics of Artificial Intelligence}, focuses on the impact, real and prospective, of machine learning (ML), on the economy. The authors tackle a wide range of topics, including how it is impacting innovation, the consequences for employment and economic growth, issues related to privacy, international trade and ultimately, how AI will affect the economics discipline itself. The contributors, overall, take a positive view of the impact of AI on economic outcomes. They also acknowledge, however, that policies related to redistribution, privacy and competition are needed to ensure that the benefits of digitalization are shared appropriately.

Would I be wrong if I said this seems much more anti-Facebook than anti-trust?

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/26/anti-facebook-agitators-biden-era-450347

Anti-Facebook agitators see their moment under Biden

… Democrats widely accuse Facebook leaders of permitting misinformation to appease Trump and his Republican allies. Biden’s campaign representatives have also lambasted Facebook for choosing not to remove Trump’s misleading claims from their pages and for broadly halting political advertising in the days immediately before and after the Nov. 3 election.

“It's just not a great business strategy to piss off the incoming president,” said Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, which has advocated for antitrust enforcement against Facebook, Google and other big tech firms.

Tools. Some Privacy enhancements, but mostly to plant trees?

https://www.makeuseof.com/reasons-to-use-ecosia-instead-of-other-search-engines/

10 Reasons to Use Ecosia Instead of Other Search Engines

A “heads up!”

https://www.pogowasright.org/canada-watch-out-gdpr-canada-proposes-strict-new-privacy-law-framework-backed-by-significant-fines/

Canada: Watch out, GDPR – Canada proposes strict new privacy law framework backed by significant fines

Arlan Gates, Theo Ling, and Karina Kudinova of Baker McKenzie write:

In November 2020, Canada introduced new federal privacy legislation that, if adopted, will create one of the strictest data protection regimes in the world, accompanied by some of the most severe financial penalties, rivalling the standards in Europe and California. Companies with a connection to Canada will need to build the new federal law, and applicable provincial laws, into their global compliance strategy.

Key Takeaways and Next Steps

The draft federal Bill C-11 provides organizations with a glimpse into what Canada’s private sector privacy laws may look like in the near future. As Canadian lawmakers consider amendments and proposals to align with global regimes such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), businesses are likely to see new or increased consumer rights and additional obligations with respect to how personal information may be processed.

Read more on Global Compliance News.

How much paranoia is enough?

https://www.pogowasright.org/we-say-no-to-mug-shots-at-airports-and-borders/

We say “No” to mug shots at airports and borders

From the great folks at Papers, Please! (the Identity Project) on December 21:

Today the Identity Project (IDP), Restore the Fourth, Privacy Times, and the National Workrights Institute filed joint comments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in opposition ot the CBP proposal to require mug shots (and possibly collection of other biometrics) from all non-U.S. citizens at all border crossings and international airports and seaports

Read their analysis of CBP’s proposal on Papers, Please!

Is Facebook jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/as-final-stage-of-brexit-approaches-facebook-moves-uk-user-data-to-california-to-escape-eu-privacy-rules/

As Final Stage of Brexit Approaches, Facebook Moves UK User Data to California to Escape EU Privacy Rules

The United Kingdom is expected to complete its “Brexit” withdrawal from the European Union as 2021 starts. The situation may be of some benefit to Facebook, as the UK is slated to immediately adopt its own version of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in a bid to maintain “adequate” status as an EU data transfer partner. Facebook has come up with a clever workaround that takes advantage of the UK’s newly independent status; it’s simply going to move local users to California to evade EU privacy rules.

The sensors we carry with us. Could this be sensitive enough to distinguish between running over the neighbor’s bike and running over the neighbor?

https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/12/26/how-this-startup-is-mapping-indias-potholes-using-just-your-phone/

How this startup is mapping India’s potholes using just your phone

… The firm created a simple application to capture potholes using your phone’s sensors, such as gyroscope and accelerometer. Its algorithm observes changes in your vehicle’s speed and sudden dips and jumps to determine if a road has potholes in certain places.

You can install the app, and go about your business without even having to register. The company says it doesn’t need your personal data.

Not much news today. You’d think it was some kind of holiday…

A clear Security responsibility.

https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2020/12/24/ftc-announces-enforcement-for-inadequate-third-party-risk-management-practices-under-the-glbas-safeguards-rule/

FTC Announces Enforcement for Inadequate Third Party Risk Management Practices Under the GLBA’s Safeguards Rule

On December 15, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement with Ascension Data & Analytics, LLC, a Texas-based mortgage industry data analytics company (“Ascension”), to resolve allegations that the company failed to ensure one of its vendors was adequately securing personal information of mortgage holders. The FTC alleged that Ascension’s vendor, OpticsML, stored documents with information, such as names, Social Security numbers and loan information, pertaining to tens of thousands of mortgage holders on a cloud-based server in plain text without any protections to block unauthorized access. The FTC further alleged that, as a result of the inadequate protections, the cloud-based server was subject to unauthorized access dozens of times.

The better the lure, the more phish you catch.

https://coppercourier.com/story/godaddy-employees-holiday-bonus-secruity-test/

GoDaddy Employees Were Told They Were Getting a Holiday Bonus. It Was Actually a Phishing Test.

“2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you!” the email read.

Sent by Happyholiday@Godaddy.com, tucked underneath a glittering banner of a snowflake and stamped with the words “GoDaddy Holiday Party,” the Dec. 14 email to hundreds of GoDaddy employees promised some welcome financial relief during an otherwise stressful year.

“Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus!” the email read. “To ensure that you receive your one-time bonus in time for the Holidays, please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th.”

But, two days later, the company sent another email.

“You’re getting this email because you failed our recent phishing test,” the company’s chief security officer Demetrius Comes wrote. “You will need to retake the Security Awareness Social Engineering training.”

The first, but according to my crystal ball, not the last.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/first-cross-border-gdpr-fine-comes-in-twitter-will-pay-e450000/

First Cross-Border GDPR Fine Comes In; Twitter Will Pay €450,000

Bringing an end to a case that was nearly two years in the making, Twitter will pay a GDPR fine of €450,000 (about $546,000) in the first cross-border enforcement action brought against a tech giant.

The fine stems from a data breach discovered back in January 2019, involving a bug that exposed certain protected tweets to the general public that was believed to have been in place since late 2014.

For the true AI geeks.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-debate4-2-night-of-a-thousand-ai-scholars/

AI Debate 2: Night of a thousand AI scholars

A year ago, Gary Marcus, a frequent critic of deep learning forms of AI, and Yoshua Bengio, a leading proponent of deep learning, faced off in a two-hour debate about AI at Bengio's MILA institute headquarters in Montreal.

Wednesday evening, Marcus was back, albeit virtually, to open the second installment of what is now planned to be an annual debate on AI, under the title "AI Debate 2: Moving AI Forward." (You can follow the proceedings from 4 pm to 7 pm on Montreal.ai's Facebook page.)

… Each of the sixteen speakers spoke for roughly five minutes about their focus and what they believed AI needs. Marcus compiled a nice reading packet you can check from each of the scholars as background.

Lawyers getting all techie… I suppose it’s better than us techies getting all lawyerly.

https://abovethelaw.com/2020/12/5-unforeseeable-predicable-and-surprising-legal-tech-trends-in-2020/

5 (Unforeseeable, Predicable, And Surprising) Legal Tech Trends In 2020

… I have identified five trends, which I have divided into three categories: unforeseeable, continuing and surprising.

The trends I believe are worth noting — Unforeseeable: COVID-19 impacts; Predicable: state court analytics and innovative workflow tools; Surprising: legal news re-emerges as a competitive focus among major legal publishers and tech marketplaces emerge.

Perspective.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/12/11/20-striking-findings-from-2020/

20 striking findings from 2020

As 2020 draws to a close, here are 20 striking findings from Pew Research Center’s studies this year, covering the pandemic, race-related tensions, the presidential election and other notable trends that emerged during the year.

For us math geeks.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantas-year-in-math-and-computer-science-2020-20201223/

The Year in Math and Computer Science

Even as mathematicians and computer scientists proved big results in computational complexity, number theory and geometry, computers proved themselves increasingly indispensable in mathematics.

Will we understand how to control this technology by 2022?

https://www.pogowasright.org/new-york-bans-facial-recognition-in-schools-until-at-least-2022/

New York bans facial recognition in schools until at least 2022

Colin Wood reports:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation on Tuesday making his state the first to ban the use of facial recognition technology and other biometric technology in both public and private K-12 schools.

The new law places a moratorium on schools purchasing or using biometric technology until at least July 1, 2022 or until a study is conducted determining acceptable use of the technology, whichever comes later.

Read more on EdScoop.

Privacy in the presence of Alexa.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/12/eavesdropping-on-phone-taps-from-voice-assistants.html

Eavesdropping on Phone Taps from Voice Assistants

The microphones on voice assistants are very sensitive, and can snoop on all sorts of data:

In Hey Alexa what did I just type? we show that when sitting up to half a meter away, a voice assistant can still hear the taps you make on your phone, even in presence of noise. Modern voice assistants have two to seven microphones, so they can do directional localisation, just as human ears do, but with greater sensitivity. We assess the risk and show that a lot more work is needed to understand the privacy implications of the always-on microphones that are increasingly infesting our work spaces and our homes.

From the paper:

Abstract: Voice assistants are now ubiquitous and listen in on our everyday lives. Ever since they became commercially available, privacy advocates worried that the data they collect can be abused: might private conversations be extracted by third parties? In this paper we show that privacy threats go beyond spoken conversations and include sensitive data typed on nearby smartphones. Using two different smartphones and a tablet we demonstrate that the attacker can extract PIN codes and text messages from recordings collected by a voice assistant located up to half a meter away. This shows that remote keyboard-inference attacks are not limited to physical keyboards but extend to virtual keyboards too. As our homes become full of always-on microphones, we need to work through the implications.

An extension to my Excel class? (Not in my local library, yet.)

https://bdtechtalks.com/2020/12/22/excel-data-science-machine-learning/

An introduction to data science and machine learning with Microsoft Excel

… mastering machine learning is a difficult process. You need to start with a solid knowledge of linear algebra and calculus, master a programming language such as Python, and become proficient with data science and machine learning libraries such as Numpy, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, and PyTorch.

And if you want to create machine learning systems that integrate and scale, you’ll have to learn cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

… While I’ve been using Excel’s mathematical tools for years, I didn’t come to appreciate its use for learning and applying data science and machine learning until I picked up Learn Data Mining Through Excel: A Step-by-Step Approach for Understanding Machine Learning Methods by Hong Zhou.

Learn Data Mining Through Excel takes you through the basics of machine learning step by step and shows how you can implement many algorithms using basic Excel functions and a few of the application’s advanced tools.

While Excel will in no way replace Python machine learning, it is a great window to learn the basics of AI and solve many basic problems without writing a line of code.

Will others follow?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03611-8

Prestigious AI meeting takes steps to improve ethics of research

For the first time, the organizers of NeurIPS required speakers to consider the societal impact of their work.

For the truly bored.

https://syncedreview.com/2020/12/22/2020-in-review-10-ai-podcasts-you-need-to-know/

2020 in Review: 10 AI Podcasts You Need to Know

… In a year plagued by shutdowns, “being home has actually opened up a new opportunity to discover this format.”

Synced has selected 10 AI-related podcasts for readers to check out over the holiday season.

Not sure this provides and insight to Google’s response to all the anti-trust kerfuffle, but still interesting.

https://www.ft.com/content/9debcf65-7556-4247-8abb-1d165391343f

‘Regulation can get it wrong’: Google’s Sundar Pichai on AI and antitrust

For Google, the Techlash arrived with a vengeance last week. After years of mounting angst about the power of Big Tech, two state-level antitrust suits against the search giant in the US landed on consecutive days, adding to a Federal case launched in October.

The European Commission, which has fought a running battle with Google over a series of competition complaints for the past decade, also upped the ante by proposing sweeping new laws aimed at curbing the power of a handful of dominant tech platforms.

For Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive officer since 2015, defending the company against the multiplying legal and legislative threats has become almost a full-time job.

(Related)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/technology/google-antitrust-lawsuit.html

Google Denies Antitrust Claims in Early Response to U.S. Lawsuit

The company said people use its services because they choose to, not because they lack alternatives.

Google said on Monday that it had not used its multibillion-dollar deals with other large tech firms to protect its position as the dominant online search engine, in the company’s first formal rebuttal to the Justice Department’s accusations that those deals violated antitrust laws.

The filing, a 42-page document, is a paragraph-by-paragraph — and sometimes sentence-by-sentence — denial of the claims made by the government and a group of states that have joined its lawsuit.

… In its filing on Monday, Google did admit that some of the government’s claims held up: It is true, the company said, that some dictionaries do classify “Google" as a verb. It admitted that “it was founded in a Menlo Park garage 22 years ago and that it created an innovative way to search the internet.”

And it acknowledged that its parent company, Alphabet, has a roughly $1 trillion value — but denied that such a claim could be made about Google itself.

[Google’s reply is here: https://www.axios.com/google-denies-dojs-antitrust-claims-in-filing-bbe8d1b6-ea6d-4814-92fa-2ac2223b8e2e.html