Monday, February 24, 2020


It could happen here. How would you use this data if you were running for office? If you were a crook? If you were Russia?
Voter Data of Every Israeli Citizen Leaked by Election Management Site
While most of the attention of international media was on the voting snafus in the Iowa Democratic caucus earlier this month, a much more serious incident was developing in Israel. The registration data of all of Israel’s 6.5 million voters was leaked thanks to a faulty download site for the Likud party’s election management app. The breach included full names, addresses and identity card numbers for all users.




I wonder what the FBI recommends?
EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app
The European Commission has told its staff to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push to increase the security of its communications.
The app is favored by privacy activists because of its end-to-end encryption and open-source technology.




You can tell when something is important to a company.
No, Facebook’s is not telling you everything
Despite Facebook claim, "Download Your Information" doesn't provide users with a list of all advertisers who uploaded a list with their personal data
As a user this means you can't exercise your rights under GDPR because you don't know which companies have uploaded data to Facebook
Information provided about the advertisers is also very limited (just a name and no contact details), preventing users from effectively exercising their rights




Biometrics.
New DNA test that reveals a child’s true age has promise, but ethical pitfalls
Epigenetic clocks are a new type of biological test currently capturing the attention of the scientific community, private companies and governmental agencies because of their potential to reveal an individual’s “true” age.
Over the past two years, companies such as Chronomics and MyDNage have started to sell epigenetic age tests to the public online, and the life insurance company YouSurance has announced that it would be testing the epigenetic age of their policy holders to assign them to risk groups. Forensic scientists are also contemplating how epigenetic clocks could help determine the age of suspected criminals.
Recently, the Kobor Lab developed the first pediatric epigenetic clock designed specifically for testing the age of young people, with an eye towards its applications in research and medical settings. This test uses a small sample of cells collected cheaply and easily from a cheek swab, and can predict a child’s age with a degree of precision within approximately four months.
But pediatric epigenetic clocks are likely to have non-medical applications as well. They could soon be used in immigration cases to prove the age of undocumented migrants seeking asylum as minors. Other future uses can be imagined, such as for child labour and trafficking surveillance, or even for the identification of child combatants in armed conflicts.
However, most epigenetic tests have not yet been scientifically validated to confirm their precision and accuracy in different sub-groups of the population, and the ethical, legal and social implications of their use are not well understood.




Rearchitecting the business.
AI is not just another technology project
AI, unlike any other initiative is a business transformation enabler and not another technology system implementation that business users need to be trained on. Traditionally, businesses choose either the classic waterfall approach of linear tasks, or the agile approach, where teams review and evaluate solutions as they are tested out.
In contrast, implementing AI technology requires a different approach altogether. AI requires that you look at a problem and see if there’s a way to solve it by reframing the business process itself. Instead of solving a problem with a 10-step strategy, is there a way to cut it down to six steps using data already available or by using new types of untapped internal or publicly available data and applying AI to it? A study by IDC last year found that 60% of organizations reported changes in their business model that were associated with AI adoption.




We’re still asking this question? Really? I expect the car to put my life first – hit the kids! (It’s how self-driving cars and car services will be marketed.)
Who Lives and Who Dies When Artificial Intelligence Drives Your Car?
We can expect AI to perform as well as we do in difficult situations, and hopefully much better. But we can't expect it to play at amateur philosophy. We should be afraid if it did. Would you trust a car that thought deeply about issues of life and death? Or would you rather your car just got on with the driving, and left the big moral questions to the philosophers?




Toward automated lawyers.
Artificial Intelligence ante portas: The End of Comparative Law?
Artificial intelligence (AI) can do many things that were not thought of some years ago and that are unimaginable for non-AI experts even today. In contrast, it is relatively easy to understand that AI can be used to compare contents and structures of laws and legal documents. In fact, the comparative abilities of AI are the reason why AI is now playing an increasing role—for example, in due diligence exercises where contracts, documents as well as other materials and legal data of target companies are benchmarked against standard patterns. If the ‘ability to compare’ is one of the core features of AI it is only natural to assume that AI is an ideal tool to conduct comparative law work. This article explores if this assumption is correct. This article first highlights key features of the comparative law work process, which, for some strange reason, is hardly ever discussed in the legal literature. This article describes and analyses the different stages and investigates which parts can (or cannot) be conducted by AI. It also asks if AI will—within the scope of its comparative abilities—in fact, ‘take over’ from human comparatists. On the basis of the findings, this article concludes that it is more likely than not that comparative law work will, in the future, be AI based.



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