Friday, June 19, 2020


Acts of war? Soon, someone is going to say, “Enough!” Will they respond with bytes or bombs?
Australia cyber attacks: PM Morrison warns of 'sophisticated' state hack
Australia's government and institutions are being targeted by ongoing sophisticated state-based cyber hacks, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says.
He declined to identify a specific state actor and said no major personal data breaches had been made.
The attacks have happened over many months and are increasing, he said.
The prime minister said his announcement on Friday was intended to raise public awareness and to urge businesses to improve their defences.
But he stressed that "malicious" activity was also being seen globally, making it not unique to Australia.


(Related) Perhaps attacks on critical/beloved infrastructure (Beer!) will be the trigger.
Ransomware Attack Confirmed by Australia-Based Beverage Manufacturer


(Related)
Hidden Cyber War Between Israel and Iran Spills Into Public View With Attacks on Physical Infrastructure
For decades now there has been something of a tacit agreement among nations that spying and hacking are not enough to constitute acts of war, and that these battles are to be kept in the shadows for the most part. The general public is occasionally impacted by this quiet cyber war in the form of a personal information breach or a state-sponsored raid on the confidential assets of a private company, but attackers have generally stopped short of executing virtual attacks that create real damage in the physical world.
Israel and Iran have crossed that line in recent months, and may be redefining the terms of cyber warfare. Attacks by each on the opposite’s public utilities and ports have caused physical disruptions that impact the general civilian population, a move that could force a change in the unspoken rules of cyber defense as non-government entities are increasingly drawn into the fray.




Worth reading. I keep thinking about labor related protests and strikes that seem to have some immunity from such active prosecution. Is that just me?
The FBI used a Philly protester’s Etsy profile, LinkedIn, and other internet history to charge her with setting police cars ablaze
As demonstrators shouted, fires burned outside City Hall, and Philadelphia convulsed with outrage over the death of George Floyd, television news helicopters captured footage of a masked woman with a peace sign tattoo and wearing a light blue T-shirt setting a police SUV ablaze.
More than two weeks after that climactic May 30 moment, federal authorities say they’ve identified the arsonist as 33-year-old Philadelphia massage therapist Lore Elisabeth Blumenthal by following the intricate trail of bread crumbs she left through her social media history and online shopping patterns over the years.
The path took agents from Instagram, where amateur photographers also captured shots of the masked arsonist, to an Etsy shop that sold the distinctive T-shirt the woman was wearing in the video. It led investigators to her LinkedIn page, to her profile on the fashion website Poshmark, and eventually to her doorstep in Germantown.
Their pursuit, described in court filings this week, sheds light on the extent to which the FBI and Justice Department have used news footage, online histories, and social media footprints to track down and identify demonstrators believed to be responsible for acts of violence or property destruction.




Clearly location data is useful in many ways. Will we become dependent on it? Could it even become mandatory?
AI model uses smartphone location data to predict power grid usage
In a paper published on the preprint server Arxiv.org, Microsoft and the University of Washington researchers propose an AI system that uses smartphone location data to forecast electrical load. They say their architecture, which takes into account data from geographical regions both within the U.S. and Europe, can outperform conventional forecasting methods by more than three times.
The pandemic shows no sign of abating, and it’s made a striking impact on the global electrical grid.




Another set of opinions. Useful until we get AI to take over.
The Bigot in the Machine: Bias in Algorithmic Systems
The New York Technical Services Librarians, an organization that has been active since 1923 – imagine all that has happened in tech services since 1923! – invited me to give a talk about bias in algorithms. They quickly got a recording up on their site and I am, more slowly, providing the transcript. Thanks for the invite and all the tech support, NYTSL.
The Bigot in the Machine: Bias in Algorithmic Systems Abstract: We are living in an “age of algorithms.” Vast quantities of information are collected, sorted, shared, combined, and acted on by proprietary black boxes. These systems use machine learning to build models and make predictions from data sets that may be out of date, incomplete, and biased. We will explore the ways bias creeps into information systems, take a look at how “big data,” artificial intelligence and machine learning often amplify bias unwittingly, and consider how these systems can be deliberately exploited by actors for whom bias is a feature, not a bug. Finally, we’ll discuss ways we can work with our communities to create a more fair and just information environment. I want to talk about what we mean by “the age of algorithms,” and about how bias creeps into or is purposefully designed into algorithmic systems using examples in public health surveillance and in law enforcement. We’ll talk about how racists exploit the affordances of these systems to pollute our information environment. Finally, because I want to be hopeful, we’ll talk about some of the ways people are apply anti-racism to address the bigot in the machine and what we can do as librarians…”




This could be a handy tool.
Google’s new Chrome extension lets you link directly to specific text on a page
Link to Text Fragment is a new Chrome Extension from Google that lets you generate URLs to specific text on a webpage, regardless of the page’s formatting.
With the extension installed, simply highlight the text you want to link to, right click, and select “Copy Link to Selected Text.” This can then be shared and opened by anyone using a compatible browser. For example, clicking this link in Chrome or Edge will bring you directly to a highlighted section at the bottom of the article.




Travel for shut-ins.
Explore the Royal Academy of Arts in Google's Arts & Culture Apps
This morning Google announced a new collection with the Arts & Culture site. That collection features the Royal Academy of Arts.
The highlight of the Royal Academy of Arts collection within Google Arts & Culture is a collection of 31 online exhibits, The exhibits tell the stories of the artists and art showcased in the Royal Academy of Arts collections. You can also take a virtual tour through the Academy and some of the galleries. Visitors can navigate through the tour much like navigating in Google Street View imagery.



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