If they pay once, will they pay the next time?
https://www.databreaches.net/meat-processor-jbs-paid-11-million-in-ransom-to-hackers/
Meat processor JBS paid $11 million in ransom to hackers.
Rebecca Robbins reports:
The world’s largest meat processor said on Wednesday that it paid an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers behind an attack that forced the shutdown last week of all the company’s U.S. beef plants and disrupted operations at poultry and pork plants.
The company, JBS, said in a statement that the decision to pay the ransom was made to protect its data and hedge against risk for its customers. The company said most of its facilities were back up and running when the payment was made.
Read more on The New York Times.
Another non-standard law.
https://www.databreaches.net/connecticut-on-its-way-to-an-enhanced-data-breach-notification-law/
Connecticut on its Way to an Enhanced Data Breach Notification Law
Joseph J. Lazzarotti, Jason C. Gavejian, and Maya Atrakchi of Jackson Lewis write:
State legislatures across the nation are prioritizing privacy and security matters, and Connecticut is no exception. This week, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the passage of An Act Concerning Data Privacy Breaches, a measure that will enhance and strengthen Connecticut’s data breach notification law. The Connecticut House of Representatives unanimously approved the bill on May 27th, and Senate followed with unanimous approval shortly after. The bill now heads to Governor Ned Lamont for signage.
Read more on The National Law Review.
(Related)
https://www.insideprivacy.com/data/colorado-legislature-passes-comprehensive-consumer-privacy-bill/
Colorado Legislature Passes Comprehensive Consumer Privacy Bill
Colorado is poised to join the growing number of states enacting a comprehensive privacy law. On Monday, June 7, both houses of the legislature passed the Colorado Privacy Act. The bill will now be sent to the Governor for approval.
The law is too specific? Legislators didn’t think about the future?
https://www.theverge.com/22522486/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-avoid-escape-privacy
Is there any way out of Clearview’s facial recognition database?
… Clearview’s massive surveillance apparatus claims to hold 3 billion photos, accessible to any law enforcement agency with a subscription, and it’s likely you or people you know have been scooped up in the company’s dragnet. It’s known to have scraped sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram, and is able to use profile names and associated images to build a trove of identified and scannable facial images.
Little is known about the accuracy of Clearview’s software, but it appears to be powered by a massive trove of scraped and identified images, drawn from social media profiles and other personal photos on the public internet. That scraping is only possible because social media platforms like Facebook have consolidated immense amounts of personal data on their platforms, and then largely ignored the risks of large-scale data analysis projects like Clearview.
… Laws in some states and countries are also starting to catch up with privacy threats online. These laws circumvent platforms like Facebook and instead demand accountability from the companies actually scraping the data. The California Consumer Privacy Act allows residents to ask for a copy of the data that companies like Clearview have on them, and similar provisions exist in the European Union. Some laws mandate that the data must be deleted at the user’s request.
But King notes that just because the data is deleted once doesn’t mean the company can’t simply grab it again.
“It’s not a permanent opt-out,” she said. “I’m concerned that you execute that ‘delete my data’ request on May 31st, and on June 1st, they can go back to collecting your data.”
“Schoolkids got no rights!” (It’s not like they vote.)
Massachusetts School Committee Allows Real-Time Crime Center To Monitor Students Live
Joe Cadillic writes:
How does a school committee respond to a year of remote student learning? How will the Springfield, MA School Committee respond to post-COVID schooling?
Now that public schools are reopening (just in time for summer vacation) what are officials worried about? Is it face-to-face learning? Is it in-person interactions with students? Nope, it is mass surveillance and how to let Real-Time Crime Centers (RTCC) monitor students under the guise of public safety,
As MassLive reports, the decision to let the Springfield Police Department monitor students in real-time “feels tone deaf.”
Read more on MassPrivateI.
Is there any way to put a positive spin on this? Clearly you don’t like my face. If you claim to be ‘improving’ my looks, I find that rude.
https://texasnewstoday.com/tiktok-changed-the-shape-of-some-peoples-faces-without-asking/307743/
TikTok changed the shape of some people’s faces without asking
On the surface, it was a strange, temporary problem that affected some users and not others. But it also forced people to change their appearance. This is an important issue for apps used by about 100 million people in the United States. So I also sent a video to Amy Niu, a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin who is studying the psychological effects of beauty filters. She pointed out that in China and several other places, some apps add subtle beauty filters by default. If Niu is using an app like WeChat, you can only really know that the filter is set by comparing your photo using the camera with the image generated by the app. I can do it.
A few months ago she said she downloaded a Chinese version of TikTok called Douyin. “Even if you turn off beauty mode and filters, you can still see facial adjustments,” she said.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have beauty filters in your app, but app designers are responsible for considering how these filters are used and how they change the people who use them. Even temporary bugs can affect people’s perspectives.
(Related) Trying to keep up…
Biden revokes and replaces Trump orders banning TikTok and WeChat
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday revoking the Trump-era bans on TikTok and WeChat. In place of the Trump order, Biden will direct the commerce secretary to investigate apps with ties to foreign adversaries that may pose a risk to American data privacy or national security.
In case my AI wants to go into business...
Artificial Intelligence as a Service: Legal Responsibilities, Liabilities, and Policy Challenges
Cobbe, Jennifer and Singh, Jatinder, Artificial Intelligence as a Service: Legal Responsibilities, Liabilities, and Policy Challenges (April 12, 2021). Forthcoming in Computer Law & Security Review, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3824736 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3824736
“Artificial Intelligence as a Service (‘AIaaS’) will play a growing role in society’s technical infrastructure, enabling, facilitating, and underpinning functionality in many applications. AIaaS providers therefore hold significant power at this infrastructural level. We assess providers’ position in EU law, focusing on assignment of controllership for AIaaS processing chains in data protection law and the availability to providers of protection from liability for customers’ illegal use of AIaaS. We argue that in data protection law, according to current practice, providers are often joint controllers with customers for aspects of the AIaaS processing chain. We further argue that providers lack protection from liability for customers’ illegal activity. More fundamentally, we conclude that the role of providers in customer’s application functionality – as well as the significant power asymmetries between providers and customers – challenges traditional understandings of roles and responsibilities in these complex, networked, dynamic processing environments. Finally, we set out some relevant issues for future regulation of AIaaS. In all, AIaaS requires attention from academics, policymakers, and regulators alike.”
For a minute there, I thought their AI had written the paper…
DeepMind says reinforcement learning is ‘enough’ to reach general AI
… In a new paper submitted to the peer-reviewed Artificial Intelligence journal, scientists at U.K.-based AI lab DeepMind argue that intelligence and its associated abilities will emerge not from formulating and solving complicated problems but by sticking to a simple but powerful principle: reward maximization.
Titled “Reward is Enough,” the paper, which is still in pre-proof as of this writing, draws inspiration from studying the evolution of natural intelligence as well as drawing lessons from recent achievements in artificial intelligence. The authors suggest that reward maximization and trial-and-error experience are enough to develop behavior that exhibits the kind of abilities associated with intelligence. And from this, they conclude that reinforcement learning, a branch of AI that is based on reward maximization, can lead to the development of artificial general intelligence.
Perspective.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026008/the-coming-productivity-boom/
The coming productivity boom
Productivity growth, a key driver for higher living standards, averaged only 1.3% since 2006, less than half the rate of the previous decade. But on June 3, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that US labor productivity increased by 5.4% in the first quarter of 2021. What’s better, there’s reason to believe that this is not just a blip, but rather a harbinger of better times ahead: a productivity surge that will match or surpass the boom times of the 1990s.
Soon: “We don’t need no stinking humans!”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/08/compose-ai-raises-2-1m-to-help-everyone-write-faster/
Compose.ai raises $2.1M to help everyone write faster
… Compose.ai is essentially an auto-complete function that works wherever you browse the web. The company is also building the capability for its AI-powered backend to learn your voice, imbibe context to help provide better responses, and, in time, absorb a company’s larger voice to help align its aggregate writing output.
Co-founders Landon Sanford and Michael Shuffett told TechCrunch that Compose.ai believes that in five years, average folks won’t type every word that they write. They want to bring that future to more people through the Compose.ai Chrome extension, which hopefully workers can access without having to get corporate permission. [A hacker’s dream is a security managers nightmare. Bob]
I chose for my text, ‘English, as she is spoke.”
https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-teach-english-online-and-work-from-anywhere-in-the-world/
How to Teach English Online and Work From Anywhere in the World
... If you’re new to the idea of teaching English online or have any questions about qualifications, finding jobs, different teaching platforms, and what the difference between TEFL and TESOL is, read this handy guide and introduction to teaching English online.
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