Possibly the expiration date was encrypted?
https://news.yahoo.com/internet-goes-down-millions-tech-021400230.html
Internet goes down for millions, tech companies scramble as key encryption service expires
The expiration of a key digital encryption service on Thursday sent major tech companies nationwide scrambling to deal with internet outages that affected millions of online users.
Tech giants — such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco, as well as many smaller tech companies — were still battling with an endless array of issues by the end of the night. The problems were caused by the forced expiration of a popular digital certificate that encrypts and protects the connection between devices and websites on the internet.
I read about the process and wonder: If I had been wandering by and the FBI noted that I do not have a smartphone, would I immediately leap to the top of their suspect list? Clearly I’m trying to hide my tracks…
https://www.wired.com/story/capitol-riot-google-geofence-warrant/
How a Secret Google Geofence Warrant Helped Catch the Capitol Riot Mob
COURT DOCUMENTS SUGGEST the FBI has been using controversial geofence search warrants at a scale not publicly seen before, collecting account information and location data on hundreds of devices inside the US Capitol during a deadly invasion by a right-wing mob on January 6.
(Related) Same thing, another angle.
When the FBI seizes your messages from Big Tech, you may not know it for years
Jay Greene and Drew Harwell recently reported:
At first, Ryan Lackey thought the email was a scam. It arrived one morning in March, bearing news that Facebook had received an order from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over data from personal accounts Lackey uses to chat with friends and exchange cat photos.
Even weirder, the email said Facebook had been forced to keep this intrusion secret. Six months later, Lackey, a computer security consultant in Puerto Rico, still has no idea what Facebook turned over to an FBI investigation that he believes may have started as early as 2019.
Read more on Washington Post, I am in a similar situation, I have heard, but I have no details as yet as to the gag order on Twitter that may have gone on for years.
For another aspect of law enforcement and tech, see It’s not easy to control police use of tech—even with a law by Sidney Fussell of Wired.com.
And in the most recent story about government surveillance, John Wright has a story on Raw Story: FBI used secret Google tracking data to nab Capitol rioters. It begins:
Federal prosecutors have cited secretive “geofence” warrants — which allow law enforcement to pinpoint cell-phone users’ precise locations over time — in 45 Capitol riot cases, including six where where suspects had not previously been identified.
Geofence warrants, also known as reverse-location warrants, allow law enforcement to obtain data from Google to identify potential suspects.
Read more on Raw Story.
A right the Founding Fathers missed?
https://www.bespacific.com/discriminatory-ai-and-the-law-legal-standards-for-algorithmic-profiling/
Discriminatory AI and the Law Legal Standards for Algorithmic Profiling
von Ungern-Sternberg, Antje, Discriminatory AI and the Law – Legal Standards for Algorithmic Profiling. (June 29, 2021). Draft Chapter, in: Silja Vöneky, Philipp Kellmeyer, Oliver Müller and Wolfram Burgard (ed.) Responsible AI, Cambridge University Press (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3876657
“Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used to assess people (profiling) and helps employers to find qualified employees, internet platforms to distribute information or to sell goods, and security authorities to single out suspects. Apart from being more efficient than humans in processing huge amounts of data, intelligent algorithms – which are free of human prejudices and stereotypes – would also prevent discriminatory decisions, or so the story goes. However, many studies show that the use of AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes. From a legal point of view, this raises the question if the law as it stands prohibits objectionable forms of differential treatment and detrimental impact. In the legal literature dealing with automated profiling, some authors have suggested that we need a “right to reasonable inferences”, i.e. a certain methodology for AI algorithms affecting humans. This paper takes up this idea with respect to discriminatory AI and claims that such a right already exists in antidiscrimination law. It argues that the need to justify differential treatment and detrimental impact implies that profiling methods correspond to certain standards. It is now a major challenge for both lawyers as well as data and computer scientist to develop and establish those methodological standards in order to guarantee compliance with antidiscrimination law (and other legal regimes), as the paper outlines.”
Was customer demand high or is this purely speculative?
https://www.ft.com/content/c2cf67d6-a143-4aff-9eb1-b7a4e93c3c73
Amazon’s Astro robot is a symbol of the surveillance age
When Amazon unveiled a domestic robot this week, it promised that the Astro is capable of “many delightful things”. Tellingly, the first practical example given by Dave Limp, the executive in charge, was checking whether his dogs were cheekily sleeping on the sofa while he was out of the house.
… In 1967, the American novelist and poet Richard Brautigan imagined “a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labours . . . and all watched over/by machines of loving grace.” Brautigan was prescient about one thing: the task for which Amazon’s robot is best suited is surveillance, loving or not.
… Astro’s most human talent is recognising its owners. Amazon has built into the device a screen and artificial intelligence, so that it can identify up to 10 family members, follow them around playing music or videos, blink its digital eyes and carry small items from one to another. In other words, it performs like a well-behaved toddler; it will even go away on command. Where Astro outperforms the toddler is on sentry duty. It can act like a miniature guard, patrolling while the occupants are out and checking on unexpected noises, such as burglar alarms or breaking windows. If it finds an intruder, it will track him and observe the crime, unless he kicks it over.
Reading this got me thinking. The first company to succeed because of strong ethics will change the world. Any idea how that would work?
Are AI ethics teams doomed to be a facade? Women who pioneered them weigh in
The concept of “ethical AI” hardly existed just a few years ago, but times have changed. After countless discoveries of AI systems causing real-world harm and a slew of professionals ringing the alarm, tech companies now know that all eyes — from customers to regulators — are on their AI. They also know this is something they need to have an answer for. That answer, in many cases, has been to establish in-house AI ethics teams.
Now present at companies including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Salesforce, Sony, and more, such groups and boards were largely positioned as places to do important research and even act as safeguards against the companies’ own AI technologies. But after Google fired Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, leading voices in the space and the former co-leads of the company’s ethical AI lab, this past winter after Gebru refused to rescind a research paper on the risks of large language models, it felt as if the rug had been pulled out on the whole concept. It doesn’t help that Facebook has also been criticized for steering its AI ethics team away from research into topics like misinformation, in fear it could impact user growth and engagement. Now, many in the industry are questioning if these in-house teams are just a facade.
Perspective. Perhaps Facebook isn’t so bad? Shouldn’t management of any organization have confidence that they can deal with any issues that arrise?
Facebook's Latest Scandals: The Banality Of Hubris; The Messiness Of Humanity
Over the last few weeks, the WSJ has run a series of posts generally called "The Facebook Files," which have exposed a variety of internal documents from Facebook that are somewhat embarrassing. I do think some of the reporting is overblown -- and, in rather typical fashion regarding the big news publications and their reporting on Facebook, presents everything in the worst possible light. For example, the report on how internal research showed that Instagram made teen girls feel bad about themselves downplays that the data actually shows a significantly higher percentage of teens indicated that Instagram made them feel better:
Perspective.
https://www.bespacific.com/pwc-offers-u-s-employees-full-time-remote-work/
PwC offers U.S. employees full-time remote work
Reuters: “Accounting and consulting firm PwC told Reuters on Thursday it will allow all its 40,000 U.S. client services employees to work virtually and live anywhere they want in perpetuity, making it one of the biggest employers to embrace permanent remote work. The policy is a departure from the accounting industry’s rigid attitudes, known for encouraging people to put in late nights at the office. Other major accounting firms, such as Deloitte and KPMG, have also been giving employees more choice to work remotely in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. PwC’s deputy people leader, Yolanda Seals-Coffield, said in an interview that the firm was the first in its industry to make full-time virtual work available to client services employees. PwC’s support staff and employees in areas such as human resources and legal operations that do not face clients already had the option to work virtually full-time…”
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