How did this happen? I doubt Iran is a Republican bastion.
https://thehackernews.com/2021/11/us-charged-2-iranians-hackers-for.html
U.S. Charged 2 Iranian Hackers for Threatening Voters During 2020 Presidential Election
The U.S. government on Thursday unsealed an indictment that accused two Iranian nationals of their involvement in cyber-enabled disinformation and threat campaign orchestrated to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections by gaining access to confidential voter information from at least one state election website.
… As part of the coordinated election interference scheme, Kazemi and Kazemi are alleged to have attempted to compromise nearly 11 state voter registration and information websites between September and October 2020, successfully breaching a misconfigured computer system in an unnamed state to retrieve details associated with more than 100,000 voters.
The siphoned data was then used to simulate intrusions that the Democratic Party was supposedly planning to carry out by exploiting election infrastructure vulnerabilities to register non-existent voters and edit mail-in ballots, all of which were captured in the form of a "False Election Video" that was distributed to Republican Senators, White House advisors, and several members of the media.
We would never sell our data to the government. We sell it to someone who sells it to someone else who sells it to the government.
How Cellphone Data Collected for Advertising Landed at U.S. Government Agencies
Mobilewalla CEO writes to U.S. senator investigating location brokers: ‘Selling mobile device data for use by law enforcement agencies is not our business model’
A company that collects and sells consumer information gleaned from cellphones said it was the source of some of the advertising data used by the Department of Homeland Security and other government entities to track mobile phones without warrants, shedding new light on how device location data is harvested and sold in a secretive multibillion-dollar industry.
Mobilewalla, a closely held digital-advertising company founded in Singapore and now based in Atlanta, said in a letter last week to Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) that it had indirectly provided some of the data used by DHS, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. military for warrantless tracking of devices both at home and abroad.
… Mobilewalla harvested such data and sold it to Gravy Analytics, based in Dulles, Va., the letter said, adding that Gravy’s wholly owned subsidiary, Venntel, then provided the data to several federal agencies and to contractors with ties to the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Those contractors include specialized software vendors that integrate phone data with social-media feeds and other open sources for use in tracking devices as part of national-security efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.
… In the collected data sets, consumers are assigned a unique alphanumeric identifier rather than being identified by name or phone number. But real-world identity can easily be inferred in most cases by cross-checking where the phone spends its evenings against databases containing home addresses.
(Related)
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/kerr_webreadypdf.pdf
Buying Data and the Fourth Amendment
In Carpenter v. United States,1 the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant before compelling a cell phone service provider to disclose at least seven days of a user’s historical cell-site location records. This is a groundbreaking holding. For the first time, users have Fourth Amendment rights in corporate records about them that they did not make, cannot control, and likely do not even know exist.
Carpenter prompts a question: If the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for the government to compel a provider to hand over records, is the same true if the government buys those records instead?2 Put another way, if the company is willing to sell the records to the government—or has already sold them to someone else who will sell them to the government—can the government purchase the records without a warrant as an end run around Carpenter?
This essay offers two responses. First, existing law leads to a clear answer: The government
can buy business records without a warrant or any cause.
… The second response is a caveat to the first. Although current doctrine gives a green light to buying Carpenter-protected records, a sea change in how often the government can buy records to conduct detailed surveillance might someday justify a more restrictive approach.
What can AI do today?
https://www.bespacific.com/next-big-things-in-tech-2021/
Next Big Things in Tech 2021
Fast Company: “Some of the world’s most intriguing innovations are so new that their full impact is yet to be felt. This is what we’re highlighting in the inaugural edition of Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech. The 65 honorees on our list, which includes global giants as well as intrepid startups, often harness research that’s fresh from the labs, applying cutting-edge tech to solve real-world problems in unexpected ways. Our winners, which were selected by a team of 14 Fast Company writers and editors, cover a lot of ground, from financial tech to robotics to sustainability. There’s an affordable tractor that drives itself and uses sensors to improve crop yields. The first at-home COVID-19 test that uses CRISPR technology to deliver results that are both rapid and reliable. A dashboard that helps companies gain new insights into their diversity, equity, and inclusion progress based on hard data. A technology for keeping payments safe from quantum computing attacks that could instantly crack current encryption standards. And a streaming platform that turned a billion people watching a live BTS concert into a community. Other honorees take on equally ambitious challenges—and are poised to improve our lives at home, at work, and beyond. These products, services, and technological breakthroughs may not all be on the market yet, but they’re real, and they’re reaching important milestones along the way toward availability. Their potential for the future is what excited us the most as we assessed candidates for this list.”
Another perspective.
Defense Innovation Unit Publishes 'Responsible AI Guidelines'
"DIU's RAI guidelines provide a step-by-step framework for AI companies, DOD stakeholders and program managers that can help to ensure that AI programs are built with the principles of fairness, accountability and transparency at each step in the development cycle of an AI system," Jared Dunnmon, PhD, technical director of the artificial intelligence/machine learning portfolio at DIU said.
… To view the guidelines, visit: https://www.diu.mil/responsible-ai-guidelines.
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