Is this the minimum for ransomware?

https://threatpost.com/cybersecurity-best-practices-ransomware/176316/

Top 10 Cybersecurity Best Practices to Combat Ransomware

… In fact, recent Veritas Technologies research suggests that the average organization has had 2.57 ransomware attacks that led to significant downtime in the past 12 months, with 10 percent experiencing downtime that impacted business more than five times.

There are times when you can’t really act like a proud parent, but keeping the knowledge that you might have the next Bill Gates can be kinda hard…

https://www.databreaches.net/mom-says-her-11-year-old-son-hacked-into-his-schools-virtual-system-and-shut-down-classes/

Mom says her 11-year-old son hacked into his school’s virtual system and shut down classes

That feeling when you are told your child is some kind of evil genius/master criminal who has been sabotaging the school district’s network for months….

Jeroslyn Johnson reports:

A mom recently went viral on TikTok after finally revealing all the trouble her 11-year-old son has been in due to his amazing tech skills.

TikTok user @VictoriaPrettyMuch took to TikTok last week to share a three-minute testimonial about her tech-savvy son who used his talents to do what any other 5th grader would do….get his class canceled.

Victoria recalled the school calling her in April 2021, telling her to come in because her child was in “major trouble.” She said four police officers, the district attorney’s office, superintendent, principal, and three IT technicians were all waiting for her upon arrival.

Read more on Black Enterprise.

[From the article:

...authorities went easy on the elementary school student and only punished him with some computer programming classes and community service instead of filing criminal charges.

I wonder if they are using AI as much as other industries?

https://threatpost.com/organized-cybercrime-syndicates-europol/176326/

Threat from Organized Cybercrime Syndicates Is Rising

Europol reports that criminal groups are undermining the EU’s economy and its society, offering everything from murder-for-hire to kidnapping, torture and mutilation.

From encrypting communications to fencing ill-gotten gains on underground sites, organized crime is cashing in on the digital revolution.

The latest organized crime threat assessment from Europol issues a dire warning about the corrosive effect the rising influence of criminal syndicates is having on both the economy and society of the European Union. And it’s all happening online.

A little more detail but still rather pathetic. How often will “new” technology be used to baffle a judge? (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhouse-bruce-schroeder-screenshot-zoom-in

Rittenhouse trial judge still baffled by pinch-to-zoom

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/learn-microsoft-access-5-free-online-resources/

How to Learn Microsoft Access: 7 Free Online Resources

If this passes, what will it do to security budgets?

https://threatpost.com/congress-ban-ransomware-payouts/176213/

Congress Mulls Ban on Big Ransom Payouts Unless Victims Get Official Say-So

A U.S. lawmaker has introduced a bill – the Ransomware and Financial Stability Act (H.R.5936) (PDF ) – that would make it illegal for financial firms to pay ransoms over $100,000 without first getting the government’s permission.

The legislation was introduced on Wednesday by the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry.

A common tech law complaint.

https://www.wired.com/story/company-tapped-ai-website-landed-court/

This Company Tapped AI for Its Website—and Landed in Court

Last year, Anthony Murphy, a visually impaired man who lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, visited the website of eyewear retailer Eyebobs using screen reader software. Its synthesized voice attempted to read out the page’s content, as well as navigation buttons and menus. Eyebobs used artificial intelligence software from Israeli startup AccessiBe that promised to make its site easier for people with disabilities to use. But Murphy found it made it harder.

AccessiBe says it can simplify the work of making websites accessible to people with impaired vision or other challenges by “replacing a costly, manual process with an automated, state-of-the-art AI technology.” In a lawsuit filed against Eyebobs in January, Murphy alleged that the retailer failed to provide people using screen readers equal access to its services and that the technology from AccessiBe—not party to the suit—doesn’t work as advertised.

… The lawsuit against Eyebobs is among a growing number in recent years accusing companies of breaching web accessibility standards. Offers to fix websites with AI technology have grown too, along with complaints from some accessibility advocates that it doesn’t work as advertised.

The case also provides a rare example of a company facing legal consequences for betting on AI technology that didn’t perform as hoped.

(Related) More “Computer Law” concerns.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/protecting-your-enterprise-against-a-ransomware-related-class-action-lawsuit/

Protecting Your Enterprise Against a Ransomware-Related Class Action Lawsuit

If your company becomes the victim of a ransomware attack, you might assume the attack itself is the worst of your organizational and financial problems. have you considered the possibility that your enterprise could additionally face a class action lawsuit after experiencing a ransomware attack?

These days, that risk is increasing—and it is definitely on the radar of legal professionals. But enterprises that prepare in advance for such a worst-case scenario can protect themselves from this extra layer of financial hardship. The fact is that it will be difficult for the plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit to win a settlement if the company that was targeted was careful, attentive, and conscientious – taking every precaution it could reasonably take to prevent and recover from an attack. An organization’s risk increases, however, if the enterprise in question was negligent with personal data that was compromised, and it can be proven in court.

Is it the data you hold or what you do with that data?

https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-11-12

Think about this one. It illustrates how much Amazon knows about everyone with a phone or email address.

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-send-a-gift-to-someone-on-amazon-without-knowing-their-address/

How to Send a Gift to Someone on Amazon Without Knowing Their Address

Need to send a gift to someone but don’t know their address? Amazon has a new feature to help you with that You can now send someone a gift using their phone number or email address instead of their mailing address.

For the time being, this feature is only available to Amazon Prime members and can only be used when browsing Amazon from a mobile device. The recipient’s delivery address must also be in the continental United States.

Legal complexity? Will every court need permanent tech representatives from every technology company? Is ignorance automatic grounds for a mistrial? (If it is ignorance and not a deliberate lie.)

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22775580/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-judge-apple-ai-pinch-to-zoom-footage-manipulation-claim

Judge buys Rittenhouse lawyer’s inane argument that Apple’s pinch-to-zoom manipulates footage

As Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand to answer questions about the sequence of events before he shot and killed a man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the jury was forced to watch the video evidence play out in miniature — because Rittenhouse’s defense lawyer came up with the wild notion that Apple has “artificial intelligence” that manipulates footage when you pinch-to-zoom on an iPad, and Judge Bruce Schroeder totally bought into that possibility.

“iPads, which are made by Apple, have artificial intelligence in them that allow things to be viewed through three-dimensions and logarithms,” the defense insisted. “It uses artificial intelligence, or their logarithms, [algorithms? Bob] to create what they believe is happening. So this isn’t actually enhanced video, this is Apple’s iPad programming creating what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there,” they added.

While it’s unclear from a full video of the proceedings (via The Washington Post) whether the judge actually prohibited the prosecution from using an iOS device or otherwise zooming into the footage, the result was the same: instead of using an iPad, the jury wound up watching the original, zoomed-out clips on a Windows machine hooked up to a large TV in the courtroom. The images didn’t fill the TV’s entire screen.

Judge Schroeder argued that it was the prosecution — not the defense — that had the burden of proving that Apple doesn’t use artificial intelligence to manipulate footage, demanding that they provide an expert to testify, and didn’t allow the prosecution to adjourn to find that expert before bringing Rittenhouse up for cross-examination.

Another perspective. (Assumes we still need a human.)

https://hbr.org/2021/11/managing-ai-decision-making-tools

Managing AI Decision-Making Tools

The nature of micro-decisions requires some level of automation, particularly for real-time and higher-volume decisions. Automation is enabled by algorithms (the rules, predictions, constraints, and logic that determine how a micro-decision is made). And these decision-making algorithms are often described as artificial intelligence (AI). The critical question is, how do human managers manage these types of algorithm-powered systems. An autonomous system is conceptually very easy. Imagine a driverless car without a steering wheel. The driver simply tells the car where to go and hopes for the best. But the moment there’s a steering wheel, you have a problem. You must inform the driver when they might want to intervene, how they can intervene, and how much notice you will give them when the need to intervene arises. You must think carefully about the information you will present to the driver to help them make an appropriate intervention.

Your business’s use of AI is only going to increase, and that’s a good thing. Digitalization allows businesses to operate at an atomic level and make millions of decisions each day about a single customer, product, supplier, asset, or transaction. But these decisions cannot be made by humans working in a spreadsheet.

We call these granular, AI-powered decisions “micro-decisions” (borrowed from Taylor and Raden’s “Smart Enough Systems:). They require a complete paradigm shift, a move from making decisions to making “decisions about decisions.” You must manage at a new level of abstraction through rules, parameters, and algorithms. This shift is happening across every industry and across all kinds of decision-making. In this article we propose a framework for how to think about these decisions and how to determine the optimal management model.

The modern seminar, attend via ZOOM:

The Privacy Foundation at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law presents:

PRIVACY-HIPPAA / FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES - CURRENT & FUTURE TRENDS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2021, 10:00 to 1:00

Program Details

Would this make users of social media far less valuable? Delivery of random items rather than sorted in chronological or other user specified order would be confusing, wouldn’t it?

https://www.bespacific.com/bipartisan-bill-would-force-big-tech-to-offer-algorithm-free-feeds-search-results/

Bipartisan bill would force Big Tech to offer algorithm-free feeds, search results

Ars Technica: “A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives introduced a bill that would force social media platforms to allow people to use the site without algorithms that filter or prioritize the content that users see. The bill joins a similar act proposed in the Senate, and together, the bills suggest that lawmaker animus toward social media companies isn’t going away. “Consumers should have the option to engage with Internet platforms without being manipulated by secret algorithms driven by user-specific data,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said in a statement to Ars. Buck introduced the bill with three cosponsors, Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), and Burgess Owens (R-Utah). “Facebook and other dominant platforms manipulate their users through opaque algorithms that prioritize growth and profit over everything else,” Rep. Cicilline said in a statement. “And due to these platforms’ monopoly power and dominance, users are stuck with few alternatives to this exploitative business model, whether it is in their social media feed, on paid advertisements, or in their search results.” As the deluge of content grows, companies have increasingly relied on ranking and filtering algorithms to manage the flow so that users don’t drown in an unending stream of memes, hate speech, and inane babble while scrolling for photos of their friends’ kids, for example. But those same algorithms have also come under fire as social media companies make content-related decisions that make them look less like neutral platforms and more like publishers…”

First, do no (provable) harm!

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59221037

Supreme Court blocks mass iPhone claim against Google

The UK's Supreme Court has rejected a claim that sought billions of pounds in damages from Google over alleged illegal tracking of millions of iPhones.

The judge said the claimant had failed to prove damage had been caused to individuals by the data collection.

But he did not rule out the possibility of future mass-action lawsuits if damages could be calculated.

… "The claimant seeks damages... for each individual member of the represented class without attempting to show that any wrongful use was made by Google of personal data relating to that individual or that the individual suffered any material damage or distress as a result of a breach," it read.

"Without proof of these matters, a claim for damages cannot succeed."

Fascinating.

https://www.bespacific.com/great-art-explained-the-mona-lisa-the-extended-cut/

Great Art Explained: The Mona Lisa (The Extended Cut)

Kottke.org: “In the most recent episode of the excellent YouTube series Great Art Explained, James Payne expands on an earlier, shorter video on the Mona Lisa with this double-length extended cut.

Consider this approach as part of your “when it happens” planning.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/how-the-cloud-enables-fast-easy-recovery-from-ransomware-and-disasters/

How the Cloud Enables Fast, Easy Recovery From Ransomware and Disasters

Ransomware attacks are skyrocketing, fueled by the rise in remote work during the pandemic. [One factor only. Bob] There were more than 300 million ransomware attacks during the first half of this year — up 151% over 2020 — according to the 2021 Cyber Threat Report from security firm SonicWall. A recent global survey of 5,400 organizations by Sophos found that 37% of respondents had been struck by malicious software within the past year. About one-third of the victims paid the ransom, averaging $170,000, but even those who didn’t pay incurred huge losses when malware brought their operations to a standstill, sometimes for weeks on end.

… However, there is good news on the horizon. In 2020, 41% of companies had most or all of their environment in the cloud, and that number was expected to grow to 62% within 18 months, according to the IDG Cloud Computing Study 2020. Used properly, the cloud can provide very strong protection against ransomware attacks.

… Sophos reports that even businesses that pay up don’t get back as much as one-third of their data, and industry statistics show that victims are often hit with another attack. And backups are not an ideal solution for a speedy recovery from a ransomware assault — or from any data breach or disaster. The real issue isn’t whether the files can ever be recovered — they can, eventually — but how long it will take to make a business fully operational again.

With traditional backup, the answer is: too long. There are other tools that can make the recovery process faster and easier.

They really really want to ignore Minority Report.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/07/lapd-predictive-policing-surveillance-reform

LAPD ended predictive policing programs amid public outcry. A new effort shares many of their flaws

The Los Angeles police department has been a pioneer in predictive policing, for years touting avant-garde programs that use historical data and software to predict future crime.

But newly revealed public documents detail how PredPol and Operation Laser, the department’s flagship data-driven programs, validated existing patterns of policing and reinforced decisions to patrol certain people and neighborhoods over others, leading to the over-policing of Black and brown communities in the metropole.

The documents, which include internal LAPD documents and emails and were released as part of a report by the Stop LAPD Spying coalition, also suggest that pledges to reform the programs amid rising public criticism largely rang hollow.

We really need to rethink the definition of “Public.” None of these should come as a surprise.

https://www.makeuseof.com/types-public-records-data-brokers-collect/

7 Types of Public Records That Data Brokers Collect

What you share online is your business. But data brokers can find much more information about you than you might expect, often without your knowledge.

1. Voter Registration

2. Birth Certificates

3. Marriage Licenses and Divorce Records

4. Vehicle Registration

5. School Affiliations

6. Court Records

7. News Information

Should we take this to mean this government agency recognizes it is not creating the cutting edge? If so, it’s the first time I’ve see such a great grasp of the obvious!

https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2021/11/08/national-geospatial-intelligence-agency-issues-new-commercial-strategy/

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency issues new commercial strategy

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has published a new strategy intended to encourage employees to leverage more commercial technology moving forward.

What are they doing?

https://insights.dice.com/2021/11/09/how-data-scientists-machine-learning-devs-specialize-their-workflows/

How Data Scientists, Machine Learning Devs Specialize Their Workflows

Data scientists and machine-learning specialists are playing an increasingly integral role in many organizations’ strategy and product development. Are most of these technologists involved in every part of their employers’ data analysis and model training, or do they just specialize in specific areas?

According to SlashData’s Q3 2021 analysis, the answer is the latter: Most data scientists and machine-learning specialists focus on a few parts of the overall data science/machine learning (DS/ML) workflow. The highest percentage is involved in data exploration and analysis; far fewer participate in model deployment, project management, and model health and lifecycle management. Take a look at the breakdown:

Worth reading or too obvious for words?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-we-forgive-humans-more-readily-than-machines/

Why We Forgive Humans More Readily Than Machines

When things go wrong, flexible moral intuitions cause us to judge computers more severely

Perspective. I was surprised how few I had heard of…

https://www.bespacific.com/the-most-cited-legal-scholars-revisited/

The Most-Cited Legal Scholars Revisited

The Most-Cited Legal Scholars Revisited. Fred R. Shapiro @UChiLRev Volume 88.7 (November 2021): “This Essay presents a list of the fifty most-cited legal scholars of all time, intending to spotlight individuals who have had a very notable impact on legal thought and institutions. Because citation counting favors scholars who have had long careers, I supplement the main listing with a ranking of the most-cited younger legal scholars. In addition, I include five specialized lists: most-cited international law scholars, most-cited corporate law scholars, most-cited scholars of critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence, most-cited public law scholars, and most-cited scholars of law and social science.

Stuff for my geeks.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-install-multiple-bootable-operating-systems-on-one-usb-stick/

How to Install Multiple Bootable Operating Systems on a USB Stick

Lazy people love Covid.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-11-09

Anyone can construct a drone from readily available parts, following online instructions. With minimal care, tracing a drone back to its creator would be extremely difficult. We now face a world where anyone can be an attacker for reasons ranging from ‘I wonder what would happen if…” to deliberate military attacks.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-11-06/drone-attack-targets-iraq-pm-who-escapes-unhurt-iraq-military

Iraqi PM Safe After Drone Attack on Residence, Military Says

… Six members of Kadhimi's personal protection force stationed outside his residence in the Green Zone were wounded, security sources told Reuters.

Three drones were used in the attack, including two that were intercepted and downed by security forces while a third drone hit the residence, state news agency INA quoted a spokesman for the interior ministry as saying.

(Related)

https://www.wired.com/story/drone-attack-power-substation-threat/

A Drone Tried to Disrupt the Power Grid. It Won't Be the Last

IN JULY OF last year, a DJI Mavic 2 drone approached a Pennsylvania power substation. Two 4-foot nylon ropes dangled from its rotors, a thick copper wire connected to the ends with electrical tape. The device had been stripped of any identifiable markings, as well as its onboard camera and memory card, in an apparent effort by its owner to avoid detection. Its likely goal, according to a joint security bulletin released by DHS, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center, was to “disrupt operations by creating a short circuit.”

For anyone with enough time to plan ahead…

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3639019/congressional-cybersecurity-legislation-update-12-key-bills-move-forward.html#tk.rss_all

What's next in Congress for cybersecurity after enactment of the infrastructure bill

… Aside from these significant pieces of legislation, Congress has been busy on various cybersecurity bills since our last Congressional update. Altogether, since the current 117^th Congress began in January, 321 bills that deal in whole or part with cybersecurity have been introduced.

It’s a surveillance world, get used to it.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-will-now-snitch-on-you-at-work-like-never-before/

Microsoft will now snitch on you at work like never before

… Microsoft is preparing a couple of little updates that may curb employee rulebreaking enthusiasm.

Yes, this news again comes courtesy of Microsoft's roadmap service, where Redmond prepares you for the joys to come.

This time, there are a couple of joys.

The first is headlined: "Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management -- Increased visibility on browsers."

It all sounded wonderful until you those last four words, didn't it? For this is the roadmap for administrators. And when you give a kindly administrator "increased visibility on browsers," you can feel sure this means an elevated level of surveillance of what employees are typing into those browsers.

In this case, Microsoft is targeting "risky activity." Which, presumably, has some sort of definition. It offers a link to its compliance center, where the very first sentence has whistleblower built in: "Web browsers are often used by users to access both sensitive and non-sensitive files within an organization."

And what is the compliance center monitoring? Why, "files copied to personal cloud storage, files printed to local or network devices, files transferred or copied to a network share, files copied to USB devices."

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-to-memorize-the-un-memorizable/

How to Memorize the Un-Memorizable

LitHub: “Marcus du Sautoy Offers Tips and Tricks for Building a Better “Memory Palace”… But how does [Ed Cooke, a Grand Master of Memory and founder of a new venture for learning languages called Memrise] use this cast of characters to remember a 1000-digit number? The key is to put those characters in space: “If you want to make very, very long chains of information of things, you need a backbone on which to project our images, and it so happens that we have an extraordinary potency of memory for space. Mammals developed an incredible capacity to navigate and remember an incredible repertoire of spaces. Even if we don’t think so, we’re all really good at this. Just after wandering around an elaborate building for a few minutes we can memorize its layout. So we can use this powerful skill as a shortcut to piggyback our images representing our numbers. This is called building a memory palace.”

The Privacy Foundation ( https://www.law.du.edu/privacy-foundation ) has posted details of their November 12^th Seminar: Privacy-HIPAA/Foundational Principles—Current and Future Trends

Program Details

Is the result similar to a police patrol or something more sinister. Look for yourself.

https://www.wired.com/story/ddosecrets-police-helicopter-data-leak/

1.8 TB of Police Helicopter Surveillance Footage Leaks Online

LAW ENFORCEMENT USE of surveillance drones has proliferated across the United States in recent years, sparking backlash from privacy advocates. But newly leaked aerial surveillance footage from the Dallas Police Department in Texas and what appears to be Georgia's State Patrol underscore the breadth and sophistication of footage captured by another type of aerial police vehicle: helicopters.

The transparency activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, posted a 1.8-terabyte trove of police helicopter footage to its website on Friday. DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that her group doesn’t know the identity of the source who shared the data and that no affiliation or motivation for leaking the files was given. The source simply said that the two police departments were storing the data in unsecured cloud infrastructure.

DDoSecrets gained notoriety in June 2020 when it published a massive leak of law enforcement data stolen by a hacker associated with Anonymous. The data, dubbed BlueLeaks, included emails, audio, video, and intelligence documents from more than 200 state, local, and federal agencies around the US. The release got DDoSecrets banned from Twitter, and Reddit banned the r/blueleaks subreddit. The group, which essentially sees itself as a successor to Wikileaks, has also courted controversy by publishing leaks of sensitive data taken from the far-right platform Gab and a trove stolen in a ransomware attack on a gas pipeline services firm.

Download here: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Aerial_Surveillance_Footage

(Related)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.00992#

Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance, and Big Data

The most important resource to improve technologies in the field of artificial intelligence is data. Two types of policies are crucial in this respect: privacy and data-sharing regulations, and the use of surveillance technologies for policing. Both types of policies vary substantially across countries and political regimes. In this chapter, we examine how authoritarian and democratic political institutions can influence the quality of research in artificial intelligence, and the availability of large-scale datasets to improve and train deep learning algorithms. We focus mainly on the Chinese case, and find that -- ceteris paribus -- authoritarian political institutions continue to have a negative effect on innovation They can, however, have a positive effect on research in deep learning, via the availability of large-scale datasets that have been obtained through government surveillance. We propose a research agenda to study which of the two effects might dominate in a race for leadership in artificial intelligence between countries with different political institutions, such as the United States and China.

The original “Big Data” gatherers would naturally find AI beneficial.

https://governmentciomedia.com/ai-helping-refine-intelligence-analysis

AI Helping to Refine Intelligence Analysis

Speaking at the GovernmentCIO Media & Research AI: National Security virtual event, Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Research Directorate Mark Segal discussed how these new capacities are assisting intelligence analysts in better processing and sorting large quantities of often complex and disparate information.

In outlining the NSA’s research priorities, Segal noted that both AI and machine-learning capacities already showed promise for better organizing the large pools of variable data their analysts sort through in producing regular assessments.

“One of the challenges that we have found AI to be particularly useful for is looking through the sheer amount of data that's created every day on this planet. Our analysts are looking at some of this data trying to understand it, and understand what its implications are for national security. The amount of data that we have to sort is going up pretty dramatically, but the number of people that we have who are actually looking at this data is pretty constant. So we're constantly looking for tools and technologies to help our analysts more effectively go through huge piles of data,” Segal said.

… “Imagine you've got a very large pile of documents, and in some of these documents there are really important things you want analysts to look at while some of the other documents are completely irrelevant. So one of the ways that we've used AI and machine learning in particular is we can have a trained human look at a subset of these documents and train a model to say which ones are really important and which ones are less important. Once you've trained a model and have enough data that you train the model successfully, you can go through a much larger collection of documents much more quickly than a human being could do it,” Segal said.

Another concrete use case that aligns AI with operational efficiency is using tailored algorithms to convert speech to text.

“If you can do that, you can make that text searchable, which once again makes the analyst more productive. So instead of listening to thousands of hours of audio to hear one relevant audio clip, you put in a few keywords and scan all this processed text,” Segal said.

(Related)

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/51191/9781000504422.pdf?sequence=1#page=52

The technoethics of contemporary intelligence practice

Intelligence agencies have a history of rapid exploitation of the latest scientific and technological advances, from the electric telegraph to radio transmissions and satellite observation. As with warfare, the history of intelligence can be told in terms of the relative advantage bestowed by a series of technological innovations ( McNeill 1983 ; Warner 2014 ). This historically close relationship between intelligence and technology marks out intelligence as a sphere of activity where issues of “technoethics”1 – of the way in which technological developments impact on the nature of ethical frameworks and judgements and the inter-relationship between the two – are prevalent.

Obvious or not?

https://thenextweb.com/news/slippery-slope-using-ai-and-deepfakes-to-reanimate-history

The slippery slope of using AI and deepfakes to bring history to life

… For the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying how everyday engagement with AI challenges the way people think about themselves and politics. We’ve found that AI has the potential to weaken people’s capacity to make ordinary judgments. We’ve also found that it undermines the role of serendipity in their lives and can lead them to question what they know or believe about human rights.

Now AI is making it easier than ever to reanimate the past. Will that change how we understand history and, as a result, ourselves?

Perspective.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3954591

Next Era of American Law Is Shaped Via AI And The Law

A commonly accepted notion is that there have been three primary eras of law in the history of American law. We are presumably in the fourth era right now. Legal scholars are apt to contend that AI and the law will abundantly impact the fourth era and fully shape the fifth era.

(Related)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3955356

Three-Tiered Practice Of Law And AI

The practice of law is potentially beginning to splinter into two tiers, whereby one-tier consists of attorneys and the second tier consists of non-lawyers seemingly practicing law (to a limited extent). This is a controversial shifting of the sands. For some added controversy, we can look toward the future and perchance envision an added tier of AI-based lawyering.

(Related)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3954531

Legal Argumentation and AI

A mainstay of lawyers is their ability to undertake legal argumentation. This is a skill taught in law school and matured over the course of a legal career. AI is going to up the game, so to speak, by providing legal argumentation enablement. Attorneys need to ready themselves.