A threat you can’t ignore. And you can’t stop after identifying one person who wasn’t responsible.

https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/potential-threat-denver-community-colleges/73-400410cd-6133-4d47-9549-7635dad054d4

Denver area community colleges affected by threat that police think was 'doxing'

Five Denver metro area community colleges closed or were on lockout Friday due to a potential threat Friday morning that law enforcement later confirmed was a hoax and "a form of doxing."

According to the Colorado Community College System (CCCS), threats were made against:

Arapahoe Community College

Community College of Aurora

Community College of Denver

Front Range Community College

Red Rocks Community College

… Arapahoe Community College Police Sgt. K.W. Moreland said that several individuals at different colleges received a threatening email shortly after midnight Friday.

The Westminster Police Department (WPD) said its officers contacted a person of interest in threats against Front Range Community College (FRCC) and that it appeared that the threats were a form of doxing against that individual.

“There was information contained in the threat about a specific person saying, ‘I’m this person. I’m making the threat. Here’s what I’m going to do,'" said Cheri Spottke, WPD investigator. "We quickly were able to contact that person in-person and determined that the person had not sent the threats."

… On Friday afternoon, CU Boulder Police said law enforcement had determined that the threats were a hoax.

A sweeping new threat to privacy?

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-irobot-roomba-acquisition-data-privacy/

The iRobot Deal Would Give Amazon Maps Inside Millions of Homes

AFTER DECADES OF creating war machines and home cleaning appliances, iRobot agreed to be acquired by Amazon for $1.7 billion, according to a joint statement by the two companies. If the deal goes through, it would give Amazon access to yet another wellspring of personal data: interior maps of Roomba owners’ homes.

iRobot got its start building robots for the US military, but 20 years ago added consumer vacuums to the mix. (It spun off the defense business altogether in 2016.) Those Roombas work in part by using sensors to map the homes they operate in. In a 2017 Reuters interview, iRobot CEO Colin Angle suggested the company might someday share that data with tech companies developing smart home devices and AI assistants.

Combined with other recent acquisition targets, Amazon could wind up with a comprehensive look at what’s happening inside people’s homes. The ecommerce giant acquired video doorbell company Ring in 2018 and Wi-Fi router-maker Eero a year later. Speakers and other devices with AI assistant Alexa can now control thousands of smart home devices, including Roomba vacuums. And Amazon plans to acquire primary care chain One Medical in a $3.49 billion all-cash deal, which if approved would put the health data of millions in its keeping.

“People tend to think of Amazon as an online seller company, but really Amazon is a surveillance company. That is the core of its business model, and that’s what drives its monopoly power and profit,” says Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit digital rights organization Fight for the Future. “Amazon wants to have its hands everywhere, and acquiring a company that’s essentially built on mapping the inside of people’s homes seems like a natural extension of the surveillance reach that Amazon already has.”

Implications beyond Jan 6^th. How do we protect a President? What of texts between lawyers or police investigating a shooting?

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3669429/the-secret-service-s-missing-text-messages-lessons-for-it-security.html#tk.rss_all

The Secret Service’s missing text messages: Lessons for IT security

The drama in Washington shines a light on the challenges in securing mobile communications and the role that document destruction and retention policies play in organizational security.

Today foreigners, tomorrow the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/facial-recognition-smartwatches-to-be-used-to-monitor-foreign-offenders-in-uk

Facial recognition smartwatches to be used to monitor foreign offenders in UK

Migrants who have been convicted of a criminal offence will be required to scan their faces up to five times a day using smartwatches installed with facial recognition technology under plans from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

In May, the government awarded a contract to the British technology company Buddi Limited to deliver “non-fitted devices” to monitor “specific cohorts” as part of the Home Office Satellite Tracking Service. The scheme is due to be introduced from the autumn across the UK, at an initial cost of £6m.

Are we all in agreement that this is the only way to confirm or deny that an AI is sentient?

https://thenextweb.com/news/stanford-ai-experts-dispute-claims-google-lamda-language-model-is-sentient

Stanford AI experts call BS on claims that Google’s LaMDA chatbot is sentient

… The episode triggered sensationalist headlines and speculation that AI is gaining consciousness. AI experts, however, have largely dismissed Lemoine’s argument.

The Stanford duo this week shared further criticisms with The Stanford Daily.

“LaMDA is not sentient for the simple reason that it does not have the physiology to have sensations and feelings,” said John Etchemendy, the co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-centered AI (HAI). “It is a software program designed to produce sentences in response to sentence prompts.”

Somehow I don’t see this lowering the cost of textbooks. And any resale value is now shared with Pearson?

https://www.bespacific.com/educational-publisher-pearson-will-sell-textbooks-as-non-fungible-tokens-nfts/

Educational publisher Pearson will sell textbooks as non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

UK Guardian: “Textbook publisher Pearson plans to profit from secondhand sales by turning its titles into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), its chief executive has said. Educational books are often sold more than once, since students sell study resources they no longer require. Publishers have not previously been able to make any money from secondhand sales, but the rise of digital textbooks has created an opportunity for companies to benefit. NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item by recording it on a decentralised digital register known as a blockchain. Typically these items are images or videos, but the technology allows for just about anything to be sold and owned in this way. After the release of Pearson’s interim results, CEO Andy Bird explained his plan to sell digital textbooks as NFTs, allowing the publisher to track the ownership of a book even when it changes hands, Bloomberg reported. “In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale,” he said, explaining that “technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life”…

It can happen to you if “someone” determines you are a threat to them or an aide to the other side.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/ciso/22/h/russian-cyber-warfare-attacks.html

Lessons from the Russian Cyber Warfare Attacks

… In these unprecedented times of targeted attacks against governments and financial institutions, every organization should be on heightened alert about protecting their critical infrastructure and digital attack surface.

With the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a backdrop, two Trend Micro security experts – VP of Threat Intelligence Jon Clay and Chief Cybersecurity Officer Ed Cabrera – recently discussed cyberwarfare techniques and how they’re an important reminder for every business to proactively manage cyber risk.

While we haven’t witnessed a pure cyber war with only digital fighting, typical cyberwarfare tactics — such as hacking government websites, spreading misinformation on social media, and installing malware to steal data — are taking on a bigger role in physical conflicts. In a world where people and critical infrastructures are hyper-connected, malicious hackers have an abundance of targets.

Determine “good” later? Or am I reading this wrong?

https://www.bespacific.com/the-datafication-of-law-how-technology-encodes-carceral-power-and-affects-judicial-practice-in-the-united-states/

The Datafication of Law: How Technology Encodes Carceral Power and Affects Judicial Practice in the United States

Rothschild Elyassi, Gil, The Datafication of Law: How Technology Encodes Carceral Power and Affects Judicial Practice in the United States (April 10, 2022). Law and Social Inquiry, Vol. 47, No. 1, 2022, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4080216

“This inquiry explores how data analyses about US Federal sentences have transformed sentencing practice beginning in the mid-1980s. I consider this inquiry an early case of the datafication of law, a pervasive process that translates legal practice into data and embeds it in digital networks so it can be tracked and analyzed in real time. To explore datafication historically and in relation to legal practice and power, I consider it not as an objective and passive undertaking but, rather, as an ideological and performative process that encodes and enacts normative presumptions and desirable futures. The empirical inquiry traverses “levels of analysis” and thus bridges prominent perspectives in sociolegal research. In so doing, I identify four mechanisms that mediate “large-scale” processes and “local” practices: field assembly, symbolic projection, material inscription, and boundaries spanning. Substantively, I show how datafication has not simply described, but also transformed, sentencing practice according to a colorblind-carceral imaginary that strives to fix the present in place. By relentlessly translating decisions into data forms that derive from this carceral imaginary, datafication affects judicial action and partakes in sustaining legacies of oppression. Yet, like other technologies, datafication also reveals dialectic dimensions in opening up to new actors and subjecting its ideological underpinnings to contestation and change.”

Perspective.

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-and-spacex-global-ai-report/

Tesla and SpaceX among companies analyzed in global AI report

Tesla and SpaceX were listed as top companies analyzed in the global Artificial Intelligence of Things (AioT) Solutions Market Report. Tesla was also mentioned as a top company in an Intellgent Driving market report.

In June Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla’s AI Day would be on September 30 since Tesla may have an Optimus prototype working by then.

Although Tesla’s work with AI is commonly known, not much is hardly mentioned about SpaceX’s use of AI. In April 2022, Analytics India Mag published an article highlighting how SpaceX is incorporating AI to advance its goals.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-bionic-reading-why-should-you-use-it/

What Is Bionic Reading and Why Should You Use It Today?

Want to read faster? Bionic Reading is what you need.

Better read up!

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/02/cjeu-sensitive-data-case/

Sensitive data ruling by Europe’s top court could force broad privacy reboot

A ruling put out yesterday by the European Union’s top court could have major implications for online platforms that use background tracking and profiling to target users with behavioral ads or to feed recommender engines that are designed to surface so-called ‘personalized’ content.

The impacts could be even broader — with privacy law experts suggesting the judgement could dial up legal risk for a variety of other forms of online processing, from dating apps to location tracking and more. Although they suggest fresh legal referrals are also likely as operators seek to unpack what could be complex practical difficulties arising from the judgement.

Good summary, worth a quick read.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/02/opinion/your-camera-police-you/

Your camera, the police, and you

For decades, people around the globe have been sold on the enticing lie that if we simply install more cameras, we can buy more safety, using surveillance to wall ourselves off from crime. It was never true, of course. Since the earliest days of CCTV, researchers raised the alarm that the technology was great at capturing grisly images for the evening news and morning paper, but it was terrible at actually  doing what it was advertised to do. Cameras record crimes; they don’t often prevent them. But in the age of Internet-enabled cameras, when home surveillance systems are cheaper than ever, the cost to your privacy is getting higher as police increasingly use cameras against their owners.

You may draw comfort from the images of your child playing in the living room or seeing every person who walks by, but the truth is that there is no one photographed and tracked more by a home security system than the person who lives there. You’re the one being watched, and it’s a lot simpler than you think for the police to look.

While you may think this sort of government access is a bug, for companies like Amazon, it’s a feature. Since acquiring the surveillance startup Ring, Amazon has heavily invested in building out partnerships with more than 2,000 police departments, giving officers easy ways not just to contact camera owners but to request footage from Amazon directly. Typically, this takes the form of a warrant or subpoena to Amazon — not a warrant or subpoena to the camera owner but to Amazon itself. You may buy the camera; you may install it; you may think of it as your own. But when your most intimate moments live on Amazon’s servers, the company’s employees are the ones who can hand them over to police.

(Related)

https://www.pogowasright.org/survey-reveals-extent-that-cops-surveil-students-online-in-school-and-at-home/

Survey Reveals Extent that Cops Surveil Students Online — in School and at Home

Mark Keierleber writes:

When Baltimore students sign into their school-issued laptops, the police log on, too.

Since the pandemic began, Baltimore City Public Schools officials have tracked students’ online lives with GoGuardian, a digital surveillance tool that promises to identify youth at risk of harming themselves or others. When GoGuardian flags students, their online activities are shared automatically with school police, giving cops a conduit into kids’ private lives — including on nights and weekends.

Read more at The74.

Will this be an exception or will we be able to see what categorizations or attributes are associated with each face by the software or the police.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-nypd-ordered-to-disclose-black-lives-matter-documents-20220801-6pohl3v5ebebrl2ac5fpuddr3m-story.html

NYPD ordered to disclose thousands of docs related to facial recognition surveillance during Black Lives Matter protests

Not just in the CJ world?

https://www.bespacific.com/understanding-criminal-justice-innovations-2/

Understanding Criminal Justice Innovations

Ryan, Meghan J., Understanding Criminal Justice Innovations (June 14, 2022). Journal of Law & Innovation (2022 Forthcoming), SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 562, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4136813 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4136813

“Burgeoning science and technology have provided the criminal justice system with the opportunity to address some of its shortcomings. And the criminal justice system has significant shortcomings. Among other issues, we have a mass incarceration problem; clearance rates are surprisingly low; there are serious concerns about wrongful convictions; and the system is layered with racial, religious, and other biases. Innovations that are widely used across industries, as well as those directed specifically at the criminal justice system, have the potential to improve upon such problems. But it is important to recognize that these innovations also have downsides, and criminal justice actors must proceed with caution and understand not only the potential of these interventions but also their limitations. Relevant to this calculation of caution is whether the innovation is broadly used across industry sectors or, rather, whether it has been specifically developed for use within the criminal justice system. These latter innovations have a record of not being sufficiently vetted for accuracy and reliability. Accordingly, criminal justice actors must be sufficiently well versed in basic science and technology so that they have the ability and the confidence to critically assess the usefulness of the various criminal justice innovations in light of their limitations. Considering lawyers’ general lack of competency in these areas, [I did not say that! Bob] scientific and technological training is necessary to mold them into modern competent criminal justice actors. This training must be more than superficial subject-specific training, though; it must dig deeper, delving into critical thinking skills that include evaluating the accuracy and reliability of the innovation at issue, as well as assessing broader concerns such as the need for development transparency, possible intrusions on individual privacy, and incentives to curtail individual liberties given the innovation at hand.”

Adding nets to prison walls?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/drone-contraband-deliveries-prisons-united-states

Drone Contraband Deliveries Are Rampant at US Prisons

… Drones are dropping drugs and cell phones in prison yards. They’re brazenly dangling contraband from fishing lines in front of smashed prison windows or crashing into recreational areas, sometimes midday. They’ve dropped wire cutters used in bold prison escapes involving body doubles and leading to manhunts. They’ve sparked prison riots, crash landed on an elementary school roof, and supplied weapons like ceramic knives, scissors, and guns (perhaps even to the Italian Mafia that put inmates and correctional officers at heightened risk.

France’s justice minister speculates they were used before the helicopter escape of murder convict Redoine Faid to run reconnaissance on the grounds of Reau Prison, in the south of Paris. And in one of the more astounding examples, UK law enforcement prosecuted a drone gang for a two-year plot coordinated across at least five prisons and involving 49 illegal drone flights and contraband worth up to $1.34 million—a plot that only came to light because field cameras set up to record wildlife tipped off police, the BBC reported.

Arguably, one of the biggest threats posed by drones is the cell phones they’re delivering, devices that can be worth several thousand dollars inside prisons, where they allow inmates to maintain vast criminal enterprises on the internet, says Cain Smith, a city attorney for Statesboro, Georgia, who represented Nicolas Lo in the case.

Over lawyering or protection beyond requirements? https://www.databreaches.net/article-how-privilege-undermines-cybersecurity/

Article: How Privilege Undermines Cybersecurity

A new article appears to be of great relevance to discussions about how lawyers and “privilege” may thwart our efforts to get more transparency and may thwart our efforts to learn from others’ mistakes — and may even thwart the victim’s own ability to learn from any forensic investigation.

Schwarcz, Daniel B. and Wolff, Josephine and Woods, Daniel W, How Privilege Undermines Cybersecurity (July 28, 2022). Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4175523

Abstract

In recent years, cyberattacks have cost firms countless billions of dollars, undermined consumer privacy, distorted world geopolitics, and even resulted in death and bodily harm. Rapidly accelerating cyberattacks have not, however, been bad news for many lawyers. To the contrary, lawyers that specialize in coordinating all elements of victims’ incident response efforts are increasingly in demand. Lawyers’ dominant role in cyber-incident response is driven predominantly by their purported capacity to ensure that information produced during the breach-response process remains confidential, particularly in any subsequent lawsuit. By interposing themselves between their clients and any third-party consultants that are involved in incident response, lawyers can often shield any materials produced after a breach from discovery under either attorney-client privilege or work product immunity. Moreover, by limiting and shaping the documentation that is produced by breached firms’ personnel and third-party consultants in the wake of a cyberattack, attorneys can limit the availability of potentially damaging information to plaintiffs’ attorneys, regulators, or media, even if their attorney-client privilege and work product immunity arguments falter. Relying on over sixty interviews with a broad range of actors in the cybersecurity landscape—including lawyers, forensic investigators, insurers, and regulators—this Article shows how, in their zeal to preserve the confidentiality of incident response efforts, lawyers frequently undermine the long-term cybersecurity of both their clients and society more broadly. We find that lawyers often direct forensic providers to refrain from making recommendations to clients about how to enhance their cyber defenses, restrict direct communications between forensic firms and clients, insist on hiring forensic firms that have no familiarity with the client’s networks or internal processes, and strictly limit dissemination of the forensic firm’s conclusions to the client’s internal personnel. To ensure that any legal confidentiality protections are not inadvertently waived by their clients, lawyers also frequently refuse to share any written documentation regarding a breach with third parties like insurers, regulators, and law enforcement. Even worse, we find that law firms overseeing breach investigations increasingly instruct forensic firms not to craft any final report regarding a breach whatsoever. These practices, we find, substantially impair the ability of breached firms to learn from cybersecurity incidents and implement long-term remediation measures. Furthermore, such efforts to protect confidentiality inhibit insurers’ capacity to understand the efficacy of different security countermeasures and regulators’ power to investigate cybersecurity incidents. To reverse these trends, the Article suggests that materials produced during incident response should be entitled to confidentiality protections that are untethered from the provision of legal services, but that such protections should be coupled with new requirements that firms impacted by a cyberattack disclose specific forensic evidence and analysis. By disentangling the incident response process from the production of information that can hold firms accountable for failing to take appropriate and required precautions, the Article aims to remove barriers to effective incident response while preserving incentives for firms to take cybersecurity seriously.

You can download the full paper (for free) from SSRN.

Unfortunately, my AI was unable to attend.

https://www.uschamber.com/technology/ais-role-in-modernizing-intellectual-property-and-bolstering-national-security

AI’s Role in Modernizing Intellectual Property and Bolstering National Security

The U.S. may lose its position as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) if we do not modernize our intellectual property system and bolster our national security strategy. That emerged as the key theme at the U.S. Chamber’s fifth and final AI Commission field hearing, hosted in Washington, D.C. last week. Experts from civil society, government, academia, and industry fathered to discuss this and other important issues related to the use and regulation of AI.

U.S. Chamber President and CEO Suzanne Clark opened the hearing by noting several challenges ahead, such as cooperation between Russia and China to compete against the U.S., intellectual property (IP) theft, and regulation from abroad. With regard to the Commission’s forthcoming policy recommendations, she noted, “You can count on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to do something with this. You can count on us to not just produce a white paper but to really turn it into action, into work.”

Here are six recommendations for how the U.S. can lead on AI:

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/infographic-of-the-worlds-104-trillion-economy/

Infographic of the world’s $104 trillion economy

BoingBoing – “Fascinating at-a-glance look at the $104 trillion global economy, divvied up into slices of geographical pie. I wasn’t surprised that the United States has the biggest economy, at $25.3 trillion, and that China is close behind with $19.9 trillion (and is expected to surpass the United States by 2030).

Things that surprised me:

• How small Russia’s economy ($1.8 trillion) is in comparison with the U.S. and China.

• Japan, at $4.9 trillion, has the third largest GDP. That’s more than Germany at $4.3 trillion, or the UK at $3.4 trillion.

• Iran’s GDP is $1.7 trillion, which is more than I would expect for a country that has so many sanctions imposed on it.

• I expected Canada’s GDP to be more than $2.2 trillion…”

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/abortion-bans-are-impeding-access-to-ulcer-arthritis-and-cancer-medications/

Abortion bans are impeding access to ulcer, arthritis, and cancer medications

Popular Science – “Methotrexate was introduced in the 1940s as a chemotherapy agent. Misoprostol was developed in the 1970s to treat stomach ulcers. On July 13, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified pharmacies that refusing to fill prescriptions for medicines containing ingredients that can induce abortion or prevent pregnancy could be in violation of federal civil rights law. The new guidance, which is aimed at the roughly 60,000 retail pharmacies across the country, breaks down how withholding certain medicines would discriminate against customers on the basis of sex or disability. These drugs include contraceptives, miscarriage treatments, and several non-abortion medications used to treat conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, ulcers, and multiple sclerosis. Experts are concerned that some pharmacists in states that have passed abortion restrictions might be unwilling to dispense common medications, even when they have been prescribed for other purposes besides reproductive healthcare. “Reproductive rights are not only a women’s issue, nor are they only an [obstetrics] issue,” Sara C. LaHue, an assistant professor of clinical neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, said in an email. “Restrictions on abortion will affect the care provided by the vast majority of medical specialties in the US.” ..

Resources. Now all I need is the time to search.

https://www.makeuseof.com/websites-discover-best-online-apps/

7 All-In-One Tools Websites to Discover the Best and Most Useful Online Apps

Private no longer…

https://www.pogowasright.org/these-companies-know-when-youre-pregnant-and-theyre-not-keeping-it-secret/

These Companies Know When You’re Pregnant—And They’re Not Keeping It Secret

Shoshana Wodinsky and Kyle Barr report:

A Gizmodo investigation into some of the nation’s biggest data brokers found more than two dozen promoting access to datasets containing digital information on millions of pregnant and potentially pregnant people across the country. At least one of those companies also offered a large catalogue of people who were using the same sorts of birth control that’s being targeted by more restrictive states right now.

Read more at Gizmodo.

(Related)

https://www.pogowasright.org/usa-offers-foreign-states-access-to-1-1-billion-biometric-encounters-in-return-for-reciprocal-database-access/

USA offers foreign states access to 1.1 billion biometric “encounters” in return for reciprocal database access

Statewatch writes:

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is touting ‘Enhanced Border Security Agreements’, offering access to its vast biometric databanks in exchange for other states reciprocating. Reports suggest the UK is already participating, although there is no official confirmation of this. In the EU the proposals have caused a furore amongst privacy-minded MEPs. A document produced by the DHS, obtained by Statewatch, shows what the USA is offering foreign states.

The document (pdf), entitled ‘DHS International Biometric Information Sharing (IBIS) Program’ and with the sub-heading ‘Enhanced Biometric Security Partnership (EBSP)’ is effectively a sales pitch to potential “foreign partners”.

Read more at Statewatch.

Wikilaw – when you don’t agree with your lawyer, write your own argument.

https://news.mit.edu/2022/study-finds-wikipedia-influences-judicial-behavior-0727

Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

Using a randomized field experiment, researchers discover that Wikipedia articles affect judges’ legal reasoning.

Mixed appraisals of one of the internet’s major resources, Wikipedia, are reflected in the slightly dystopian article “List of Wikipedia Scandals.” Yet billions of users routinely flock to the online, anonymously editable, encyclopedic knowledge bank for just about everything. How this unauthoritative source influences our discourse and decisions is hard to reliably trace. But a new study attempts to measure how knowledge gleaned from Wikipedia may play out in one specific realm: the courts.

A team of researchers led by Neil Thompson, a research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), recently came up with a friendly experiment: creating new legal Wikipedia articles to examine how they affect the legal decisions of judges. They set off by developing over 150 new Wikipedia articles on Irish Supreme Court decisions, written by law students. Half of these were randomly chosen to be uploaded online, where they could be used by judges, clerks, lawyers, and so on — the “treatment” group. The other half were kept offline, and this second group of cases provided the counterfactual basis of what would happen to a case absent a Wikipedia article about it (the “control”). They then looked at two measures: whether the cases were more likely to be cited as precedents by subsequent judicial decisions, and whether the argumentation in court judgments echoed the linguistic content of the new Wikipedia pages.

It turned out the published articles tipped the scales: Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent. The increase was statistically significant, and the effect was particularly strong for cases that supported the argument the citing judge was making in their decision (but not the converse). Unsurprisingly, the increase was bigger for citations by lower courts — the High Court — and mostly absent for citations by appellate courts — the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. The researchers suspect this is showing that Wikipedia is used more by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload, for whom the convenience of Wikipedia offers a greater attraction.

Tools & Techniques.

https://bgr.com/tech/game-changer-for-excel-free-ai-bot-creates-any-excel-formula-you-need/

Game-changer for Excel: Free AI bot creates any Excel formula you need

… For anyone who’s not a programmer and doesn’t really understand how to craft Microsoft Excel formulas? Simply head over to https://excelformulabot.com and let the AI there do the job for you.

I’m waiting for an AI to write the definitive argument.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40319-022-01213-7

Will Technology-Aided Creativity Force Us to Rethink Copyright’s Fundamentals? Highlights from the Platform Economy and Artificial Intelligence

The platform economy, the move towards artificial intelligence (AI) and the growing importance of new creative and transformative technologies such as 3D printing raise questions as to whether copyright law suffices in its present form. Our article argues that copyright law is malleable enough to fulfil some of its traditional functions in this new technology-aided (and technology-dominated) environment. However, certain adjustments and complementary instruments seem to be necessary to revitalise these functions. For example, moral rights could be more effectively harmonised at international level, and made more easily enforceable, to reflect the global reach of social media and to protect their essential reputational value in a digital economy that prioritises online exposure over remuneration opportunities. We also consider that creators’ rights are difficult, if not impossible, to license and enforce in an environment where contractual practices such as social media terms and conditions impose standard agreements that either do not compensate creators at all or compensate them only marginally. In this context, restoring the bargaining power of creators through the right of access to the platforms’ data seems to have become as important as copyright itself. Finally, doubts remain as to whether requirements such as authorship and originality can continue to apply and trigger copyright protection. To this end, we believe that the distinction between fully generative machines and other technologies that merely assist human creators is essential for the proper identification of “authorless” works. For such works we advocate the adoption of a very short right that would support computational creativity without stifling human ingenuity.

Would a reduction of communication ever be a good idea? This looks like “over protecting’ the President.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/29/secret-service-may-disable-imessages-jan-6-00048780

Secret Service may disable iMessages to avoid repeat of Jan. 6 controversy

The Secret Service is considering turning off employees’ ability to send iMessages on their work-issued iPhones, hoping to head off repeats of the current controversy embroiling the agency over deleted text messages related to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

“This is actually something we are looking at very closely,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said. “Director James Murray has ordered a benchmarking study to further examine the feasibility of disabling iMessage and whether it could have any operational impacts.”

… On July 13, the DHS inspector general informed Congress that the Secret Service lost texts related to the attack while erasing its employees’ phones as part of a change to how it manages those devices. That revelation prompted the House committee investigating the attack to subpoena the agency for its records. The panel’s leaders suggested that the agency may have violated federal records laws by failing to preserve the messages.

Keeping up…

https://www.pogowasright.org/further-thoughts-on-adppa-the-federal-comprehensive-privacy-bill/

Further Thoughts on ADPPA, the Federal Comprehensive Privacy Bill

Law professor and privacy scholar Daniel Solove writes:

I recently wrote a post about my concerns about the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) (updated version after markup is here ), a bill making its way through Congress that has progress further than many other attempts at a comprehensive privacy law. Despite grading the law a B+, I was skeptical of the law because it would preempt state laws, a provision I believe to be a Faustian bargain. Here’s an updated version of the ADPPA after markup.

Omer Tene (Goodwin Procter LLP) has a series of tweets expressing puzzlement at my reaction to the law. He thinks I should be dancing in the streets. He writes that he is “genuinely puzzled by the logic here. Dan argues against passage of a good federal privacy law (he gives it a B+) bc it might be outdated in 20 years.” He argues that my concerns will be the same with every federal law because there won’t be a federal law without preemption. “[W]hat’s the alternative? Omer asks. “Having no federal law to update in 20 years? How’s that any better?” He further argues that “if the preferred option is state by state, it’s a very poor option. Dan and others have rightfully criticized the weak tea brewed by the states. ADPPA blows every one of the state laws out of the water.” The “ADPPA is *far* stronger than CPRA. Even in California. Not to mention it would also apply in 49 other states.”

Omer makes compelling arguments, and I want to respond to clarify and expand upon some things in my original post to better explain my position.

Read more at TeachPrivacy.

My AI doesn’t like me.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_amcis2022/88/

Anthropomorphism, Privacy and Voice-based AI Systems

Intelligent personal assistants (digital voice assistants) are gaining popularity with 135.6 million number of active voice assistant users in the United States alone. Because of their usability and convenience, voice-controlled artificial intelligence systems are employed in both personal as well as professional settings. Existing literature (Manikonda et al. 2018) shows that these devices are used for several purposes ranging from seeking answers to queries, playing music, controlling lights, etc. However, these devices have been constantly upgraded not only in their physical appearance (e.g., Alexa devices with screens) but also their functionalities (e.g., Alexa devices allowing Telehealth visits). Thus, sufficient care is required to make sure privacy aspects are considered seriously. Users may be ignorant of the issues involved in using smart home devices, by using it as part of their daily lives because of its anthropomorphic characteristics. Research has shown that the users even though know about certain risks, they overlook them since the benefits received through using them is worth using (Sebastian and Crossler 2019). We examine the auditory design aspect (human-like voice including male and female voices), product attachment (such as viewing the AI system as a friend or a servant), trust of users in such systems and propose a theoretical model on why users continue to use voice-enabled intelligent personal assistants. The growing interest in using such devices as well as the constant upgrading of different functionalities of these devices regardless of the widely known privacy concerns is the primary motivation for us to focus on this problem. Personification, or Anthropomorphism – attributing human characteristics to non-human things, is defined as the attribution of "human-like properties, characteristics or mental states to real or imagined non-human agents and objects" (Epley et al. 2007). Anthropomorphism is spontaneous in addition to being pervasive and powerful (Yuan and Dennis 2019). For humans, they are born with anthropomorphism, and its characteristics can be divided into two main design factors- visual and auditory. We propose a theoretical model using different factors including auditory manipulation, product attachment, trust placed in the product, privacy concerns to measure an individual's willingness to use that product. The research model will be tested using data collected through survey responses. Prior studies have looked at smart home devices, but not from a perspective where anthropomorphism and privacy concerns come together. The study also contributes to the existing literature by integrating the concepts of anthropomorphism, extended privacy calculus model, and Protection Motivation Theory, to develop the research model. Furthermore, this study looks at how individuals perceive smart home devices and use it in their daily lives, even with the continual existence of privacy-related threats.