Apparently, uniting for a common defense is not that bad an idea. Timing was good.

https://www.databreaches.net/finlands-parliament-hit-with-cyberattack-following-us-move-to-admit-the-country-to-nato/

Finland’s parliament hit with cyberattack following US move to admit the country to NATO

Ines Kagubare reports:

Finland’s parliament website was temporarily down on Tuesday following a cyberattack that coincided with President Biden’s move to admit the Nordic country to NATO.

The Finnish parliament said in a statement on Twitter that a denial-of-service attack hit the parliament’s external websites at around 2:30 p.m. local time.

Read more at The Hill.

(Related)

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/13/in_brief_security_black_hat/

Ukraine's cyber chief comes to Black Hat in surprise visit

Victor Zhora, Ukraine's lead cybersecurity official, made an unannounced visit to Black Hat in Las Vegas this week, where he spoke to attendees about the state of cyberwarfare in the country's conflict with Russia. The picture Zhora painted was bleak.

Zhora, who is the deputy director of Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, said cyber incidents in the country have tripled since February, when Russia invaded.

(Related)

https://gizmodo.com/black-hat-2022-russian-hackers-ukraine-putin-zelensky-1849405033

Russian Hackers Are Escalating and Diversifying Their Attacks on Ukraine, Research Says

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine reaches its sixth month, Russian hackers are escalating and diversifying their attacks on the country and its citizenry, sending mass texts to Ukrainian civilians threatening their lives if they don’t retreat from their homes, attempting to breach the country’s banks, and even crippling some of their basic utilities.

In a presentation at DEF CON 30, Kenneth Geers, a security specialist at Very Good Security and fellow at NATO Cyber Centre, outlined how Russia has forecast these actions for years, including via ongoing attacks on power grids and communication systems in Ukrainian towns.

Can Ring convince camera owners and their neighbors that everything is light hearted and amusing?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k8x49/ring-nation-is-amazons-reality-show-for-our-surveillance-dystopia

'Ring Nation' Is Amazon's Reality Show for Our Surveillance Dystopia

Amazon's propaganda campaign to normalize surveillance is about to hit a higher gear: Wanda Sykes is going to host a new show featuring videos taken from Ring surveillance cameras, Deadline reported on Thursday. It will be called Ring Nation.

… According to Deadline, the show will feature lighthearted viral content captured on Ring cameras, such as "neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals." These types of videos frequently go viral online, but hardly represent the reality of what Ring is used for. Besides home surveillance, Ring is a source of surveillance video for police departments in the U.S. and abroad.

An elegant model for my students.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/08/a-taxonomy-of-access-control.html

A Taxonomy of Access Control

My personal definition of a brilliant idea is one that is immediately obvious once it’s explained, but no one has thought of it before. I can’t believe that no one has described this taxonomy of access control before Eyal Ittay laid it out in this paper. The paper is about cryptocurrency wallet design, but the ideas are more general. Ittay points out that a key—or an account, or anything similar—can be in one of four states:

safe Only the user has access,
loss No one has access,
leak Both the user and the adversary have access, or
theft Only the adversary has access.

Once you know these states, you can assign probabilities of transitioning from one state to another (someone hacks your account and locks you out, you forgot your own password, etc.) and then build optimal security and reliability to deal with it. It’s a truly elegant way of conceptualizing the problem.

Can you identify your data if it is not in a form you use internally?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/08/it-might-be-our-data-but-its-not-our-breach/

It Might Be Our Data, But It’s Not Our Breach

A cybersecurity firm says it has intercepted a large, unique stolen data set containing the names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers and dates of birth on nearly 23 million Americans. The firm’s analysis of the data suggests it corresponds to current and former customers of AT&T. The telecommunications giant stopped short of saying the data wasn’t theirs, but it maintains the records do not appear to have come from its systems and may be tied to a previous data incident at another company.

Gartner provides us with a list of technologies we may see in the near future.

https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-s-new-in-the-2022-gartner-hype-cycle-for-emerging-technologies

What’s New in the 2022 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies for 2022 fit into three main themes: evolving/expanding immersive experiences, accelerated artificial intelligence automation, and optimized technologist delivery.

A simple challenge. Finding the video should be easier than finding target Hyundai or Kia vehicles.

https://www.outtherecolorado.com/news/criminal-tiktok-challenge-hits-colorado-with-some-cars-easily-stolen-via-usb-cable/article_f468a90a-18e2-11ed-b3a3-ab5a1d951ea4.html

Criminal TikTok challenge hits Colorado, with some cars easily stolen via USB cable

According to a report from the Denver Channel, a viral TikTok challenge dubbed the 'KIA Challenge' has started to impact Coloradans in a way that costs some people thousands of dollars.

The challenge involves using a simple USB cable or similar device that can be inserted into the ignition to steal some older KIA and Hyundai models.

… .The class-action lawsuit related to this case notes that impacted vehicles seem to include KIAs manufactured from 2011 to 2021 and Hyundai's manufactured from 2015 to 2021.

Editor's Note: While this article is about a viral video challenge, we're not including a video of the challenge, as this shows criminal activity.

Bad directions during a hurricane evacuation is one thing, sending survivors of one terrorist attack toward ground zero for another attack is something else.

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/chief-engineer-fema-emergency-alert-systems-at-risk-of-hacking-due-to-vulnerable-software/

Chief Engineer: FEMA Emergency Alert Systems at Risk of Hacking Due to Vulnerable Software

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s chief engineer for the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System is issuing a public call for improved cybersecurity, warning that vulnerable software used in the Emergency Alert Systems has created an opening for hackers.

An attacker could use this vulnerability to issue fake alerts via the Emergency Alert Systems. The vulnerable software is in the possession of television and radio stations throughout the country, who are being called upon to download a software update and ensure that firewalls protecting the systems are in good working order.

How would you protect your hand in environments looking to scan your palm?

https://gizmodo.com/whole-foods-palm-contactless-payment-amazon-1849395184

Amazon's Creepy Palm Reading Payment System Is Taking Over Whole Foods

… In the coming weeks, Amazon plans to expand its “Amazon One” palm reading biometric payment system to 65 Whole Foods Markets throughout California, starting with locations in Malibu, Montana Avenue, and Santa Monica. The expansion, first reported on by The Verge, marks the biggest step forward yet in Amazon’s effort to normalize biometric payments.

We call that ‘evidence.’

https://www.bespacific.com/your-iphones-deleted-voicemails-arent-actually-deleted/

Your iPhone’s deleted voicemails aren’t actually deleted

ZDNet – “Here’s why and how to delete them for good. If you like keeping your phone tidy by periodically deleting old messages and voicemails, you may be surprised to hear that those voicemail messages you deleted two years ago may still be on your phone… Voicemail messages are typically stored in the mobile carrier’s servers; they’re not automatically stored on the phone itself, but they can be backed up to iCloud or a computer..”

Resource?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/10/23299527/microsoft-emoji-open-source-creators?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

Microsoft open sources its 3D emoji to let creators remix and customize them

Microsoft is open sourcing more than 1,500 of its 3D emoji, making them free for creators to remix and build upon. Almost all of Microsoft’s 1,538 emoji library will be available on Figma and GitHub starting today in a move that Microsoft hopes will encourage more creativity and inclusivity in the emoji space.

I’ll hold the cash if you let my AI determine who gets paid and when.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2022/08/10/ai-ethics-mulling-over-the-merits-of-legally-mandating-atonement-funds-to-ensure-ai-accountability/?sh=6ba0b9ae1381

AI Ethics Mulling Over The Merits Of Legally Mandating Atonement Funds To Ensure Accountability For AI Acting Badly

… I’ve previously discussed the criminal accountability for when AI leads to or undertakes criminal actions, see my coverage at the link here. There is also the matter of civil accountability such as who or what you might sue when AI has done you wrong, which is the topic I’ll be discussing herein. All of this has significant AI Ethics considerations. For my ongoing and extensive coverage of AI Ethics and Ethical AI, see the link here and the link here, just to name a few.

… A heated debate taking place is whether existing laws are able to adequately address the emergence of AI systems throughout society. Legal liability typically requires that you can pin the tail on the donkey as to who is responsible for harmful conduct. In the case of AI, there might be a rather unclear path that ties a particular person or persons to the AI that performed some injurious action. The AI might be largely untraceable to the source or inventor that composed the AI.

Another consideration is that even if the roots of the AI can be traced to someone, the question is whether the person or persons might not have been able to reasonably foresee the adverse outcome that the AI ultimately produced. The crux of foreseeability is a customarily notable factor in assessing legal liability.

You might be tempted to think that you can simply go after the AI itself and name the AI as the legal party accountable or responsible for whatever harm has allegedly been incurred. By and large, the prevailing legal view is that AI has not yet reached a level of legal personhood. Thus, you won’t be able to strictly speaking seek to get the AI to pay up and will need to find humans that were working the levers behind the scenes, as it were (for my analysis of legal personhood for AI, see the link here ).

Into all of this potential legal morass steps an idea that is being floated as a possible remedy, either on a short-term basis or possibly on a long-term haul. The idea is that perhaps a special compensatory fund ought to be established to provide financial relief for those that have been harmed by AI. If you are otherwise unable to get the AI to compensate you, and you cannot nail down the persons that ought to be presumably held accountable, the next best option might be to tap into a compensatory fund that aims to aid those harmed by AI.

Calculate the value of a hack that keeps you forever in the “Driving Miss Daisy” category…

https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-how-to-stay-smart-in-a-smart-world-gerd-gigerenzer-mit-press-153055703.html

Hitting the Books: How much that insurance monitoring discount might really be costing you

Machine learning systems have for years now been besting their human counterparts at everything from Go and Jeopardy! to drug discovery and cancer detection. With all the advances that the field has made, it's not unheard of for people to be wary of robots replacing them in tomorrow's workforce. These concerns are misplaced, argues Gerd Gigerenzer argues in his new book How to Stay Smart in a Smart World, if for no other reason than uncertainty itself. AIs are phenomenally capable machines, but only if given sufficient data to act on. Introduce the acutely fickle precariousness of human nature into their algorithms and watch their predictive accuracy plummet — otherwise, we'd never have need to swipe left. In the excerpt below, Gigerenzer discusses the hidden privacy costs of sharing your vehicle's telematics with the insurance company.

Something to consider until the real thing comes along?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zevd/this-is-the-data-facebook-gave-police-to-prosecute-a-teenager-for-abortion

This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

Motherboard has obtained court documents that show Facebook gave police a teenager’s private chats about her abortion. Cops then used those chats to seize her phone and computer.

A 17-year-old girl and her mother have been charged with a series of felonies and misdemeanors after an apparent medication abortion at home in Nebraska. The state’s case relies on evidence from the teenager’s private Facebook messages, obtained directly from Facebook by court order, which show the mother and daughter allegedly bought medication to induce abortion online, and then disposed of the body of the fetus. While the court documents, obtained by Motherboard, allege that the abortion took place before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June, they show in shocking detail how abortion could and will be prosecuted in the United States, and how tech companies will be enlisted by law enforcement to help prosecute their cases.

According to court records, Celeste Burgess, 17, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, bought medication called Pregnot designed to end pregnancy. Pregnot is a kit of mifepristone and misoprostol, which is often used to safely end pregnancy in the first trimester. In this case, Burgess was 28-weeks pregnant, which is later in pregnancy than mifepristone and misoprostol are recommended for use. It’s also later than Nebraska’s 20-week post-fertilization abortion ban, which makes allowances only if the pregnant person is at risk of death or "serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function." (Nebraska’s abortion laws have not changed since Roe v Wade was overturned).

Jessica Burgess is charged with five crimes (three felonies, including "perform/attempt abortion at > 20 weeks, perform abortion by non-licensed doctor, and removing/concealing a dead human body). Celeste is charged with one felony, "removing/concealing/abandoning dead human body" and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting. She is being tried as an adult. Some details of the case were earlier reported by the Lincoln Journal-Star and Forbes. Motherboard is publishing the search warrants and court records that show specifically how the case is being prosecuted.

Tools & Techniques. (You know you want to)

https://www.makeuseof.com/novelist-app-how-to-write-book/

How to Use the Novelist App to Plan and Write Your Book

Novelist has every tool you could need to plan and write every detail of your book from scratch. Here's how to use the creative writing app.

Among the many services around that can help you write and publish a book, the Novelist app is one to pay special attention to, thanks to its multiple useful features.

Novelist has a bit of a learning curve, so here are the basic steps you should know to make writing your book a breeze.

Novelist is free and available on the web, as well as on Android and iOS. all versions offering the same layout and tools. But we’re going to focus on the online service.

I think it’s clear they are not too big physically to block, so would a backlash bring down the government? I’m not certain what the ultimate influence is here.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-youtube-keeps-broadcasting-inside-russias-digital-iron-curtain-11659951003?mod=djemalertNEWS

How YouTube Keeps Broadcasting Inside Russia’s Digital Iron Curtain

YouTube still operates in Russia, possibly because the Kremlin views it as too big to bloc.

Months into its war against Ukraine, Moscow continues to let its own citizens access YouTube, leaving a conspicuous hole in its effort to control what Russians see and hear about the conflict.

The video-streaming service, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, is one of the few places where Russians can view and discuss images of the war from independent outlets. Russia has restricted domestic access to many other big platforms —including news sites and Facebook —since the conflict began.

YouTube’s availability in Russia has continued for longer than some Google executives themselves initially expected, according to people familiar with the matter, especially given that the Silicon Valley giant has irked Moscow during the war.

YouTube has suspended hundreds of channels run by Kremlin-affiliated entities worldwide. Moscow has repeatedly demanded that YouTube restore its channels and seized Google’s bank account in the country, forcing its local unit to declare bankruptcy and move its staff abroad. In July, Russia’s telecommunications regulator fined Google $360 million for failing to remove content about the war that challenges the Kremlin line.

… “Some banks are too big to fail, and some apps are too big to be blocked,” said Nu Wexler, a former policy communications staffer at Google, Meta and Twitter. “The Russian government knows they would face a backlash if they were to block a popular app like YouTube in the country.”

Always the downside of shared information.

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/07/amazon-registry-identity-theft/

AMAZON’S ONE-STOP SHOP FOR IDENTITY THIEVES

IMAGINE IF A budding identity thief had a free, user-friendly, publicly searchable database that contained the name, location, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name of millions of people. Enter Amazon registries. We already know that Amazon collects plenty of personal information and data that can be arduous for its users to obtain, but the company also readily shares your information for anyone to access when you set up a registry. Because the default visibility settings of registries for weddings, birthdays, new babies, and other occasions are preset to public, Amazon reveals to the world information that financial institutions and other service providers request for identity authentication — and that identity thieves can use to take over your life.

Still confused…

https://gizmodo.com/cory-doctorow-copyright-laws-tech-antitrust-1849376858

20 Years Of Copyright Wars

Author and activist Cory Doctorow reflects on the fight over who owns what in a digital world.

Tools & Techniques. Tuck this someplace safe, because you will need it.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-to-find-out-if-you-are-involved-in-a-data-breach-and-what-to-do-next/

How to find out if you are involved in a data breach and what to do next

ZDNet: “Think you’ve been involved in a data breach? This guide will help you find out where and when, and it lists the steps you should take next. Data breaches are security incidents we now hear about every day. They strike every industry, every sector, every county; victim organizations can be everything from small, independent businesses to Fortune 500 companies. IBM estimates that the average cost of a data breach in 2021 for US companies was $4.24 million, and damages increased by an average of $1.07 million when remote working was involved — a daunting statistic for businesses now adapting to hybrid and work-from-home setups. However, talk of the millions of dollars corporations spend to repair damaged systems, perform cyberforensics, improve their defenses, and cover legal fees doesn’t necessarily convey all the costs felt by individual customers involved in a data breach. For individuals, the costs can be more personal. And while financial damage may be a factor, the loss may be in the form of salaries, savings, and funds in investments. Here’s how data breaches occur, how they can impact you, and what you can do in the aftermath…”

Resource.

https://www.kdnuggets.com/2022/08/free-ai-beginners-course.html

Free AI for Beginners Course

… The aptly-named Artificial Intelligence for Beginners is put together by Microsoft Azure Cloud Advocates, and consists of a 12 week, 24 lesson curriculum designed to introduce learners to the wonderful world of AI.

… You can see specific course content, laid out lesson by lesson, here.

I hope everyone already knows this?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/tech-companies-buckle-up-things-are-about-to-get-even-bumpier-with-data-privacy/

Tech Companies, Buckle Up. Things Are About To Get Even Bumpier With Data Privacy

It has been well documented that the U.S. has no federal data privacy law, despite the EU, China and many other nations enacting their own governing policies. That may be about to change. On June 3, a group of bipartisan senators introduced a draft of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA). The bill has since entered the markup process, where it is starting to face some pushback on both sides of the aisle. Until ADPPA or a different federal privacy bill is passed, data privacy is slowly becoming more of a states-rights issue. California got the wheels in motion with its landmark California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2020, and it is already set to up the ante with an upgraded version – the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) – set to go into effect on January 1, 2023.

A re you operating an intelligence gathering device?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tesla-autopilot-data-scope

The Radical Scope of Tesla’s Data Hoard

Logs and records of its customers’ journeys fill out petabytes—and court case dockets

You won’t see a single Tesla cruising the glamorous beachfront in Beidaihe, China, this summer. Officials banned Elon Musk’s popular electric cars from the resort for two months while it hosts the Communist Party’s annual retreat, presumably fearing what their built-in cameras might capture and feed back to the United States.

Back in Florida, Tesla recently faced a negligence lawsuit after two young men died in a fiery car crash while driving a Model S belonging to a father of one of the accident victims. As part of its defense, the company submitted a historical speed analysis showing that the car had been driven with a daily top speed averaging over 90 miles per hour (145 kilometers per hour) in the months before the crash. This information was quietly captured by the car and uploaded to Tesla’s servers. (A jury later found Tesla just 1 percent negligent in the case.)

Meanwhile, every recent-model Tesla reportedly records a breadcrumb GPS trail of every trip it makes—and shares it with the company. While this data is supposedly anonymized, experts are skeptical.

Alongside its advances in electric propulsion, Tesla’s innovations in data collection, analysis, and usage are transforming the automotive industry, and society itself, in ways that appear genuinely revolutionary.

In a series of articles (story 2; story 3), IEEE Spectrum is examining exactly what data Tesla vehicles collect, how the company uses them to develop its automated driving systems, and whether owners or the company are in the driver’s seat when it comes to accessing and exploiting that data. There is no evidence that Tesla collects any data beyond what customers agree to in their terms of service—even though opting out of this completely appears to be very difficult.

After 20 years, TSA still hasn’t figured out how to secure an airport?

https://www.hstoday.us/industry/industry-news/hakimo-ai-to-help-reduce-unauthorized-access-at-punta-gorda-tsa-checkpoint/

Hakimo AI to Help Reduce Unauthorized Access at Punta Gorda TSA Checkpoint

… PGD turned to Hakimo to help monitor for and reduce incidents of unauthorized access by people and vehicles (piggybacking and tailgating) at the airport. U.S. airports are required to implement access control measures to prevent unauthorized access as part of their airport security program which is approved and checked by the TSA. The Hakimo software helps address these requirements by applying artificial intelligence to the airport’s existing access control and video surveillance systems.

Wait for them to make it personal, then pound them into insignificance? Has the non-lawyer got this figured out? How about a bounty program?

https://www.ksl.com/article/50453680/alex-jones-493m-verdict-and-the-future-of-misinformation

Alex Jones' $49.3M verdict and the future of misinformation

… "I think a lot of people are thinking of this as sort of a blow against fake news, and it's important to realize that libel law deals with a very particular kind of fake news," said Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment professor at the UCLA School of Law.

U.S. courts have long held that defamatory statements — falsehoods damaging the reputation of a person or a business — aren't protected as free speech, but lies about other subjects, like science, history or the government, are. For example, saying COVID-19 isn't real is not defamatory, but spreading lies about a doctor treating coronavirus patients is.

That distinction is why Jones, who attacked the parents of Sandy Hook victims and claimed the 2012 shooting was staged with actors to increase gun control, is being forced to pay up while Holocaust deniers, flat-earthers and vaccine skeptics are free to post their theories without much fear of a multimillion-dollar court judgment.

"Alex Jones was attacking individuals," said Stephen D. Solomon, a law professor and founding editor of New York University's First Amendment Watch. "And that's important. A lot of disinformation does not attack individuals."

Tools and Techniques. You never know when you might need one...

https://www.makeuseof.com/free-portable-apps-for-students/

16 Free Portable Apps for Students They Can Carry Everywhere

Tread carefully. What you learn as faith is rarely changed by facts.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09537325.2022.2106422

Correlation of Christian ethics and developments in artificial intelligence

In the traditional understanding, Christian ethics touches upon issues of morality and the general structure of a human as a person. At the same time, Christian ethics does not touch upon questions and does not impose restrictions on the development of scientific principles and methodological structures of knowledge of the surrounding world. That is, Christian ethics allows and encourages the exploration of created space. The novelty of the study is fact that the understanding of the importance of artificial intelligence is based primarily on the belief that there is a need to develop boundaries where artificial intelligence is capable of making a decision that will not be approved by humans. The authors show that the creation of such a technology runs counter to the values of a religious nature and Christianity, in particular, due to the representation of freedom of technology, which has moral convictions not based on the principles of humanism. The study compares and develops the main criteria for correlating the sufficiency of ethical norms and the requirements of technological advancement. A promising question for further discussion is the question of the artificial intelligence's deliberate lack of attachment to a particular morality, including extreme or aggressive worldviews.

Past time for a start.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9844014

An Overview of Artificial Intelligence Ethics

Artificial intelligence (AI) has profoundly changed and will continue to change our lives. AI is being applied in more and more fields and scenarios such as autonomous driving, medical care, media, finance, industrial robots, and internet services. The widespread application of AI and its deep integration with the economy and society have improved efficiency and produced benefits. At the same time, it will inevitably impact the existing social order and raise ethical concerns. Ethical issues, such as privacy leakage, discrimination, unemployment, and security risks, brought about by AI systems have caused great trouble to people. Therefore, AI ethics, which is a field related to the study of ethical issues in AI, has become not only an important research topic in academia, but also an important topic of common concern for individuals, organizations, countries, and society. This paper will give a comprehensive overview of this field by summarizing and analyzing the ethical risks and issues raised by AI, ethical guidelines and principles issued by different organizations, approaches for addressing ethical issues in AI, methods for evaluating the ethics of AI. Additionally, challenges in implementing ethics in AI and some future perspectives are pointed out. We hope our work will provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of AI ethics for researchers and practitioners in this field, especially the beginners of this research discipline.

Stuff I didn’t know, but should have.

https://www.wvnews.com/news/wvnews/rank-one-computing-aims-to-expand-ai-facial-recognition-software-throughout-west-virginia-united-states/article_afb73068-14e8-11ed-a723-2fe1647a2358.html

Rank One Computing aims to expand AI, facial recognition software throughout West Virginia, United States

Hoping to expand the United States’ use of domestic artificial intelligence technology, Rank One Computing (ROC) has set up its East Coast headquarters in West Virginia, where officials hope to find more customers for the company’s facial recognition software, as well.

Stationed primarily in Colorado, Rank One Computing has its East Coast headquarters at Vantage Ventures in Morgantown. CEO Scott Swann described Rank One Computing as a “computer vision” company, and said the group’s facial, object and text recognition software is able to help in a wide array of industries and scenarios.

… “They use our technology on mobile phones to help identify particular encounters of people,” Swann said. “We run extremely lean, so we lend ourselves to doing that kind of edge processing. Within law enforcement, we service these larger scale ‘one-to-many’ face recognition systems for forensic uses. In the commercial sector, we’re doing a lot in (financial) tech. It’s called identify proofing, but it’s essentially the process of taking a picture of your face and a picture of your credentials, and then you get some sort of authorized transaction.”

Everybody’s doing it.

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cjil/vol23/iss1/13/

Clearview AI, TikTok, and the Collection of Facial Images in International Law

Private companies’ collection of facial images is on the rise globally, which has major implications for both economic development and privacy laws. This Comment uses the facial recognition technology company Clearview AI and the video sharing app TikTok as case studies to examine the problems raised by these practices. After summarizing the relevant legal regimes created by the United Nations (U.N.) and the European Union (E.U.), it applies the E.U. privacy regime to TikTok’s most recent Privacy Policy. The Comment concludes by proposing updates to the E.U. and U.N. privacy regimes to more effectively regulate TikTok’s data collection and analogous business practices. These proposed updates include treating all facial images as special category biometric data under the E.U. regime and amending the U.N. regime to specifically cover digital privacy.

During the war…

http://ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/bitstream/handle/123456789/23548/Avdieieva_Mahisterska_robota.pdf?sequence=1

FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS: INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW ASPECTS

Snowden’s revelations of 2013 served as a turning point for conspiracy theories to become a new reality, raising a groundful concern regarding the bulk State interference with one’s privacy. Interception of e-mails and phone communications, profiling of activists, recording of peaceful protests are the classic examples of State surveillance done under the auspices of national security and public order protection.

Modern technologies made surveillance more sophisticated, all-encompassing, and intrusive. Biometric identification becomes easier given the incorporation of the FRT into the video cameras. They enable identification (comparing recorded individuals with a list of wanted persons), verification of identity (checking whether a particular individual is the one recorded), and categorisation (defining how many people of certain gender or ethnicity were recorded).1 Such systems are often equipped with classificatory of facial expressions and emotions,2 as well as AI algorithms detecting the obstructed or poorly lit targets. Accordingly, the FRT afford increased effectiveness, granting law enforcement additional powers in surveilling individuals.

The same requirement for a DNA test?

https://www.pogowasright.org/ma-supreme-judicial-court-rules-consent-required-for-blood-alcohol-test/

MA: Supreme Judicial Court rules consent required for blood alcohol test

Shira Schoenberg reports:

The police cannot test a person’s blood to determine blood alcohol content without that person’s consent, even if the person authorized the blood draw itself, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday.

It is well-established law that the police cannot order a blood test without a person’s consent, in order to protect the safety of both the subject and medical personnel. But the SJC was presented with a unique drunk driving case in which the driver, Eric Moreau, was taken to the hospital after a collision and agreed to a blood test for medical purposes. The Gardner police then obtained a warrant for his blood and tested it to determine his blood alcohol content. Based on the results, Moreau was charged with operating under the influence and negligent driving.

Read more at CommonWealth.

A field of law that is changing. Does this predict how?

https://repository.law.uic.edu/facpubs/894/

Antitrust's AI Revolution, 89 Tenn. L. Rev. 679 (2022)

Antitrust law operates like an algorithm. Its lodestar, the rule of reason, is a black box. Unlike most other areas of the law, judges, not Congress, write the rules and sometimes in surprisingly capricious ways. These rules govern everything from Google and Facebook's “killer acquisitions” to vaccine development agreements during a pandemic. Injecting artificial intelligence (AI) into antitrust analysis seems prosaic, but in fact, it is revolutionary. Courts routinely lean on ideology as a heuristic when they must interpret the rule of reason in light of economic theory and evidence. Chicago School conservatism reined in some excesses of earlier populist and structuralist movements, but it also hampered antitrust enforcement and systemically penalized plaintiffs. Scholars widely agree Chicagoan antitrust overshot its mark and failed to protect consumers against corporate hegemony. Widespread anxiety over excessive private power recently spawned a chorus of voices beckoning a return to antitrust law's populist past. None seem to realize the fix lies in embracing new technology rather than new ideology. This Article bridges two dominant streams of antitrust scholarship for the first time. First, it shifts the focus from AI as a collusive threat to its potential as a forensic and predictive tool to build the rule of reason from the bottom-up based on big data and computing power rather than top-down with wonky ideology. Second, this new method of algorithmic adjudication presents a new normative paradigm to replace Chicagoan fears of judicial inaptitude and false positives with a truly evidence-based alternative, particularly when dealing with cases involving nascent acquisitions and intellectual property rights. In getting down to the brass tacks, this Article confronts well-known concerns with AI deployment--bias, accountability, and data availability. It explains that these concerns, while legitimate, can be significantly mitigated or, in some cases, comprehensively addressed. The Article concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of algorithmic adjudication beyond antitrust law by discussing atextualism in action, algocracy and the common law, and the implications of plaintiff success to the rule of law.

Tools & Techniques. Could be handy.

https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2022/08/how-to-quickly-broadcast-your-screen-to.html

How to Quickly Broadcast Your Screen to Your Students' Screens

A few months ago I published an overview of DisplayNote Broadcast. It's a tool that you can use to broadcast your screen to your students' laptop or tablet screens. Shortly after I published my initial overview DisplayNote Broadcast added a Google Slides and Classroom integration. The latest update is a Chrome extension that you can use to share your screen with just a couple of clicks.

In the short video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to broadcast your screen to your students' screens by using the Display Note Broadcast Chrome extension.