Wednesday, December 11, 2019

The laws protecting our data are too weak

“All of my words, if not well put nor well taken, are well meant.”
― Woody Guthrie 

 “You have to make an enemy a friend to conquer his or her evil intentions.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind  
Hong Kong fraud payments put Westpac under fresh scrutiny


It isn’t that Communists lie, which is a given. It’s that they lie so obviously and badly. . .



Analysis: In a word, the world is in a mess. It's going to get worse


This year may well go down as the most disrupted year in global politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The bad news is that the sailing doesn't look any smoother next year, writes Tony Walker.



Sanna Marin is about to become the world's youngest serving prime minister, backed by an all-female leadership team via Steve Monaghan 


Finland's new 34-year-old prime minister will become the youngest world leader when she ascends to the position later this week, and is already being dubbed the country's answer to New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern.

A Window into European Versus US Management

Evidence keeps accumulating that American management is rotten.







How Your Work Is Changing Under Governance Of Algorithms

IDEAS


The hidden moments of reclaimed freedom that make any job bearable are being discovered and wiped out by bosses everywhere: That trick you used to use to slow down the machine won’t work anymore; or that window of 23 minutes when you knew your boss couldn’t watch you is vanishing. Whatever little piece of humanity survived in these fragments dies with them.
 – The New Republic

Barrister-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo wants to return to Australia but says police are pressuring her not to


Barrister-turned-informer Nicola Gobbo tells 7.30 she fears Victoria Police will kill her or leak information that could lead to her death.
Honestly, The Onion kind of nailed it: Comey: ‘What Can I Say, I’m Just A Catty Bitch From New Jersey And I Live For Drama.’
How business elites sold the “urban renewal” lie to the Rust Belt Salon. Bangor, too. We destroyed a lovely brick train station in favor of a wasteland of parking lots and banks.

One more time – “For all of you that used the FaceApp to see what you would look like in old age, the FBI just told @SenSchumer that “the FBI considers any mobile application or similar product developed in Russia, such as FaceApp, to be a potential counterintelligence threat…” [via Frank Thorpe – producer and off-air reporter, NBCNews – his Tweet includes a copy of the FBI’s letter to Sen. Schumer

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues December 7, 2019 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: 50 countries ranked by how they’re collecting biometric data and what they’re doing with it; Facebook Asks Supreme Court to Review Face Scan Decision; The United States House Has Approved a New Anti-Robocall Bill; and Do our algorithms have enough oversight?


 Elizabeth Smart Died in 1986. Her Work Still Haunts Me | The Walrus. 

What far fewer people know about Elizabeth Smart—and what she declined to mention during the years I knew her in the 1980s—is that she spent much of her working life in London selling carpets, tiaras, and transistor radios as a witty fashion and advertising copywriter. She was reputed, at one point, to be the highest-paid commercial writer in England 
Secretary contradicts PM over Thodey review while APS braces for more MoG changes
TENSION RISING: A rare example of a top mandarin backgrounding the media.


ProPublica, How a Tax Break to Help the Poor Went to NBA Owner Dan Gilbert:
Pro PublicaAfter a lobbying effort, Dan Gilbert, billionaire founder of Quicken Loans, won special tax status for wealthy areas of downtown Detroit where he owns billions worth of property.
Billionaire Dan Gilbert has spent the last decade buying up buildings in downtown Detroit, amassing nearly 100 properties and so completely dominating the area, it’s known as Gilbertville. In the last few years, Gilbert, the 57-year-old founder of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, has also grown close to the Trump family.



Why Vinyl Records Are Cool Again (And Getting More Expensive)


For some, buying records is no longer about owning the same piece of music as everyone else but owning a version of it that few others have. It reflects a change in contemporary relationships to owning music, says Sevier. “Owning a limited or special edition is doubling down on the closeness you feel to an album or artist. You can’t display your streaming history like a trophy.” – The Guardian

 Forbes: “Only two road traffic deaths per 100, 000 inhabitants were reported in Norway in 2019, making the Scandinavian nation the best-performing country for road safety.  In comparison, the risk of being killed in a crash was six times higher in Argentina than in Norway, and the United States ranked 33 (out of 40), following Morocco and Chile. Those are among the findings of the Road Safety Annual Report 2019, published last month by the Paris-based International Transport Forum, an intergovernmental organization with 60 member countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Norway also had the lowest mortality rates per distance traveled and per registered vehicles in 2018. Its success “is particularly remarkable,” the report noted, as the country’s roads were already among the safest in the world…”

 The laws protecting our data are too weak - engadget – “The latest in a long line of privacy scandals happened last week, after Google was found to have been pulling unredacted data from one of America’s largest healthcare providers to use in one of its projects. Despite assurances that it won’t use this information to supplant its ad business, that’s not the issue here. How was Google able to acquire this knowledge in the first place? Professor Sandra Wachter is an expert in law, data and AI at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute. She says that every time your data is collected, “you leave something of yourself behind.” She added that anyone can use your online behavior to “infer very sensitive things about you,” like your ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and health status. It’s bad enough when the companies use those inferences for targeted ads. But it gets a lot worse when they gain access to very private data. For instance, would you feel comfortable if Google started displaying ads for fertility treatments in your emails after a trip to the doctor? Or if your healthcare provider could access your browser history without your knowledge to determine how suitable you are for insurance…” 

 WSJ.com – A Billion Surveillance Cameras Forecast to Be Watching Within Two Years - Global numbers to grow almost 30% as higher image quality allows better facial recognition – “As governments and companies invest more in security networks, hundreds of millions more surveillance cameras will be watching the world in 2021, mostly in China, according to a new report…”
Source: Video Surveillance Installed Base Report – 2019 – “IHS Markit has been tracking annual shipment volumes of video surveillance cameras since 2004. This report builds on nearly two decades of research to provide a dedicated analysis of the installed base of network, analog and HD CCTV security cameras. This report provides market sizes, forecasts and market shares for the installed base of network, analog and HD CCTV cameras globally. An increasing number of video surveillance cameras are being shipped every year. This growth is being driven by long-standing trends, such as the shift from analog to network equipment, increased government funding, and increased price competition, meaning security cameras have never been more affordable to the end-user. Furthermore, increased adoption of technologies such as wide dynamic range, higher megapixel rated cameras and video analytics are also driving adoption. So, what does this mean for the installed base of security cameras?…”

50 countries ranked by how they’re collecting biometric data and what they’re doing with it - comparitech: “From passport photos to accessing bank accounts with fingerprints, the use of biometrics is growing at an exponential rate. And while using your fingerprint may be easier than typing in a password, just how far is too far when it comes to biometric use, and what’s happening to your biometric data once it’s collected, especially where governments are concerned? Here at Comparitech, we’ve analyzed 50 different countries to find out where biometrics are being taken, what they’re being taken for, and how they’re being stored. While there is huge scope for biometric data collection, we have taken 5 key areas that apply to most countries (so as to offer a fair country-by-country comparison and to ensure the data is available). Each country has been scored out of 25, with high scores indicating extensive and invasive use of biometrics and/or surveillance and a low score demonstrating better restrictions and regulations regarding biometric use and surveillance…” [Spoiler – U.S. ranks #4 of top 5 countries using biometric data]


 Why I Opt Out of Facial Recognition - Fortune – Robert Hackett – “When Fortune employees moved into a new office building in Manhattan a few months ago, we had the option to sign up for facial recognition scanning. This meant we could access the premises without showing an authorized ID badge. I ruminated on the convenience for some time. Imagine: No more pausing at the turnstile. No more fumbling around in your pockets. No more accidentally forgetting your ID badge at home. Simply flash a smile at a little camera and—presto—you’re in. What a dream come true! Naturally, I declined the option…If I lose my ID badge, I can get a new one. But I have only one face.” [See also DHS wants to expand airport face recognition scans to include US citizens.]

We have educations, credit cards, were raised with privilege and access – but our lives are filled with financial uncertainty
We're broke, not poor: how I became downwardly mobile 
Adolph Reed on Movements and Monuments Current Affairs
Labor Unions Team Up With Drug Makers to Defeat Drug-Price Proposals NYT
Human insight remains essential to beat the bias of algorithms FT

 The Second Wave of Algorithmic Accountability Law and Political Economy

Harvesting the Blood of America’s Poor: The Latest Stage of Capitalism Mint Press. “[B]lood now makes up well over 2 percent of total U.S. exports by value.” Hey, why don’t they just learn to code?
What 60 Minutes Missed: 44 Percent of U.S. Workers Earn $18,000 Per Year The Stranger
Toughest jobs? Try working in a pet store CBS
Leading anti-vaxxer jailed as measles death toll rises to 63 in Samoa Ars Technica (Re Silc).
Performance artist eats $120,000 banana duct-taped to wall, calls it ‘delicious’ NBC
Kripke versus Kant LRB
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