Wednesday, July 07, 2021

Facial Recognition: The Senator Who Decided to Tell the Truth


Using Facial Recognition Technology on BearsUsing Facial Recognition Technology on Bears

Facial Recognition Technology: Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Should Better Assess Privacy and Other Risks, GAO-21-518Published: Jun 03, 2021. Publicly Released: Jun 29, 2021.  We surveyed 42 federal agencies that employ law enforcement officers about their use of facial recognition technology.

  • 20 reported owning such systems or using systems owned by others
  • 6 reported using the technology to help identify people suspected of violating the law during the civil unrest, riots, or protests following the death of George Floyd in May 2020
  • 3 acknowledged using it on images of the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6
  • 15 reported using non-federal systems

GAO surveyed 42 federal agencies that employ law enforcement officers about their use of facial recognition technology. Twenty reported owning systems with facial recognition technology or using systems owned by other entities, such as other federal, state, local, and non-government entities. We recommended that 13 agencies track employee use of non-federal systems and assess the risks these systems can pose regarding privacy, accuracy, and more…”


Despot wannabe … ‘Communists Did The Right Thing': Berkshire Hathaway Chief Charlie Munger Praises CCP's Authoritarianism, Oppression..



YouTube – The KDE Community – By Björn Balazs – “Data collaboratives, trusts, cooperatives and many more have for long been discussed as a cure for the current problems with personal data. None of them so far succeeded in practice. I think, we can change this. In my talk, I will provide a vision for a system, that is trustworthy, democratic, transparent and that guarantees digital privacy for each and everyone, while providing fair access to personal data for those interested. I will show that a ‘global digital personal data cooperative’ can be realized and what we in KDE can do for it right now. Compared to a traditional cooperative, this is facing some special challenges


The hard truth about ransomware: we aren’t prepared, it’s a battle with new rules, and it hasn’t near reached peak impact. Double Pulsar. Kaseya


Kaseya Case Update Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (dk). dk: “The SaaS and ‘cloud’ industries are unprepared to take necessary steps in face of clear evidence of hazard. One has to be able to shut down for some limited period (a 2-7 days usually enough for in-house to secure and clean up, if caught before total compromise). But when further enterprises across the economy rely on these services/providers, the impacts will cascade. The psychology of computer use must change for the sake of safety and overall consistency/reliability. The awareness of the responsibility seems to be too much to grasp for self-centered business operators.”


Another Day, Another Hack Via a Private Equity Owned Software Firm Matt Stoller, BIG



The Senator Who Decided to Tell the Truth


Donald Barthelme, Maybe The Least Likely New Yorker Writer Ever

“By most standards, many of his stories aren’t stories at all. They don’t have plots, or even realistic, believable characters. … In the manner of visual artists like Duchamp and Rauschenberg, they incorporated all sorts of found materials: snippets from ad copy, old travel guides, textbooks, and instruction manuals, even other writers.” – Literary Hub