Category: Uncategorized

The Department of Justice unsealed indictments against four officers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), charging them with carrying out the 2017 hack against consumer credit bureau Equifax. The indictments allege that the officers, who were members of the PLA’s 54th Research Institute, “conspired with each other to hack into Equifax’s computer networks, maintain unauthorized access to those computers, and steal sensitive, personally identifiable information of approximately 145 million American victims.”

Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter for the New York Times, conducted an interview with Hoan Ton-That, the founder of Clearview AI, a technology company providing law enforcement agencies with facial recognition software. Ton-That discussed the company’s policy regarding selling the software, claiming that “[Clearview AI’s] philosophy is basically, if it’s a U.S. based — or like a democracy or an ally of the U.S. — we will consider it. But like, no China, no Russia or anything that wouldn’t be good. So if it’s a country where it’s just governed terribly or whatever, I don’t know if we’d feel comfortable selling to certain countries.” Additionally, he claimed that at this stage Clearview AI is not looking to offer the software on the consumer market.Relatedly, CNN tested Clearview AI software in a piece featuring PRG member Jake Goldenfein.

Researchers affiliated with Roboflow discovered widespread problems with the labeling (and mislabeling) of cars, pedestrians and cyclists in a popular dataset used to build autonomous cars.

The Washington Post reported that Crypto AG, an encryption company based in Switzerland, has been owned and controlled for decades by the CIA and German intelligence.

US government officials have reportedly told the Wall Street Journal that Huawei built backdoors into mobile phone networks it maintains and sells. These new disclosures come after Britain approved a plan allowing Huawei to build the country’s 5G network, despite urging by the US to the contrary.
The New York Times reported on the many organizational problems which plagued the Iowa Democratic caucuses beyond the Shadow Inc. reporting app.

The Federal Trade Commission ordered five major tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft) to provide information about their acquisitions in the past 10 years which were not previously reported to antitrust agencies.

The British government introduced a plan which would give Ofcom, the country’s media regulator, new powers to regulate internet content. Although the details of the proposal have not been released, the aim appears to be to combat “harmful content such as violence, terrorism, cyber-bullying and child abuse.” (BBC/NYT)

The Scottish Parliament’s Justice Sub-Committee on Policing released a report concluding that “current live facial recognition technology is not fit for use by Police Scotland.” Among other things, the report cites biases against women and ethnic minorities as causes for concern. (BBC)

Israel’s Ministry of Justice has begun to investigate the massive leak of voters’ data via an election campaign app used by the Likud party. The data includes the names, ID numbers and addresses of all Israeli voters. (JP/Haaretz/NYT)

Compiled by Student Fellow Stav Zeitouni.

• Facebook and Twitter announced new policies for how they plan to handle deepfake videos and falsified content. 

• In an interview with CBS, the CEO of controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI, argued that his company is allowed to scrape billions of social media profiles due to First Amendment rights. The scraped data is used to help police departments around the country identify individuals.
• Senator Lindsay Graham will introduce a bill, the EARN IT Act, that purports to combat the online exploitation of children, but in reality works to end strong encryption practices. It would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and give Attorney General William Barr the authority to shape “best practices” for tech companies.
• Experian announced that 100% of the U.S. population has been assigned a Unique Patient Identifier.
• The U.S. Army is looking to develop technology that utilizes biometric data in order to give soldiers the ability to classify and identify individuals, including through walls and ceilings.
• The Iowa Caucus suffered from widespread chaos and confusion on Monday due to the Democratic Party’s introduction of a new smartphone app that malfunctioned when volunteers attempted to use it.

U.K. allows Huawei to given permission to build noncritical parts of the 5G Network, despite U.S. security concerns.

Avast, a free antivirus software company, is accused of selling users’ location and browsing data  that includes “Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.”

Facebook’s new “Off-Facebook activity” function allows users to see the data Facebook has been collecting on its users outside of its social media platform.

Amazon engineer urges the firm to shut down Amazon Ring immediately over privacy concerns.

Study shows that machine learning can recognize people by their dancing styles with “astounding accuracy.”

Twitter has sent Clearview a cease-and-desist letter requesting deletion of any collected data from its platform.

LinkedIn was given more time to file a petition for certiorari challenging the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that held HiQ Labs Inc. not liable for scraping on its website.

(compiled by student fellow Grace Huang)

The UK rolled out new child privacy standards for any app, device, or online service that processes personal data.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported about a company called Clearview AI whose powerful facial recognition app “goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.” 

Officials in Suzhou, a city in Eastern China, has begun using facial recognition to identify and publicly shame citizens who were pajamas in public. 

As Mitch McConnell prepared to draft rules of impeachment, he restricted access of the press to Senators. Justified it by saying it protects Senators’ privacy. 

Apple was not encrypting backups because of requests from the FBI asking them not to do so.

(compiled by student fellow Tom McBrien)

The NBER put out a series of reports about algorithmic studies on the share of a teachers’ value-added effect on their students’ student achievement. NBER researchers re-did the analysis of teacher effect on different outcomes such as student height growth and found equally strong correlations.

The EU initiated a new antitrust probe around Google and Facebook’s data collection.

The Senate is holding a hearing today to discuss privacy bills in Congress.

The Intercept released new reporting on Ring — the Amazon-owned video doorbell company. The journalism outlet is reporting that Ring has internal planning documents about using AI paired with its devices to create AI-enabled “neighborhood watchlists.” Ring denies all of the allegations.

The New York Times reported this week that Chinese scientists are attempting to combine DNA and facial recognition databases so that DNA samples can be used to reconstruct facial features.

The Intercept reported that the proficiency test for fingerprint scanners is an extremely low bar to pass with a high rate of false positives.

Just before Thanksgiving, Google fired four senior engineers, possibly because of their internal activism. They have filed a complaint with NLRB.

Brian Krebs showed iPhone 11 Pros have been transmitting location data even when turned off.

Facebook deleted the Facebook accounts of employees of NSO, the Israeli spyware firm hacked WhatsApp to track human rights activists, journalists, political dissidents, and others. This week, NSO filed a lawsuit against Facebook in Israel for deleting user accounts.

There was a suit filed in Israel against the Ministry of Justice’s “Cyber Department.” Normally, there’s a voluntary model in which the Department requests that Facebook/Google remove content and points out where terms of service have been violated (hate crimes, elections influencing, etc.). The new suit alleges that this procedure lacks process, violating constitutional and administrative norms.

Two days ago, a federal court said people who have been victims of a Facebook data breach are not allowed to bring a class action suit for damages against the internet company , but they may sue to force Facebook to adopt better practices.

(Compiled by student fellow Tom McBrien.)

The New York City Automated Decision Systems Task Force released their final report this week. Some members of the task force took to Twitter after its release to raise concerns about some of the viewpoints underrepresented in the report. This summer the AI Now institute published comments from many of the committee members on the report.

Senate Democratic leaders released a set of privacy principles and high-level guidelines for potential future legislation.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Oracle v. Google, the multibillion-dollar copyright case on whether the interfaces in the Java programming language are fair use.

Researchers at the Duke Kunshan University have released a dataset for use in training machine learning systems to detect violence.

(Compiled by Student Fellow David Stein.)

According to the Intercept, the NYPD maintained until very recently a fingerprint database gathered from people charged as juveniles, in violation of state law.

Microsoft has announced that it will extend California’s privacy protections under the new California Consumer Privacy Act to the rest of the United States.

Following a Wall Street Journal article which revealed “Project Nightingale”, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) announced that it has partnered with Ascension, the second largest healthcare system in the United States. This will provide the company access to the health information of millions of patients across 21 states. In response, the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services initiated an investigation to ensure that the partnership is in compliance with HIPAA. There is similarly a question as to the implications this partnership would have for Google’s plans to acquire FitBit.

A Federal District Court in Massachusetts ruled earlier this week that searches of electronic devices at the border without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment.

A recent New York Times opinion piece offered the idea of a public option in AI to facilitate competitive entrance to the market.

The New York Times reported on the Trump administration’s push for new rules that will limit the scientific research the EPA can use to determine public health regulations. In particular, the article details “a new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, [which] would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study’s conclusions.” This measure would significantly impact regulation which is based on research results gathered from, for example, health records subject to confidentiality agreements. The draft, if it is adopted, could also apply retroactively to regulation currently in place.

Manual Override, an exhibit currently showing at the Shed at Hudson Yards, showcases works by artists engaging with and critiquing emerging technology.

(Compiled by student fellow Stav Zeitouni)

Chair of the Federal Election Commission Ellen L. Weintraub published an opinion piece in Washington Post in response to twitter’s ban of political ads. Instead of a total ban, the Commissioner argues for a strategy that would focus on preventing microtargeting.

PRG member Albert Cahn published two new op-eds. In an NBC News piece, Dr. Cahn examines privacy impact of electronic monitoring — a class of body-worn devices that are increasingly used to replace prison confinement as well as accompany bail and probation releases. Dr. Cahn’s recent Daily News article discusses a recent move by NYPD to give commissioner discretion on releasing body camera footage to the public.

IBM has put out a proposal for federal regulation of Facial Recognition technology, echoing similar calls from Microsoft, Amazon, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The document introduces a differentiation between Detection, Authentication, and Matching as types of Facial Recognition tasks. The proposal advocates against blanket bans on the technology, citing possible benefits. 

Democratic Reps. Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren introduced a new Online Privacy Act that would establish an agency to enforce user privacy laws.

The New York Times addresses legal implication ensuing from a sweeping warrant granted to a police officer for searching the full GEDmatch database with over a million users. 

An agency hired by Google reportedly sent its contractors to target the homeless people in Atlanta as part of an effort to collect more racially diverse facial scans.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Margarita Boyarskaya)

On Oct 24, Two U.S. senators have reintroduced legislation to stop U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s growing practice of searching or seizing travelers’ electronic devices at U.S. ports of entry, including land borders and airports. (Law360)

Germany’s government commission published a set of recommendations for how data and algorithmic development should happen in the age of artificial intelligence. (U.S. News)

After suing NSO for exploiting 1,400 WhatsApp users, Facebook deleted the accounts of NSO Group workers. (Wall Street Journal) (Arstechnica)

As a government agency seeks approval of a facial recognition system, it says one use for it could be verifying the age of people who want to view pornography online. (NY Times)

Seventy percent of campaign websites reviewed in an audit failed to meet security and privacy best practices, according to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaign Audit by the Online Trust Alliance (OTA). (Security Magazine)

(Compiled by Student Fellow Grace Huang)

Google published in Nature this morning that they demonstrated quantum supremacy. Some are hailing it as an enormous technical breakthrough.

NordVPN’s server was compromised and an encryption key was stolen. This happened March 2018 but they didn’t disclose anything to customers until the news started leaking.

A bipartisan group of Senators introduced the bill ACCESS for promoting competition in social media firms by forcing data portability. Seems pretty weak, but at least it’s something.

The FTC banned a Florida company from promoting and distributing its children- and employee-monitoring apps, which the FTC referred to as “stalking” apps.

Georgia Supreme Court: Police can’t download data from a car’s black box without a warrant.

(compiled by Tom McBrien)