Browsed by
Category: Privacy

Data Collection 2.0 aka Defcon 3

Data Collection 2.0 aka Defcon 3

Comments 0 Comment

 Said the Wall Street Journal, “More companies and government agencies out in the wild want to read our body parts. The Transportation Security Administration, for example, started scanning passengers’ faces instead of checking IDs. These groups say the biometric processes are meant to eliminate friction, save time and reduce lines.”

Why is that always the party line? To make our lives easier? To save us time? Does it? Ask anyone who has been a victim of identity theft, and remember “the huge Facebook data breach, in which upwards of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had personal data leaked online, including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, birthdates — you name it,” The Verge reported. Not that Facebook even bothered to tell users.

Yes, your phone has your fingerprint or faceprint. Fine, that’s native to your phone – or so they say. What about once the info is sent to the cloud? Cybersecurity is not top of mind for many tech companies, as we well know by the number of hacks reported and that continue to be reported and FYI, Ransomware Attacks Reach Record Highs: Demands and Payments Continue to Soar – and are we even informed about what data of ours might have been compromised? Read More...

Apple’s New AI: Is Tim Cooked?

Apple’s New AI: Is Tim Cooked?

Comments 1 comment
Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

So, Apple has at long last stepped into the AI game, and appropriately named at least part of their offering Apple Intelligence, a designation that, in our mind, harkens to ‘Army Intelligence,’ ‘Military Intelligence,’ and in Apple’s case, rightly so.

Apple’s AI solution is a partnership with OpenAI, who last week announced the addition of Paul M. Nakasone, a retired US Army general and former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), to its board of directors. FYI, as the National Pulse reported, “Prior to his departure from the NSA, Nakasone authored an op-ed advocating for the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FISA legislation reauthorized a controversial provision that allows the government to spy on Americans without a warrant as long as they’re communicating with noncitizens in a foreign country.

“Not everyone is thrilled about Nakasone’s new role at the AI firm, which will also see the former general seated at OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee,” Futurism reported. “The NSA has long been associated with surveillance of US citizens, and AI-embedded technologies are already renewing and escalating existing surveillance concerns. With that in mind, it might be unsurprising that former NSA employee and famed whistleblower Edward Snowden is among the OpenAI appointment’s outspoken detractors. Read More...

Is Software Trying to Take Too Big a Bite Out of the World?

Is Software Trying to Take Too Big a Bite Out of the World?

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Valentine’s Day just passed, and as we know, at least some humans always seem to go looking for love in all the wrong places. Thank heavens for AI hitting the love space, where people finally can meet someone literally tailor-made for them, but you know love: is anything really as it appears?

This just in:  Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show “The privacy mess is troubling because the chatbots actively encourage you to share details that are far more personal than the typical app, Gizmodo reported. “According to a new study from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project, AI girlfriends and boyfriends harvest shockingly personal information, and almost all of them sell or share the data they collect.

“To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends,” said Misha Rykov, a Mozilla Researcher. “Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.” Read More...

Time to Stop and Smell the Absurdities

Time to Stop and Smell the Absurdities

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

It was something of a travel week for us, and a good time to at long last look at articles in the ‘save for later’ pile, which we did: stopped to smell the absurdities.

Incandescent lightbulbs were outlawed recently in favor of the longer lasting and supposedly more climate friendly LED bulbs, but according to greenmatters, LED Bulbs May Not Be as Great as We Thought — Studies Show Health and Environmental Risks, reporting that “Per a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from the University of Exeter have noted various health and environmental risks that come with LED lights. According to The Guardian, LED bulbs are becoming increasingly more common, and even though they are more energy efficient, they emit more blue light radiation”…which is harmful to human health and the environment.

What to speak of the fact that they arguably create more of an environmental hazard when it comes to their disposal. Read More...

The Long Tale of the Shortcut

The Long Tale of the Shortcut

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Roland Schwerdhöfer from Pixabay

Bill Gates was a college dropout. Steve Jobs quit after one semester. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t finish, either.  So it was no wonder that, when the tech sector rose to prominence, kids believed that dropping out of college and starting a company was de rigueur for success in life. And to be wealthy and lionized.

The Age of Social loved tech ‘luminaries’ such as Zuck and Jack Dorsey and how convenient that their genius could be amplified on the very platforms they created. Tech founders were the rockstars of the computer age.

We know things move faster in the online world, but how did these guys get so rich and powerful in so short an amount of time? Read More...

Health Tech and Big Tech: An Unhealthy Alliance

Health Tech and Big Tech: An Unhealthy Alliance

Comments 0 Comment
Image by ElasticComputeFarm from Pixabay

HealthIT funding is up right now,  despite the downturn in global digital health investment, with data collection being such a big part of the reason why investors are all in on the HealthIT sector.  Do note that Big Tech et al is paying close attention to the space and making acquisitions.

Dr. Amazon Will See You Now, said the Wall Street Journal, noting that “Amazon and other companies are trying to disrupt the giant, inefficient U.S. healthcare sector. They’ve made little headway but a crop of upstarts is offering industry giants a chance to buy their way in.

“Amazon.com’s repeated failure to disrupt the industry underscores just how hard it is to make meaningful change.. As hard as healthcare has proven to crack, it is also too big of an opportunity to ignore. That explains why Amazon is trying again: It agreed in July to pay $3.9 billion for One Medical, a concierge-type primary-care service with nearly 200 medical offices in 25 markets… and will give Amazon the foothold in healthcare it struggled to build organically. In a not-too-distant future, your Prime membership may include a free annual checkup.” Read More...

The New Era of Tracking: Too Much to Swallow?

The New Era of Tracking: Too Much to Swallow?

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

 We have entered a new era of tech. Web 3.0, including blockchain/the distributed web, cryptocurrency, the metaverse, 5G and before too long, quantum computing (The Need, Promise, and Reality of Quantum Computing), which will certainly be a huge game-changer.

After all the loss of privacy we’d experienced during Web 2.0h???, as we now like to call it, as capturing all our personal data was supposedly all in the name of selling us yet another pair of, say, sneakers. Oh, and connecting the world through social, too, as it was the social web after all, no matter how anti-social it became over time. But considering how much more the next era in tech is promising – and let’s not forget robotics, connected glasses, eg the upcoming Apple Glasses, the Internet of Things, AI, Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture, et al are also in the mix – what a wonderful era of promise awaits us! We’re finally going to get it all right and in fact, to help you prepare, head’s up: “To succeed in the future, you MUST learn web3, @Mishadavinci tweeted.  These 7 world-changing concepts get you up to speed.”

  Read More...

What Hath Tech Wrought…This Time

What Hath Tech Wrought…This Time

Comments 0 Comment
Photo by TheDigitalArtist @Pixabay

The world was up in arms when Russia says it’s blocking Facebook in alarming new censorship push. Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg then tweeted in response to the move, saying “Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information…and silenced from speaking out,” The Verge reported. Yet, how long has the tech cabal been censoring people and posts that are not in lockstep with what they deem appropriate, or do not conform to their agendas?

 

Meanwhile, we’re witnessing The creeping authoritarianism of facial recognition that’s being adopted more and more. “The same technology that Russia uses to keep its people in line has come to America,” Spectator World reported. Of course, it’s all in the name of  lowering crime rates, but note to self, More States Than Ever Passing Laws For No Cash Bail and Pretrial Detention, including New York, where the NYPD provide(d) hard proof that no-bail law is causing a crime spike. Said the New York Post, “Since Jan. 1, 482 suspects busted for serious felonies were released without bail only to commit another 846 new crimes. Over a third were arrested for one of the seven most serious crimes: murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto.” Read More...

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay

The line is a reference to a comedic variety show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, which was basically an homage to the absurd.

Enter Meta, the Company Formerly Known as Facebook, which some wags have referred to as Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to escape his many problems in the physical world.  Not the least of which is his loss of a younger audience, and every advertiser knows that it’s best to get them when they’re young.  Even Instagram can’t seem to hold on to those younger eyeballs. In Meta, kids can strap on their headsets (and CFKAF is betting that they will) and enter their own virtual worlds – with friends too, if they choose. Although it won’t be the Oculus headset, since FB is killing off the brand, which means, btw, as Techcrunch pointed out, that  it took Zuck roughly 15 seconds to tell his first lie: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either.”

“Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors (or neural implants?) later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods, collect virtual art, hang out with each other’s virtual avatars and attend virtual work meetings,” wrote The New York Times. Read More...

Wee the People

Wee the People

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

We were half joking last week when we suggested that, in many cases in tech, so-called terms of service be renamed ‘terms of servitude.’ Given the amount of data scraping and surveillance we’ve seen because of the lockdowns (think the enormous spike in Amazon and Walmart online orders, while mom and pops were forced to close). It’ll be interesting to see what fresh hell comes next. The New Normal? Might want to think New Police State.

Or something like that.

  Read More...