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dr tech

Still flattening the curve?: Increased risk of digital authoritarianism after... - 0 views

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    "The main rationale for increasing state surveillance was to tackle the pandemic effectively to save people's lives. Yet, states are not enthusiastic about abandoning these digital tools, even though the pandemic is winding down. Instead, they are determined to preserve their surveillance capacities under the pretext of national security or preparation for future pandemics. In the face of increasing state surveillance, however, we should thoroughly discuss the risk of digital authoritarianism and the possible use of surveillance technologies to violate privacy, silence political opposition, and oppress minorities. For example, South Korea's sophisticated contact tracing technology that involves surveillance camera footage, cell-phone location data, and credit card purchases has disclosed patients' personal information, such as nationality. It raised privacy concerns, particularly for ethnic minorities, and underlined the risk of technology-enabled ethnic mapping and discrimination."
aren01

Social Networks Are Becoming a Security Risk [SURVEY] - 0 views

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    "According to a report by Sophos, malware and spam are on the rise on social networks such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. In the last year, 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites, an increase of 70.6% compared to last year. Furthermore, 36% of users claim they've been sent malware via social networking sites, which is a rise of 69.8% from last year. On the other hand, CEOs of companies are concerned that their employees' usage of social networks is posing a security risk for their company. Sophos has surveyed more than 500 organizations, discovering that 72% of them think social networks are a danger for their companys, with 60% of them tagging Facebook as the biggest security risk, followed by MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, says that Facebook is the biggest threat because it's the biggest social network out there, but he also places some of the blame on Facebook's own privacy rules. "When Facebook rolled-out its new recommended privacy settings late last year, it was a backwards step, encouraging many users to share their information with everybody on the internet," he says. Interestingly enough (and contrasted to some of the reports we've seen lately), Cluley thinks that simply barring access to Facebook is not the solution. "Social networks can be an essential part of the business mix today," he says, "and the answer is not to bar staff from participating in them but to apply some 'social security' instead.""
anonymous

BBC News - NatWest online services hit by cyber attack - 0 views

  • ails safe On Friday, a number of customers reported problems getting on to the bank's website, from which they normally access their accounts online. The RBS Group - which includes RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank - said that NatWest was worst affected by the "deliberate" disruption. "Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today," a spokeswoman for RBS said. "This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected websites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused." She stressed that the latest incident was not connected to Monday's IT failure and no customer information was compromised at any time. The incident on Monday also affected cash machines and card payments and prompted an apology from the boss of the RBS group, Ross McEwan. More on This Story Big Banking Latest news EU fines banks over rate-rigging We've kept businesses alive - RBS Cable hands RBS file to watchdog Parties row over Co-op 'smears' JP Morgan in record $13bn settlement Police search home of Paul Flowers Barclays plans to cut 1,700 jobs $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-1"); Basics Funding for Lending: How does it work? Q&A: Standard Chartered allegations HSBC report: Key findings Q&A: Basel rules on bank capital $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-2"); Guides and analysis Shock: A banker can live on £1m salary RBS's new boss, Ross McEwan, will not receive any bonus for his first 15 months in the job, and won't pocket any bonus payments till at least 2017. When will banking ever change? Q&A: Banker bonus cap plan What has changed since the crisis? Explaining the Libor scandal Timeline: Libor-fixing scandal $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-6");
  • Details safe On Friday, a number of customers reported problems getting on to the bank's website, from which they normally access their accounts online. The RBS Group - which includes RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank - said that NatWest was worst affected by the "deliberate" disruption. "Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today," a spokeswoman for RBS said. "This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected websites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused." She stressed that the latest incident was not connected to Monday's IT failure and no customer information was compromised at any time. The incident on Monday also affected cash machines and card payments and prompted an apology from the boss of the RBS group, Ross McEwan. More on This Story Big Banking Latest news EU fines banks over rate-rigging We've kept businesses alive - RBS Cable hands RBS file to watchdog Parties row over Co-op 'smears' JP Morgan in record $13bn settlement Police search home of Paul Flowers Barclays plans to cut 1,700 jobs $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-1"); Basics Funding for Lending: How does it work? Q&A: Standard Chartered allegations HSBC report: Key findings Q&A: Basel rules on bank capital $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-2"); Guides and analysis Shock: A banker can live on £1m salary RBS's new boss, Ross McEwan, will not receive any bonus for his first 15 months in the job, and won't pocket any bonus payments till at least 2017. When will banking ever change? Q&A: Banker bonus cap plan What has changed since the crisis? Explaining the Libor scandal Timeline: Libor-fixing scandal $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-6"); hyper-depth-st
  • 's website, from which they normally access their accounts online. The RBS Group - which includes RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank - said that NatWest was worst affected by the "deliberate" disruption. "Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today," a spokeswoman for RBS said. "This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected websites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused." She stressed that the latest incident was not connected to Monday's IT failure and no customer information was compromised at any time. The incident on Monday also affected cash machines and card payments and prompted an apology from the boss of the RBS group, Ross McEwan. More on This Story Big Banking Latest news EU fines banks over rate-rigging We've kept businesses alive - RBS Cable hands RBS file to watchdog Parties row over Co-op 'smears' JP Morgan in record $13bn settlement Police search home of Paul Flowers Barclays plans to cut 1,700 jobs $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-1"); Basics Funding for Lending: How does it work? Q&A: Standard Chartered allegations HSBC report: Key findings Q&A: Basel rules on bank capital $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-2"); Guides and analysis Shock: A banker can live on £1m salary RBS's new boss, Ross McEwan, will not receive any bonus for his first 15 months in the job, and won't pocket any bonus payments till at least 2017. When will banking ever change? Q&A: Banker bonus cap plan What has changed since the crisis? Explaining the Libor scandal Timeline: Libor-fixing scandal $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-6"); Your Savings
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  • and cash machines. Details safe On Friday, a number of customers reported problems getting on to the bank's website, from which they normally access their accounts online. The RBS Group - which includes RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank - said that NatWest was worst affected by the "deliberate" disruption. "Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today," a spokeswoman for RBS said. "This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected websites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused." She stressed that the latest incident was not connected to Monday's IT failure and no customer information was compromised at any time. The incident on Monday also affected cash machines and card payments and prompted an apology from the boss of the RBS group, Ross McEwan. More on This Story Big Banking Latest news EU fines banks over rate-rigging We've kept businesses alive - RBS Cable hands RBS file to watchdog Parties row over Co-op 'smears' JP Morgan in record $13bn settlement Police search home of Paul Flowers Barclays plans to cut 1,700 jobs $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-1"); Basics Funding for Lending: How does it work? Q&amp;A: Standard Chartered allegations HSBC report: Key findings Q&amp;A: Basel rules on bank capital $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-2"); Guides and analysis Shock: A banker can live on £1m salary RBS's new boss, Ross McEwan, will not receive any bonus for his first 15 months in the job, and won't pocket any bonus payments till at least 2017. When will banking ever change? Q&amp;A: Banker bonus cap plan What has changed since the crisis? Explaining the Libor scandal Timeline: Libor-fixing scandal $render("hyper-related-assets","group-title-6"); <h4 cla
  • It came less than a week after a major computer failure left some customers unable to use cards and cash machines.
  • On Friday, a number of customers reported problems getting on to the bank's website
  • Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today,
dr tech

Teens' night-time use of social media 'risks harming mental health' | Society | The Gua... - 0 views

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    "Teenagers who engage with social media during the night could be damaging their sleep and increasing their risk of depression and anxiety, research shows."
Max van Mesdag

German government warns against using MS Explorer - 0 views

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    People in Germany are being warned about the risks of security when using Internet Explorer. Apparently anyone using versions six through eight are at risk, and are being advised to use another browser.
dr tech

8 Skilled Jobs That May Soon Be Replaced by Robots - 0 views

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    "Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time - but, increasingly, they're not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in artificial intelligence. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well. Here are eight jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades. Call Center Employees call-center Telemarketing used to happen in a crowded call center, with a group of representatives cold-calling hundreds of prospects every day. Of those, maybe a few dozen could be persuaded to buy the product in question. Today, the idea is largely the same, but the methods are far more efficient. Many of today's telemarketers are not human. In some cases, as you've probably experienced, there's nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to "press '1' for more information," but nothing you say has any impact on the call - and, usually, that's clear to you. But in other cases, you may get a sales call and have no idea that you're actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response - the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they're just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch. It's a more practical version of those funny soundboards that used to be all the rage for prank calls. Using soundboard-assisted calling - regardless of what it says about the state of human interaction - has the potential to make individual call center employees far more productive: in some cases, a single worker will run two or even three calls at the same time. In the not too distant future, computers will be able to man the phones by themselves. At the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced
dr tech

Big Data Ethics: racially biased training data versus machine learning / Boing Boing - 0 views

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    "O'Neill recounts an exercise to improve service to homeless families in New York City, in which data-analysis was used to identify risk-factors for long-term homelessness. The problem, O'Neill describes, was that many of the factors in the existing data on homelessness were entangled with things like race (and its proxies, like ZIP codes, which map extensively to race in heavily segregated cities like New York). Using data that reflects racism in the system to train a machine-learning algorithm whose conclusions can't be readily understood runs the risk of embedding that racism in a new set of policies, these ones scrubbed clean of the appearance of bias with the application of objective-seeming mathematics. "
dr tech

'Being cash-free puts us at risk of attack': Swedes turn against cashlessness | World n... - 0 views

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    ""When you have a fully digital system you have no weapon to defend yourself if someone turns it off," he says. "If Putin invades Gotland [Sweden's largest island] it will be enough for him to turn off the payments system. No other country would even think about taking these sorts of risks, they would demand some sort of analogue system.""
dr tech

Software 'no more accurate than untrained humans' at judging reoffending risk | US news... - 0 views

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    "The algorithm, called Compas (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), is used throughout the US to weigh up whether defendants awaiting trial or sentencing are at too much risk of reoffending to be released on bail. Since being developed in 1998, the tool is reported to have been used to assess more than one million defendants. But a new paper has cast doubt on whether the software's predictions are sufficiently accurate to justify its use in potentially life-changing decisions."
dr tech

Facebook doesn't seem to mind that facial recognition glasses would endanger women | Ar... - 0 views

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    ""Face recognition … might be the thorniest issue, where the benefits are so clear, and the risks are so clear, and we don't know where to balance those things." Excuse me? What kind of benefits could possibly balance the risk of making life extremely easy for stalkers and creeps? Well, Bosworth later said on Twitter, it could help people with prosopagnosia, a neurological condition where you can't recognize people's faces. More generally, Bosworth said, it would be super handy when you run into someone at a party and can't remember their name. Ah yes, I can totally see how avoiding a little social awkwardness balances out the whole stalker thing!"
dr tech

FCC aims to investigate the risk of AI-enhanced robocalls | TechCrunch - 0 views

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    "As if robocalling wasn't already enough of a problem, the advent of easily accessible, realistic AI-powered writing and synthetic voice could supercharge the practice. The FCC aims to preempt this by looking into how generated robocalls might fit under existing consumer protections. A Notice of Inquiry has been proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to be voted on at the agency's next meeting. If the vote succeeds (as it is almost certain to), the FCC would formally look into how the Telephone Consumer Protection Act empowers them to act against scammers and spammers using AI technology. But Rosenworcel was also careful to acknowledge that AI represents a potentially powerful tool for accessibility and responsiveness in phone-based interactions. "While we are aware of the challenges AI can present, there is also significant potential to use this technology to benefit communications networks and their customers-including in the fight against junk robocalls and robotexts. We need to address these opportunities and risks thoughtfully, and the effort we are launching today will help us gain more insight on both fronts," she said in a statement."
dr tech

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter - Future of Life Institute - 0 views

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    "Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system's potential effects. OpenAI's recent statement regarding artificial general intelligence, states that "At some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new models." We agree. That point is now."
dr tech

Critics fear catastrophic energy crisis as AI is outsourced to Latin America - 0 views

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    "Data centers are mushrooming worldwide to meet AI demand, but particularly in Latin America, seen as strategically located by Big Tech. One of the largest data center hubs is in Querétaro, a Mexican state with high risk of intensifying climate change-induced drought. Farmers are already protesting their risk of losing water access."
dr tech

UK public must wake up to risks of CCTV, says surveillance commissioner | UK news | The... - 0 views

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    "In his full first interview as surveillance commissioner, Tony Porter - a former senior counter-terrorism officer - said the public was complacent about encroaching surveillance and urged public bodies, including the police, to be more transparent about how they are increasingly using smart cameras to monitor people."
dr tech

Your Car Is Spying on You. A CBP Contract Shows the Risks. - 0 views

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    "U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION purchased technology that vacuums up reams of personal information stored inside cars, according to a federal contract reviewed by The Intercept, illustrating the serious risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone."
dr tech

'We risk another crisis': TikTok in danger of being major vector of election misinforma... - 0 views

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    "In the final sprint to the US midterm elections the social media giant TikTok risks being a major vector for election misinformation, experts warn, with the platform's huge user base and its design making it particularly susceptible to such threats."
dr tech

OpenAI CEO calls for laws to mitigate 'risks of increasingly powerful' AI | ChatGPT | T... - 0 views

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    "The CEO of OpenAI, the company responsible for creating artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E 2, said "regulation of AI is essential" as he testified in his first appearance in front of the US Congress. The apocalypse isn't coming. We must resist cynicism and fear about AI Stephen Marche Stephen Marche Read more Speaking to the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, Sam Altman said he supported regulatory guardrails for the technology that would enable the benefits of artificial intelligence while minimizing the harms. "We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models," Altman said in his prepared remarks."
dr tech

Amazon backs down over Cornish-language children's book | Books | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

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    " With more than 40% of the world's estimated 7,000 languages "endangered and at risk of extinction", an army of tiny publishers is fighting an unsung battle to save them. UK press Diglot Books is one of them, and this week took on the might of Amazon to get its Cornish children's story out to readers. Told by the internet giant that Matthew and the Wellington Boots (Matthew ha'n Eskisyow Glaw in Cornish, or Kernewek) would not be made available through Kindle Direct Publishing because it was in a language that is "not currently supported" by the platform, Diglot petitioned the retailer."
dr tech

Ransomware creeps steal the entire St Louis library system / Boing Boing - 0 views

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    "The criminals who took over the library system want $35,000 in Bitcoin to give it back.The criminals who took over the library system want $35,000 in Bitcoin to give it back. The FBI is investigating. The library does not store sensitive patron data, so the hack does not expose patrons to data-breach risks."
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