Digit_al Society

"A pilot project to test facial recognition technology at boarding points in airports is underway at six airports in the country, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh informed Lok Sabha. His statement came in the response of a question about use of new hi-tech improvement in India's civil aviation sector. Ministry of Civil Aviation had introduced the Digi Yatra policy in August 2018 "to provide a contactless, seamless and paperless handling of passengers at airports from the entry gate of the terminal to the boarding point," Singh said. "

"The biometric identification system will be used not only to identify criminals, DCRC said, but also to identify fingerprints of contested documents from various agencies such as courts, the National Land Commission and Anti-Corruption Commission."

"The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) unveiled a 30-point draft proposal for "algorithm recommendation management regulations" that would directly affect companies including ByteDance, Tencent Holdings and Kuaishou Technology. The rules would forbid practices that "encourage addiction or high consumption", as well as any activities that endanger national security or disrupt social and economic order."

"The hacker who is taking responsibility for breaking into T-Mobile US Inc.'s systems said the wireless company's lax security eased his path into a cache of records with personal details on more than 50 million people and counting."

"KanKan's capabilities include gathering data on in-store traffic, such as how long a customer lingers at a specific shelf, monitors stock levels and staff activity, and even takes note of the emotions of shoppers as they walk around a store."

"The Bank of Thailand has allowed six commercial banks to offer facial recognition for electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) technology to verify the identity of new customers under the regulatory sandbox when opening online deposit accounts."

"RIGHTS DEFENDERS raised concerns yesterday over the move to force all |cellphone users in the restive South to submit their pictures for facial-recognition identification."

"But the oddest thing happened when you searched the word "trespassing" on Etsy, which feels like the natural place to look for that sort of thing. Lots of the signs high up in the search rankings were strange, word salad, anti-vax signs. They were impossible to ignore or miss. They were everywhere."

"The long-running issues of traceability, transparency and enforcement were colourfully illustrated in September 2017 when a group of investigators from the Basel Action Network (BAN) - a non-for-profit group that monitors compliance with the 1989 United Nations Basel Convention on the trade of hazardous wastes - attempted to learn where exactly Australia's e-waste was going. The group fitted 35 old CRT televisions, LED monitors and printers with GPS devices of a special make. Out of this sample the team quickly focused on the fate of three LCD screens dropped at Officeworks storefronts around the Brisbane metro area. Hayley Palmer, BAN's chief operating officer, was on the team that followed where they went afterwards. As the signals left the country, Palmer, her nine-month-old and a colleague tracked the monitors to a warehouse in Hong Kong and then on to an illegal dump-yard in a rural part of Thailand where they talked their way inside."

"We've forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts. We're forever "interrupting ourselves", as Lembke puts it, for a quick digital hit, meaning we rarely concentrate on taxing tasks for long or get into a creative flow. For many, the pandemic has exacerbated dependence on social media and other digital vices"

"Elon Musk wants Tesla to be seen as "much more than an electric car company." On Thursday's Tesla AI Day, the CEO described Tesla as a company with "deep AI activity in hardware on the inference level and on the training level" that can be used down the line for applications beyond self-driving cars, including a humanoid robot that Tesla is apparently building."

"China's biggest tech stocks dropped sharply after the country approved a strict data privacy law, prompting renewed concerns among investors over the intensity of Beijing's regulatory crackdown."

"Some have argued for much greater policing of content online, and companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have talked about hiring thousands to staff up their moderation teams.8 8. April Glaser, Want a Terrible Job? Facebook and Google May Be Hiring,Slate (Jan. 18, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/facebook-and-google-are-building-an-army-of-content-moderators-for-2018.html (explaining that major platforms have hired or have announced plans to hire thousands, in some cases more than ten thousand, new content moderators).On the other side of the coin, companies are increasingly investing in more and more sophisticated technology help, such as artificial intelligence, to try to spot contentious content earlier in the process.9 9. Tom Simonite, AI Has Started Cleaning Up Facebook, But Can It Finish?,Wired (Dec. 18, 2018), https://www.wired.com/story/ai-has-started-cleaning-facebook-can-it-finish/.Others have argued that we should change Section 230 of the CDA, which gives platforms a free hand in determining how they moderate (or how they don't moderate).10 10. Gohmert Press Release, supra note 7 ("Social media companies enjoy special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, protections not shared by other media. Instead of acting like the neutral platforms they claim to be in order obtain their immunity, these companies have turned Section 230 into a license to potentially defraud and defame with impunity… Since there still appears to be no sincere effort to stop this disconcerting behavior, it is time for social media companies to be liable for any biased and unethical impropriety of their employees as any other media company. If these companies want to continue to act like a biased medium and publish their own agendas to the detriment of others, they need to be held accountable."); Eric Johnson, Silicon Valley's Self-Regulating Days "Probably Should Be" Over, Nancy Pelosi Says, Vox (Apr. 11, 2019), https:/

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically-now it seems that almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of trolling, bigotry, and hatred.1 1. Zachary Laub, Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons, Council on Foreign Rel. (Jun. 7, 2019), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons.Meanwhile, others feel that these platforms have become too aggressive in policing language and are systematically silencing or censoring certain viewpoints.2 2. Tony Romm, Republicans Accused Facebook, Google and Twitter of Bias. Democrats Called the Hearing 'Dumb.', Wash. Post (Jul. 17, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/17/republicans-accused-facebook-google-twitter-bias-democrats-called-hearing-dumb/?utm_term=.895b34499816.And that's not even touching on the question of privacy and what these platforms are doing (or not doing) with all of the data they collect."

"The Purdue researchers have created Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) which uses low-frequency, carrier-less broadband transmission, and so keeps the signal almost entirely within the human body. That means data from pacemakers and other implantable medical devices would only be readable a handful of centimetres outside the wearer."

"Increasing numbers of implantable medical devices are now gaining internet connectivity, giving doctors the ability to monitor patients health remotely, and even update the devices to tweak a treatment plan. Unfortunately, that flexibility offers a way for hackers to hijack that hardware, and even potentially make changes to the way the devices work. While so far no attacks have been successful, proof-of-concept attacks have been available for years"

"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.""

""We may not take action on and cannot respond to each report in the experiment, but your input will help us identify trends so that we can improve the speed and scale of our broader misinformation work." "

"Apple's Not Digging Itself Out of This One: "Online researchers say they have found flaws in Apple's new child abuse detection tool that could allow bad actors to target iOS users.""