Saturday, March 31, 2018

Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?; The New York Times, March 31, 2018

Sapna Maheshwari, The New York Times; Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

"The Electronic Privacy Information Center has recommended more robust disclosure rules for internet-connected devices, including an “algorithmic transparency requirement” that would help people understand how their data was being used and what automated decisions were then being made about them.\

Sam Lester, the center’s consumer privacy fellow, said he believed that the abilities of new smart home devices highlighted the need for United States regulators to get more involved with how consumer data was collected and used.

“A lot of these technological innovations can be very good for consumers,” he said. “But it’s not the responsibility of consumers to protect themselves from these products any more than it’s their responsibility to protect themselves from the safety risks in food and drugs. It’s why we established a Food and Drug Administration years ago.”"

Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook business chief leans out of spotlight in scandal; Guardian, March 29, 2018

Sheryl Sandberg, Guardian; Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook business chief leans out of spotlight in scandal

"As the public bayed “Where’s Mark?”, his right-hand woman, Sheryl Sandberg, has avoided much of the scrutiny, despite the fact that she is the architect of Facebook’s data-centric advertising business and a highly skilled communicator.

As the social network faces its biggest reputation crisis yet, critics are asking if the author of Lean In, a book about leadership in business, is choosing to lean out of the limelight.

“It’s truly remarkable that Sandberg hasn’t come under greater public scrutiny for this crisis, since she is widely perceived to be the ‘adult’ who was hired to manage these kinds of political situations in a savvy way for the company,” said Kara Alaimo, assistant professor of public relations at Hofstra University.
Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist who said he encouraged Mark Zuckerberg to hire Sandberg, and who helped poach her from Google about a decade ago, pointed out the executive had long been “applauded for Facebook’s extraordinary growth and profitability”. “Now that the dark side of that success has been exposed, she needs to do a better job of accepting responsibility for the consequences of the choices she makes,” he said."

RIP John Sulston, open science hero and father of the Human Genome Project; BoingBoing, March 9, 2018

Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing; RIP John Sulston, open science hero and father of the Human Genome Project

"Sulston won the Nobel in 2002 and was a force for open science and access to knowledge. His two claims to greatness were his contributions to genomics and his moral leadership. He will be missed."

How to download a copy of everything Google knows about you; CNBC, March 30, 2018

Todd Haselton, CNBC; How to download a copy of everything Google knows about you

"If you use Google services, there's a really easy way to download everything you have stored on the company's servers.

This is particularly important if you ever decide to quit Google and delete your account entirely, but still want a record of your Google Calendar, an archive of the pictures in Google Photos or a copy of everything in Gmail. It's also useful if you want a reminder of everything Google knows about you.

We already showed you how to download a copy of everything Facebook knows about you. Now here's how to download an archive of your footprint on Google.

A reminder: downloading your data doesn't delete it. Think of it as a backup."

Everything you need to know about a new EU data law that could shake up big US tech; CNBC, March 30, 2018

Arjun Kharpal, CNBC; Everything you need to know about a new EU data law that could shake up big US tech

"You may have heard of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But most likely you haven't because it sounds boring, but it's really important and CNBC has a guide to help you understand it.

It's a piece of European Union (EU) legislation that could have a far-reaching impact on some of the biggest technology firms in the world including Facebook and Google.

So here's your guide to the GDPR."

Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs; Gizmodo, March 31, 2018

Tom McKay, Gizmodo; Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs

"The ridiculous mess over at Facebook has continued to get worse, with staff allegedly in a full-on “uproar” over the fallout of the leak of consumer hardware VP Andrew Bosworth’s 2016 memo claiming things like terrorism and cyberbullying suicides were justifiable side effects of the site’s continued growth.

Per the New York Times, what began as widespread concern over the company’s Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal has now apparently transformed into a sort of panic over possible further leaks of potentially damaging internal information like Bosworth’s memo. While some staff are urging greater transparency, others have turned to shredding emails and demanding leakers be found and dealt with..."

Promises, promises: Facebook’s history with privacy; Washington Post, March 30, 2018

Ryan Nakashima, Washington Post; Promises, promises: Facebook’s history with privacy

"“We’ve made a bunch of mistakes.” ‘’Everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times.” ‘’Not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.”

Sound familiar? It’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a major privacy breach — seven years ago .

Lawmakers in many countries may be focused on Cambridge Analytica’s alleged improper use of Facebook data, but the social network’s privacy problems go back more than a decade. Here are some of the company’s most notable missteps and promises around privacy."

Here are the internal Facebook posts of employees discussing today’s leaked memo; The Verge, March 30, 2018

Casey Newton, The Verge; Here are the internal Facebook posts of employees discussing today’s leaked memo

"The publication of a June 2016 memo describing the consequences of Facebook’s growth-at-all-costs triggered an emotional conversation at the company today. An internal post reacting to the memo found employees angry and heartbroken that their teammates were sharing internal company discussions with the media. Many called on the company to step up its war on leakers and hire employees with more “integrity.”...

Nearly 3,000 employees had reacted to Bosworth’s memo when The Verge viewed it, responding with a mixture of likes, “sad,” and and “angry” reactions."

More advertisers drop Laura Ingraham's Fox News show despite apology to David Hogg; Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2018

Stephen Battaglio, Los Angeles Times; More advertisers drop Laura Ingraham's Fox News show despite apology to David Hogg

"Ingraham is often the fourth most-watched program in all of cable news with about 2.6 million viewers nightly.

Ingraham's apology came quickly, considering that Fox News commentators have typically resisted backing down when under attack for their controversial statements. But the support and sympathy for Hogg and other Parkland students has prompted advertisers to continue to bail from her program.

Hogg did not accept Ingraham's apology. He told the New York Daily News on Friday that Ingraham will have to admit she slandered his classmates in her coverage of their gun protests....

Ingraham said at the end of her Friday program that she will be on vacation with her children next week. Fill-in hosts will appear on "The Ingraham Angle" in her absence."

Quixotic Approaches To Circumventing Censorship, Using Books And Music; TechDirt, March 30, 2018

Glyn Moody, TechDirt; Quixotic Approaches To Circumventing Censorship, Using Books And Music

"The topic of censorship crops up far too much here on Techdirt. Less common are stories about how to circumvent it. The two which follow are great examples of how human ingenuity is able to find unexpected ways to tackle this problem. The first story comes from Spain, and concerns a banned book...

Update: The Finding Fariña site has now been censored. So far, there's no sign of a mirror site being set up outside Spanish jurisdiction, which would seem the obvious response."

The Outrage Over Kevin Williamson; New York Times, March 30, 2018

Bret Stephens, New York Times; The Outrage Over Kevin Williamson

"Shouldn’t great prose and independent judgment count for something? Not according to your critics. We live in the age of guilt by pull-quote, abetted by a combination of lazy journalism, gullible readership, missing context, and technologies that make our every ill-considered utterance instantly accessible and utterly indelible. I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet. When you write a whole book on the need to execute the tens of millions of American women who’ve had abortions, then I’ll worry...

The real question, then, isn’t what kinds of arguments are “acceptable.” It’s what kinds are, or ought to be, acceptable to liberals. In The Huffington Post, one writer proposes that the answer is none. This is the liberalism of the 9- year-old sticking fingers in his ears and saying: nah-nah-nah-nah-nah. Anyone still wondering how Donald Trump became president need look no further.

The wiser test of acceptability is whether an argument is thoughtful, thought-provoking and offered in good faith. That holds true even if the views aren’t politically representative. Last I checked, you and I were hired as columnists, not party ideologues or demographic segments."

Friday, March 30, 2018

iPhone update adds privacy 'transparency'; BBC News, March 29, 2018

BBC News; iPhone update adds privacy 'transparency'

"Apple has updated its iOS, MacOS and tvOS operating systems to give people more information about how their personal data is collected and used.
After updating, customers will see new information screens when they use Apple-made apps that collect personal data, such as App Store.
The change comes ahead of new EU data protection rules, which take effect on 25 May."

What Congress Should Ask Mark Zuckerberg; The Atlantic, March 28, 2018

Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic; What Congress Should Ask Mark Zuckerberg

"Mark Zuckerberg will be headed to Washington. No one knows precisely when or to whom, but he himself has said he would be “happy” to testify.

That he has never been before Congress is one of those minor miracles that only technology companies seem capable of generating through their bulky “policy” (i.e. lobbying) teams and still considerable popularity.

But times are changing and in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica affair, Facebook processes that have been known for years are coming under the most intense scrutiny they’ve ever received. Senator Ron Wyden, for example, has already submitted a formidable list of questions to Facebook.

I’m most interested in pinning down the facts around Cambridge Analytica and political advertising generally. But Facebook is multifaceted, so I reached out to a dozen close observers of the company to see what they wanted to ask Facebook’s CEO."

Thursday, March 29, 2018

The Most Important Self-Driving Car Announcement Yet; The Atlantic, March 28, 2018

Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic; The Most Important Self-Driving Car Announcement Yet

"With Waymo’s most recent announcement, now is the time to think through these larger questions. They are bigger and harder because they cannot be answered by technological proof. They involve power—Alphabet’s power, the power of labor, the power of local governments to control their jurisdictions.

Let’s assume Waymo is wildly successful. They take over the ride-sharing market from human drivers in both ride-hailing companies and traditional taxicabs. In so doing, they’ll complete the shift in consumer spending on car transportation from thousands of taxicab drivers across thousands of cities to one technology company. It’s not unlike thousands of newspapers making money from classifieds and then a couple of technology companies taking all of that revenue. It’s certainly easier to buy stuff from other people now, but local journalism is in a hopeless business situation."

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age; Guardian, March 28, 2018

Alex Hern and Arwa Mahdawi, Guardian; Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age

"Awareness of our digital footprint is one thing, but what are we to do about it? In the wake of the Facebook revelations, it’s clear that we can’t all keep clicking as usual if we value our privacy or our democracy. It’s still relatively early in the internet era and we are all still figuring it out as we go along. However, best practices when it comes to security and online etiquette are starting to emerge. Here’s a guide to some of the new rules of the internet."

How Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet; The Verge, March 28, 2018

Russell Brandom, The Verge; How Europe’s new privacy rule is reshaping the internet

"The rule could also create a divide between the European Union and the rest of the internet. So far, most companies have aimed toward a single set of privacy rules for all users, which is why so many US users are noticing new privacy features and terms of service. But in many cases, it’s still easier to split off EU data, which could result in European users seeing a meaningfully different internet from the rest of the world.

On the other hand, it would be hard to make data collection more creepy at this point. So much of the internet is based on the free exchange of user data, especially the gnarly hairball that is the targeted advertising industry. That has real political consequences: the NSA can use the same system to track users across the web, and political firms like Cambridge Analytica can use it to quietly single out particular subgroups. We’ve spent the last 15 years thinking of lucrative things to do with that data, on the assumption that it would always be freely shareable. The GDPR is starting to roll it back, but the most profound changes will take years to play out, potentially reshaping the web as we know it."

Facebook Changing Privacy Controls As Criticism Escalates; The Two-Way, NPR, March 28, 2018

Yuki Noguchi, The Two-Way, NPR; Facebook Changing Privacy Controls As Criticism Escalates

"Facebook responded to intensifying criticism over its mishandling of user data Wednesday by announcing new features to its site that will give users more visibility and control over how their information is shared. The changes, rolling out in coming weeks, will also enable users to prevent the social network from sharing that information with advertisers and other third parties.

"Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data," Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan and Deputy General Counsel Ashlie Beringer wrote in a statement.

"We've heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed," they said."

Apple CEO Tim Cook slams Facebook: Privacy 'is a human right, it's a civil liberty'; NBC, March 28, 2018

Elizabeth Chuck and Chelsea Bailey, NBC; Apple CEO Tim Cook slams Facebook: Privacy 'is a human right, it's a civil liberty'

"Privacy to us is a human right. It's a civil liberty, and something that is unique to America. This is like freedom of speech and freedom of the press," Cook said. "Privacy is right up there with that for us."

His comments are consistent with Apple's long-held privacy stance — which the company stood by even in the face of a legal quarrel with the U.S. government a couple of years ago, when it refused to help the FBI unlock an iPhone belonging to the man responsible for killing 14 people in San Bernadino, California, in December 2015."

A long awaited privacy awakening is here; CNN, March 28, 2018

Seth Fiegerman, CNN; A long awaited privacy awakening is here

"The resulting scandal has sparked a long awaited data awakening among internet users.

"People are digging in and looking at the data that's been collected on them," says Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT. "In the past, a lot of us have been willing to say we understand we are in this constant dance with commercial providers."

What's changed is people waking up to the fact that their data isn't just used to sell products, but also potentially to affect elections. "It just feels different," Zuckerman said."

Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you; Guardian, March 28, 2018

Dylan Curran, Guardian; Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

"Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it."

A Needle In A Legal Haystack Could Sink A Major Supreme Court Privacy Case; NPR, March 28, 2018

Nina Totenberg, NPR; A Needle In A Legal Haystack Could Sink A Major Supreme Court Privacy Case

"The question in the case is whether a U.S. technology company can refuse to honor a court-ordered U.S. search warrant seeking information that is stored at a facility outside the United States...

...[A]s the case came to the justices, they were going to have to apply current advanced technology to the Stored Communications Act, a law enacted in 1986, several years before email even became available for wide public use.

Amazingly, just three weeks after the Supreme Court argument, lo and behold, a Congress famous for gridlock passed legislation to modernize the law...

Titled the Cloud Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data), the statute was attached to the 2,232 page, $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill."

Cambridge Analytica controversy must spur researchers to update data ethics; Nature, March 27, 2018

Editorial, Nature; Cambridge Analytica controversy must spur researchers to update data ethics

"Ethics training on research should be extended to computer scientists who have not conventionally worked with human study participants.

Academics across many fields know well how technology can outpace its regulation. All researchers have a duty to consider the ethics of their work beyond the strict limits of law or today’s regulations. If they don’t, they will face serious and continued loss of public trust."

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

The Six Data Privacy Principles of the GDPR; Corporate Counsel, March 26, 2018

Amy Lewis, Corporate Counsel; The Six Data Privacy Principles of the GDPR

"Data privacy and personal data breaches have been in the news a lot recently. Over the past few years, companies have been collecting and processing ever-increasing amounts of data about their customers, employees, and users. As personal data becomes more valuable, governments around the world have begun the debate surrounding whether this data collection should be limited in favor of individuals’ fundamental right to privacy.

The Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the European Union’s answer to these debates. This new regulation strives to take the decisions regarding some uses of personal data out of the hands of companies and return control to the individuals that the data refer to—the data subjects. Any company that has a European presence or handles European residents’ personal data is subject to the GDPR. These companies will likely need to upgrade their data security and privacy procedures to meet the personal data handling requirements of the GDPR.

The GDPR’s data privacy goals can be summarized in six personal data processing principles: Lawfulness, Fairness and Transparency; Purpose Limitation; Data Minimization; Accuracy; Integrity and Confidentiality; and Storage Limitation."

Monday, March 26, 2018

Europe is doing way more than the US to protect online privacy; Vox, March 26, 2018

Trevor Butterworth, Vox; Europe is doing way more than the US to protect online privacy

"Much commentary in the US has suggested that there is no way out of the dystopia that we’ve constructed for ourselves, short of deleting Facebook and turning away from Google. But that can be hard to do, so interconnected have Facebook and other platforms become with all sorts of internet services people depend on.

But Europe is about to point to a better way of balancing the interests of technological innovation and privacy concerns. It’s been undercovered by the US media, but the era of the data robber barons will be massively disrupted on May 25, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation Act, enshrining data protection as a fundamental human right, goes into effect."

FTC, states increase pressure on Facebook on privacy; Associated Press via Chicago Tribune, March 26, 2018

Barbara Ortutay and Andrew Selsky, Associated Press via Chicago Tribune; FTC, states increase pressure on Facebook on privacy

"U.S. regulators and state attorneys general are increasing pressure on Facebook as they probe whether the company's data-collection practices have hurt the people who use its services.

The Federal Trade Commission confirmed news reports on Monday that it was investigating the company. Separately, the attorneys general for 37 U.S. states and territories sought details Monday on how Facebook monitored what app developers did with data collected on Facebook users and whether Facebook had safeguards to prevent misuse...

Facebook is also facing questions about reports that it collected years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and information about text messages from Android users. Facebook says the data is used "to improve people's experience across Facebook" by helping to connect with others. But the company did not spell out exactly what it used the data for or why it needed it."

Saturday, March 24, 2018

‘A grand illusion’: seven days that shattered Facebook’s facade; Guardian, March 24, 2018

Olivia Solon, Guardian; ‘A grand illusion’: seven days that shattered Facebook’s facade

"For too long consumers have thought about privacy on Facebook in terms of whether their ex-boyfriends or bosses could see their photos. However, as we fiddle around with our profile privacy settings, the real intrusions have been taking place elsewhere.

“In this sense, Facebook’s ‘privacy settings’ are a grand illusion. Control over post-sharing – people we share to – should really be called ‘publicity settings’,” explains Jonathan Albright, the research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. “Likewise, control over passive sharing – the information people [including third party apps] can take from us – should be called ‘privacy settings’.”

Essentially Facebook gives us privacy “busywork” to make us think we have control, while making it very difficult to truly lock down our accounts."

Computer science faces an ethics crisis. The Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it.; Boston Globe, March 22, 2018

Yonatan Zunger, Boston Globe; 

Computer science faces an ethics crisis. The Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it.


"Software engineers continue to treat safety and ethics as specialities, rather than the foundations of all design; young engineers believe they just need to learn to code, change the world, disrupt something. Business leaders focus on getting a product out fast, confident that they will not be held to account if that product fails catastrophically. Simultaneously imagining their products as changing the world and not being important enough to require safety precautions, they behave like kids in a shop full of loaded AK-47’s...

Underpinning all of these need to be systems for deciding on what computer science ethics should be, and how they should be enforced. These will need to be built by a consensus among the stakeholders in the field, from industry, to academia, to capital, and most importantly, among the engineers and the public, who are ultimately most affected. It must be done with particular attention to diversity of representation. In computer science, more than any other field, system failures tend to affect people in different social contexts (race, gender, class, geography, disability) differently. Familiarity with the details of real life in these different contexts is required to prevent disaster...

What stands between these is attention to the core questions of engineering: to what uses might a system be put? How might it fail? And how will it behave when it does? Computer science must step up to the bar set by its sister fields, before its own bridge collapse — or worse, its own Hiroshima."

Pitt makes disciplinary moves after department implicated in sex-harassment investigation; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 22, 2018

Peter Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Pitt makes disciplinary moves after department implicated in sex-harassment investigation

"The University of Pittsburgh has disciplined an unspecified number of people associated with its Department of Communication after an investigation found violations of university policy and federal law against gender discrimination. 
The investigation, triggered by past and recent allegations of sexual harassment and sexual relationships between staff and students, “found a consistent pattern in which women were not as valued and respected as their male colleagues,” said a statement by Kathleen M. Blee, the dean of Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences.
“This resulted in an environment in which the inappropriate acts of the few were tolerated by the silence of others,” she acknowledged.
“The investigations revealed failures of systems and failures of character,” her statement added."

Driverless cars raise so many ethical questions. Here are just a few of them.; San Diego Union-Tribune, March 23, 2018

Lawrence M. Hinman, San Diego Union-Tribune; Driverless cars raise so many ethical questions. Here are just a few of them.

"Even more troubling will be the algorithms themselves, even if the engineering works flawlessly. How are we going to program autonomous vehicles when they are faced with a choice among competing evils? Should they be programmed to harm or kill the smallest number of people, swerving to avoid hitting two people but unavoidably hitting one? (This is the famous “trolley problem” that has vexed philosophers and moral psychologists for over half a century.)

Should your car be programmed to avoid crashing into a group of schoolchildren, even if that means driving you off the side of a cliff? Most of us would opt for maximizing the number of lives saved, except when one of those lives belongs to us or our loved ones.

These are questions that take us to the heart of the moral life in a technological society. They are already part of a lively and nuanced discussion among philosophers, engineers, policy makers and technologists. It is a conversation to which the larger public should be invited.

The ethics of dealing with autonomous systems will be a central issue of the coming decades."

Can Self-Driving Cars Be Engineered to Be Ethical?; Voice of America, March 21, 2018

Bryan Lynn reported this story for VOA Learning English. Additional information came from Reuters and the Associated Press. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor., Voice of America; Can Self-Driving Cars Be Engineered to Be Ethical?

"Nicholas Evans is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, Massachusetts...

Evans is receiving money from the National Science Foundation to study the ethics of decision-making algorithms in autonomous vehicles. He says self-driving cars need to be programmed to react to many difficult situations. But, he adds, even simple driving activities – such as having vehicles enter a busy street – can be dangerous...

One of the most basic questions is how to decide the value of human lives. Evans says most people do not like to think about this question. But, he says, it is highly important in developing self-driving technology...

“So this is one of the really tricky questions behind autonomous vehicles – is how do you value different people's lives and how do you program a car to value different people's lives.”"

THE LOSE-LOSE ETHICS OF TESTING SELF-DRIVING CARS IN PUBLIC; Wired, March 23, 2018

Aarian Marshall, Wired; THE LOSE-LOSE ETHICS OF TESTING SELF-DRIVING CARS IN PUBLIC

"The unfortunate truth is that there will always be tradeoffs. A functioning society should probably create space—even beyond the metaphorical sense—to research and then develop potentially life-saving technology. If you’re interested in humanity’s long-term health and survival, this is a good thing. (Even failure can be instructive here. What didn’t work, and why?) But a functioning society should also strive to guarantee that its citizens aren’t killed in the midst of beta testing. We’ve made this work for experimental drugs, finding an agreeable balance between risking lives today and saving them tomorrow."

Thursday, March 22, 2018

There Are No Guardrails on Our Privacy Dystopia; Motherboard, March 9, 2018

David Golumbia and Chris GilliardMotherboard; There Are No Guardrails on Our Privacy Dystopia

"The Time Well Spent movement has proposed a “Hippocratic Oath for technology:” first, do no harm. Tech companies—and tech advocates more generally, even those outside of companies—have demonstrated that they are neither capable nor responsible enough to imagine what harms their technologies may do. If there is any hope for building digital technology that does not include an open door to wolves, recent experience has demonstrated that this must include robust engagement from the non-technical—expert and amateur alike—not just in response to the effects of technologies, but to the proposed functions of those technologies in the first place."

A Huge Global Study On Driverless Car Ethics Found The Elderly Are Expendable; Forbes, March 21, 2018

Oliver Smith, Forbes; A Huge Global Study On Driverless Car Ethics Found The Elderly Are Expendable

"Over the last year, 4 million people took part by answering ethical questions in Moral Machine's many scenarios – which include different combinations of genders, ages, and even other species like cats and dogs, crossing the road.

On Sunday, the day before the first pedestrian fatality by an autonomous car in America, MIT's Professor Iyad Rahwan revealed the first results of the Moral Machine study at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai."

Feds: Pitt professor agrees to pay government more than $130K to resolve claims of research grant misdeeds; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 21, 2018

Sean D. Hamill and Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Feds: Pitt professor agrees to pay government more than $130K to resolve claims of research grant misdeeds

"A star researcher at the University of Pittsburgh has agreed to pay the U.S. government more than $130,000 to resolve allegations that he submitted false documents to the National Science Foundation to get more than $2.3 million in federal research grants, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh announced Wednesday.
As part of the settlement, psychology professor Christian D. Schunn, 48, will not be allowed to apply for or be involved with any federal grants through Oct. 15, 2019, according to a press release. He will have to withdraw from any applications pending for federal funding, the government said."

It’s Time to Regulate the Internet; The Atlantic, March 21, 2018

Franklin Foer, The Atlantic; It’s Time to Regulate the Internet

"If we step back, we can see it clearly: Facebook’s business model is the evisceration of privacy. That is, it aims to adduce its users into sharing personal information—what the company has called “radical transparency”—and then aims to surveil users to generate the insights that will keep them “engaged” on its site and to precisely target them with ads. Although Mark Zuckerberg will nod in the direction of privacy, he has been candid about his true feelings. In 2010 he said, for instance, that privacy is no longer a “social norm.” (Once upon a time, in a fit of juvenile triumphalism, he even called people “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data.) And executives in the company seem to understand the consequence of their apparatus. When I recently sat on a panel with a representative of Facebook, he admitted that he hadn’t used the site for years because he was concerned with protecting himself against invasive forces.

We need to constantly recall this ideological indifference to privacy, because there should be nothing shocking about the carelessness revealed in the Cambridge Analytica episode...

Facebook turned data—which amounts to an X-ray of the inner self—into a commodity traded without our knowledge."

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Ben Carson Defends Buying $31,000 Dining Set to Congress: ‘I Left It to My Wife’; New York Times, March 20, 2018

Glenn Thrush, New York Times; Ben Carson Defends Buying $31,000 Dining Set to Congress: ‘I Left It to My Wife’

[Kip Currier: HUD Secretary Ben Carson's statement in the excerpt below is the money quote take-away from this article.

Ethics is not only about the substantive impacts of actions but also about how those actions look to other people: The messages--both spoken and unspoken--that  our actions communicate about our own values.

A phrase often heard regarding ethical issues is "air of impropriety", meaning that an action has a sense of not seeming "right", of not being "above board", of not looking good. Even if an action may technically be legal or ethical.

Good ethical decision-making includes consideration of our own internal compasses and the external signals that our actions send to other people. Not just in the current buzzphrase sense of "the optics" of something, but what we are communicating about our priorities and values.

Ethical leadership--especially public service--is concerned with promoting trust in the integrity of our leaders, our institutions, our democratic values and ideals. Being mindful about how something looks--the example we set for others--is an integral component of ethical leadership. That's worth thinking about.]


"On Tuesday, Mr. Carson defended that decision, saying that his son had not profited from his father’s government post.

“HUD’s ethics counsel suggested it might look funny, but I’m not a person who spends a lot of time thinking about how something looks,” Mr. Carson said."

Monday, March 19, 2018

Who stole 314 items from the Carnegie Library rare books room?; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 19, 2018

Marylynne Pitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Who stole 314 items from the Carnegie Library rare books room?

[Kip Currier: A very troubling story that will serve as a springboard for my 3/20/18 lecture/discussion of public relations crisis management in my Managing and Leading Information Services course. A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture I've been doing the past 10 years+ on "Managing Legal Issues in Libraries and Information Centers" that includes a geographically diverse "Rogues' Gallery" (props to DC Comics' The Flash comic book for the memorable appellation!) of persons identified over the past decade, who have been alleged to have committed library-related infractions and have been convicted of library-related crimes. The individual (or individuals) who perpetrated this brazen theft of rare books from the venerable Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Main Library and breach of public trust can be added to the Rogues' Gallery if/when apprehended and adjudicated.]

"Mr. Vinson believes that the thief may have been a library employee or employees because only a handful of people knew the security procedures.
“The books were immensely valuable. But they were also across a wide variety of fields,” he said.” Only a few people have that knowledge — a general antiquarian bookseller, a librarian or a curator would know the value. It has inside written all over it.”"

Where's Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds; Guardian, March 19, 2018

Julia Carrie Wong, Guardian; Where's Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds


[Kip Currier: Scott Galloway, clinical professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, made some strong statements about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal on MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle show yesterday.

Regarding Facebook's handling of the revelations to date:

"This is a textbook example of how not to handle a crisis."

He referred to Facebook's leadership as "tone-deaf management" that initially denied a breach had occurred, and then subsequently deleted Tweets saying that it was wrong to call what had occurred a breach.

Galloway also said that "Facebook has embraced celebrity but refused to embrace its responsibilities". He contrasted Facebook's ineffectual current crisis management to how Johnson & Johnson demonstrated decisive leadership and accountability during the "tampered Tylenol bottles" crisis the latter faced in the 1980's.]



"The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has remained silent over the more than 48 hours since the Observer revealed the harvesting of 50 million users’ personal data, even as his company is buffeted by mounting calls for investigation and regulation, falling stock prices, and a social media campaign to #DeleteFacebook...

Also on Monday, the New York Times reported that Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, would be leaving the company following disagreements with other executives over the handling of the investigation into the Russian influence operation...

Stamos is one of a small handful of Facebook executives who addressed the data harvesting scandal on Twitter over the weekend while Zuckerberg and Facebook’s chief operating officer, Shery Sandberg, said nothing."

Oscar Munoz's tough ride as United CEO; CNN, March 19, 2018

Julia Horowitz, CNN; Oscar Munoz's tough ride as United CEO

""There's something about the United culture that has employees making decisions that are not the right things to do," [John Strong, a professor of business administration at the College of William and Mary and an airline industry expert] said.

Another high-profile event could be the final straw, according to Reber. Even if Munoz isn't directly implicated, he could wind up taking the fall.

"History is littered with CEOs who have had to take a hit for a crisis that happened and was caused someplace else in the organization," Reber said."

Data scandal is huge blow for Facebook – and efforts to study its impact on society; Guardian, March 18, 2018

Olivia Solon, Guardian; Data scandal is huge blow for Facebook – and efforts to study its impact on society

"The revelation that 50 million people had their Facebook profiles harvested so Cambridge Analytica could target them with political ads is a huge blow to the social network that raises questions about its approach to data protection and disclosure.


As Facebook executives wrangle on Twitter over the semantics of whether this constitutes a “breach”, the result for users is the same: personal data extracted from the platform and used for a purpose to which they did not consent.
Facebook has a complicated track record on privacy. Its business model is built on gathering data. It knows your real name, who your friends are, your likes and interests, where you have been, what websites you have visited, what you look like and how you speak."