AI Meets Ethics: Can the Resulting Problems Be Addressed?; Legaltech News, Law.com, August 22, 2018

Rhys Dipshan, Legaltech News, Law.com;

AI Meets Ethics: Can the Resulting Problems Be Addressed?

 

"For Johannes Stiehler, CTO at e-discovery and analytics company Ayfie, the ethical concerns with AI mostly relate back to the issue of accountability. “The question of culpability is going to be key to these ethical discussions, in law as much as in medicine,” he said...

A 2016 investigation by ProPublica found that COMPAS showed bias against African-American prisoners.

Katz, however, noted that bias in the criminal justice program would exist with or without AI.  “There are plenty of complaints of biases of judges and police,” he said, adding that it’s interesting that there is so much focus on fixing AI, but little focus on addressing human biases."

 

Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech: featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community; Berkman Klein Luncheon Series, Harvard University, April 17, 2018

[Video] Berkman Klein Luncheon Series, Harvard University;

Honoring All Expertise: Social Responsibility and Ethics in Tech:
featuring Kathy Pham & Friends from the Berkman Klein Community

"The Ethical Tech Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center will host a series of lighting [sic] talks exploring social responsibility and ethics in tech. Speakers will draw on their perspectives as computer scientists, critical race and gender scholars, designers, ethnographers, historians, lawyers, political scientists, and philosophers to share reflections on what it will take to build more publicly-accountable technologies and how to bridge diverse expertise from across industry and academia to get there."

[Kip Currier: One of the speakers in this video is Ben Green, Computer Science PhD Student, Harvard University. His talk is titled "Travails in CS Academia".]

Ben Green quote:

[8:46 in video] "What was particularly disturbing for me as I entered the [computer science] field was to see the actual dismissal of non-technical voices and non-technical perspectives in the field. 

I had one experience where I heard a fellow graduate student of mine scoff at the idea of a social scientist being an actual scientist. And I had several conversations with faculty members in the department where they told me that the work that I wanted to do that was socially- and policy-minded was not computer science and wasn't worth doing."

AI Ethics: Silicon Valley Should Take A Seat At The DoD Table; Breaking Defense, August 29, 2018

Jonathan D. Moreno, Breaking Defense;

AI Ethics: Silicon Valley Should Take A Seat At The DoD Table 

 

"As well as their role in the work, scientists and engineers need to consider the consequences of their deliberate absence from a conversation. If they don’t insist on building acceptable and verifiable safeguards for their work into a system someone else will, and not necessarily in a form they would endorse. To have a voice at the table, you need to have a seat at the table."

Ethics in Computing Panel; InfoQ, August 28, 2018

[Video] InfoQ; Ethics in Computing Panel

"Summary
 
The panelists discuss the important points around privacy, security, safety online, and intent of software today." 

"Kathy Pham is currently researching the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab."

Kathy Pham quote from video: 

[13:11 in video] "What a good engineer is maybe is something we should rethink as well.

I spend a lot of time in academia now. And I hear over and over again that people who are of the computer science plus philosophy or computer science plus social science background, have the hardest time finding jobs. Even if they're within the CS Department they have such a hard time getting jobs because they're not like the real hard science, or the real hard engineering discipline...

Those kinds of people provide a really different perspective on how we build our products. So if you're in charge of hiring for your companies, perhaps we all just need to rethink how we hire people and what makes a good engineer."

"Natalie Evans Harris is COO and VP of Ecosystem Development at BrightHive."

Natalie Evans Harris quote from video:

[12:28 in video:] "While we look at resumes and we care where you get your skills and degrees from, we also want to know what your ethical code of conduct is."

N.Y. Mayor Taps Drexel Professor For First Algorithm Quality-Control Task Force; Drexel Now, June 4, 2018

Drexel Now; N.Y. Mayor Taps Drexel Professor For First Algorithm Quality-Control Task Force

"But how do we ensure that the algorithms are the impartial arbiters we expect them to be? Drexel University professor Julia Stoyanovich is part of the first group in the nation helping to answer this question in the biggest urban area in the world. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tapped Stoyanovich to serve on the city’s Automated Decision Systems Task Force, a team charged with creating a process for reviewing algorithms through the lens of fairness, equity and accountability...

The [Automated Decision Systems] Task Force is the product of New York City’s algorithmic accountability law, which was passed in 2017 to ensure transparency in how the city uses automated decision systems. By 2019, the group must “provide recommendations about how agency automated decision systems data may be shared with the public and how agencies may address instances where people are harmed by agency automated decision systems,” according to one of the provisions of the law."

Predatory publishers: the journals that churn out fake science; The Guardian, August 10, 2018

Alex Hern and Pamela Duncan, The Guardian;

Predatory publishers: the journals that churn out fake science

"A vast ecosystem of predatory publishers is churning out “fake science” for profit, an investigation by the Guardian in collaboration with German publishers NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin has found.

More than 175,000 scientific articles have been produced by five of the largest “predatory open-access publishers”, including India-based Omics publishing group and the Turkish World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, or Waset."

California Bill Is a Win for Access to Scientific Research; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), August 30, 2018

Elliot Harmon, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); California Bill Is a Win for Access to Scientific Research

"In Passing A.B. 2192, California Leads the Country in Open Access

The California legislature just scored a huge win in the fight for open access to scientific research.

Now it’s up to Governor Jerry Brown to sign it. Under A.B. 2192—which passed both houses unanimously—all peer-reviewed, scientific research funded by the state of California would be made available to the public no later than one year after publication. There’s a similar law on the books in California right now, but it only applies to research funded by the Department of Public Health, and it’s set to expire in 2020. A.B. 2192 would extend it indefinitely and expand it to cover research funded by any state agency...

Finally, it’s time for Congress to pass a federal open access bill. Despite having strong support in both parties, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR, S. 1701, H.R. 3427) has been stuck in Congressional gridlock for five years. Take a moment to celebrate the passage of A.B. 2192 by writing your members of Congress and urging them to pass FASTR."

The problem with ethics in data; Human Resources Director New Zealand, August 29, 2018

Emily Douglas, Human Resources Director New Zealand; The problem with ethics in data

"The problem of ‘ethics in data’ has become entrenched in HR. A recent paper published in Philosophical Transactions A by Luciano Floridi and Mariarosaria Taddeo, questioned the nature of ‘data ethics’ and what it means in a corporate setting.

“While the data ethics landscape is complex, we are confident that these ethical challenges can be addressed successfully,” commented Floridi.

“Striking a robust balance between enabling innovation in data science technology, and respecting privacy and human rights will not be an easy or simple task. But the alternative, failing to advance both the ethics and the science of data, would have regrettable consequences.”

It serves as both a scary reminder of what exactly is at stake here, and a rousing challenge for HR practitioners. HR should take on the role of a gatekeeper to employee data – rather than procurer."

Southerners Tore Down Silent Sam. Now Northerners Need to Tear Down Confederate Flags.; HuffPost, August 29, 2018

Alex Pareene, HuffPost; Southerners Tore Down Silent Sam. Now Northerners Need to Tear Down Confederate Flags.

"At a certain point, we stopped telling ourselves about how we freed the United States."

Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism; The Atlantic, August 23, 2018

Ian Bogost, The Atlantic; Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism

"Your data is everywhere, and nowhere, and you cannot escape it, or what it might yet do to you."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America; The Guardian, August 28, 2018

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Guardian;

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America

"Athletes who speak out are proclaiming their loyalty to a constitution that demands equality and inclusiveness, not to the government officials who try to undermine those ideals by silencing its critics."

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out; Intellectual Property Watch, August 27, 2018

Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch;

WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Begins Work On Core Issues; Indigenous Peoples May Be Left Out

"The World Intellectual Property Organization’s committee seeking to find solutions against misappropriation of traditional knowledge opened this morning. While delegates are expected to negotiate wording of a potential treaty, the fund allowing indigenous peoples to participate in the discussions is empty with no foreseeable new donors, described by the chair as a historical situation. The committee is also trying to agree on recommendations for the upcoming WIPO General Assembly next month. On core issues, such as what the protection should cover, who would benefit from it, and under which conditions, delegates still have to find common positions."

The Story of the American Inventor Denied a Patent Because He Was a Slave; Gizmodo, August 28, 2018

Matt Novak, Gizmodo;

The Story of the American Inventor Denied a Patent Because He Was a Slave

"The world of invention is famous for its patent disputes. But what happens when your dispute wasn’t with another inventor but whether the Patent Office saw you as a person at all? In 1864, a black man named Benjamin T. Montgomery tried to patent his new propeller for steamboats. The Patent Office said that he wasn’t allowed to patent his invention. All because he was enslaved."

Here’s why Trump can’t perform his job; The Washington Post, August 28, 2018

Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post; Here’s why Trump can’t perform his job

"This is what comes from electing someone emotionally and intellectually incapable of seeing beyond his own emotional needs or understanding the moral authority a normal president enjoys by fulfilling the role of head of state. Trump’s lack of decency, civility and respect for others’ accomplishments prompt him to attack Americans (especially minorities) who disagree with him; in turn, Trump’s conduct provokes honorable people to shun the president."

Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?; Slate, August 21, 2018

Aaron Mak, Slate; Who Gets to Read the Research We Pay For?: Scientific journals’ lock on new studies has ignited tension for years. When it comes to access for people with rare diseases, it becomes an ethical issue too.

"This does not sit well with academics and other members of the research community, who often publicly complain about the company’s profit margins, its allegedly restrictive copyrights, and the fact that much of the research it sells access to is taxpayer-funded. This public outrage seems to have gotten under the skin of William Gunn, Elsevier’s director of scholarly communications. When one user argued that people in rare-disease families “shouldn’t have to jump through additional hoops to access information,” Gunn responded, “Yes, everyone should have rainbows, unicorns, & puppies delivered to their doorstep by volunteers. Y’all keep wishing for that, I’ll keep working on producing the best knowledge and distributing it as best we can.”

This is just one reckless tweet in the heat of a Twitter spat (though it’s worth bearing Gunn’s job title in mind), and, sure, he later apologized. But the issue of rare-disease families trying to avoid the high fees associated with accessing research on potential treatments goes beyond this Twitter spat: It’s a real problem that has not been adequately fixed by the company."

Trump rejected plans for a White House statement praising McCain; The Washington Post, August 26, 2018

Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post; Trump rejected plans for a White House statement praising McCain


"McCain allies said they did not expect an outpouring of praise from Trump after their contentious past.

“It certainly doesn’t bother me or the people I know close to John,” Weaver said. “I don’t think it bothers John one bit. If we heard something today or tomorrow from Trump, we know it’d mean less than a degree from Trump University.”"

How This Will End: Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers.; The Atlantic, August 24, 2018

Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic; How This Will End:

Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers.

"But to really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end, we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as the “Scottish play.” One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

And so it will be for Trump...

But in the moment of losing power, the two will be alike. A tyrant is unloved, and although the laws and institutions of the United States have proven a brake on Trump, his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well."

Yes, Manafort and Cohen are guilty, but the rule of law is still in danger; The Washington Post, August 23, 2018

Joyce White Vance, The Washington Post; Yes, Manafort and Cohen are guilty, but the rule of law is still in danger

"There does not seem to be any bottom — nothing that goes too far for Republican elected officials, whom our Constitution entrusts with the last line of defense. Prosecutors are upholding their responsibility to the rule of law, but without similar action by the majority party in Congress, it is in danger of winking out of existence."

NewsGuard Wants to Fight Fake News With Humans, Not Algorithms; Wired, August 23, 2018

Issie Lapowsky, Wired; NewsGuard Wants to Fight Fake News With Humans, Not Algorithms

Kip Currier: I just heard veteran journalist Steve Brill talking about a new information assessment tool called NewsGuard on MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports. Brill delivered this money quote on how NewsGuard provides evaluation of often-visited Internet sites by human (translation: not AI!) experts:

"That's what librarians have been doing since the invention of the library." 

--Steve Brill, August 24, 2018,
Andrea Mitchell Reports Program, MSNBC

[Excerpt]

"The patchwork nature of promoting trustworthy sources online has had the unintended consequence of seeding fears of bias. 

That's one reason why a group of journalists and media executives are launching a tool called NewsGuard, a browser plug-in for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that transcends platforms, giving trustworthiness ratings to most of the internet's top-trafficked sites. Those ratings are based on assessments from an actual newsroom of dozens of reporters who comprise NewsGuard's staff. They hail from a range of news organizations, including New York Daily News and GQ. Together, they've spent the last several months scoring thousands of news sites."

President Trump brings mafia ethics to the GOP; The Washington Post, August 23, 2018

Paul Waldman, The Washington Post; President Trump brings mafia ethics to the GOP

"But Trump is big on people keeping their mouths shut. As head of the Trump Organization, as a candidate and as president, he has forced underlings to sign nondisclosure agreements forbidding them from revealing what [sic] saw while in his employ. In many cases, those agreements included non-disparagement clauses in which the signer had to pledge never to criticize Trump or his family for as long as they lived. The mafia had “omerta,” and Trump has the NDA."

The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice; Wired, July 3, 2018

Renee Diresta, Wired; The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice

"As we increasingly rely on search and on social to answer questions that have a profound impact on both individuals and society, especially where health is concerned, this difficulty in discerning, and surfacing, sound science from pseudo-science has alarming consequences."

Can Facebook, or Anybody, Solve the Internet’s Misinformation Problem?; The New York Times, August 22, 2018

Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times;Can Facebook, or Anybody, Solve the Internet’s Misinformation Problem?

"Alex Stamos, who until recently was Facebook’s chief security officer, has a dimmer view. 

In an article published on Wednesday on Lawfare, a news site that covers national security, Mr. Stamos wrote that the string of attacks revealed by Facebook, Microsoft and others were evidence that “America’s adversaries believe that it is still both safe and effective to attack U.S. democracy using American technologies and the freedoms we cherish.”

The government’s failure to address these threats have left the United States “unprepared to protect the 2018 elections,” Mr. Stamos said. He outlined a set of legislative, regulatory and law enforcement steps Americans might take to secure their digital house.

If we move fast, he said, we might be able to salvage 2020."

Verizon under fire for 'throttling' firefighters' data in California blaze; The Guardian, August 22, 2018

Olivia Solon, The Guardian; Verizon under fire for 'throttling' firefighters' data in California blaze

"Internet service providers (ISPs) are entitled to throttle people who use excessive amounts of data, depending on the terms of the individual plan. However, Verizon has a policy to remove restrictions if contacted in an emergency situations.

“We have done that many times, including for emergency personnel responding to these tragic fires. In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake,” said the company in a statement published on Tuesday.

Harold Feld, from Public Knowledge, one of the organisations bringing the suit, said: “Companies need to be liable for their actions,” adding: “Verizon’s response of ‘I’m terribly sorry your state is burning down, let me sell you this new package’ is not good enough. We need rules to prevent it from happening in the first place.”"

Is the Internet evil? We will decide.; The Washington Post, August 22, 2018

Christine Emba, The Washington Post; Is the Internet evil? We will decide.

"Has the Internet been good or bad for humanity?

I stumbled upon a new way to think about the question (on the Internet, naturally), in the form of a quietly radical 1998 talk given by the author and cultural critic Neil Postman. The title, “Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change ,” is a snoozer, but the contents are eye-opening."

Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment; The New York Times, August 21, 2018

Kelly Marie Tran, The New York Times; Kelly Marie Tran: I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment

"Editors’ note: The actress deleted her Instagram posts this summer in response to online harassment. Here she speaks out for the first time...

"I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. I want to live in a world where women are not subjected to scrutiny for their appearance, or their actions, or their general existence. I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings.

This is the world I want to live in. And this is the world that I will continue to work toward.

These are the thoughts that run through my head every time I pick up a script or a screenplay or a book. I know the opportunity given to me is rare. I know that I now belong to a small group of privileged people who get to tell stories for a living, stories that are heard and seen and digested by a world that for so long has tasted only one thing. I know how important that is. And I am not giving up.

You might know me as Kelly.

I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a “Star Wars” movie.

I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.

My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."

All Eyes on the Presidency; The Atlantic, August 22, 2018

Adam Serwer, The Atlantic; All Eyes on the Presidency

"Manafort and Cohen may see prison time. But even if they are held to account, no one should be under the illusion that the outcomes of their cases on Tuesday legitimize a system of justice in which wealthy people who commit financial crimes can fully expect to get away with them. Trump did not create the rot in this system. He has merely made it obvious."

Calculating (and Acknowledging) the Costs of OER; Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2018

Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed; Calculating (and Acknowledging) the Costs of OER

"The news releases regularly roll in to the email inbox these days with headlines like "College X has saved students $5 million by adopting open educational resources." Not only have these initiatives made a higher education more affordable, the colleges and universities note, but students who might have forgone buying an expensive textbook in the past are actually getting and using the OER content, ideally contributing to their academic success.

Amid those successes, rarely mentioned is the reality that in many cases, the institution itself is picking up the costs that were formally borne by the students, through some combination of direct subsidies to instructors to create the content and a loss of textbook revenue to a campus store, among other costs.

A session this week at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers addressed that issue head-on, in a way that would be unusual at a conference of OER advocates. It's not that the session took a skeptical view of OER -- far from it. The featured institution, the Pierce College District in Washington State, has fully embraced the use of open resources for affordability and efficacy, among other reasons. But the enthusiasm of the community college's open education project manager, Quill West, was balanced by the even-keeled acknowledgment of Choi Halladay, the district's vice president of administrative services, that OER comes at a price to the institution -- though a price very much worth paying, he said."

Copyright vs. Conscience: Lawyering Up Isn’t Always the Right Move; PetaPixel, August 21, 2018

Blair Bunting, PetaPixel; Copyright vs. Conscience: Lawyering Up Isn’t Always the Right Move

"You read stories about photographers going after copyright abuse all the time, and it’s nearly always justified. In this case, I hope you can agree with me that seeking monetary compensation through legal recourse was not the right move. Sometimes you have to step back and remember that this may be a business, but it’s a business that relies on people. Once in a while, you have to remember that everyone featured in a photograph is a human, and as such all deserve compassion.

Rest in peace, Old Man."

How Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ Became a Battle Cry for Musicians Seeking Royalties; The New York Times, August 17, 2018

Ben Sisario, The New York Times;How Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ Became a Battle Cry for Musicians Seeking Royalties

"It was Aretha Franklin’s first No. 1 hit, the cry of empowerment that has defined her for generations: “Respect.”

But for the roughly seven million times the song has been played on American radio stations, she was paid nothing.

When Ms. Franklin died on Thursday at age 76, fans celebrated the song all over again as a theme for the women’s rights movement. But in the music industry, “Respect” has also played a symbolic role in a long fight over copyright issues that, advocates say, have deprived artists like Ms. Franklin of fair royalty payments...

[Aretha Franklin] also added what became the song’s signature line: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Find out what it means to me.” 

Ms. Franklin’s reinvention of Mr. Redding’s song has continued to fascinate critics. Peter Guralnick, the author of books like “Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom,” noted that she transformed the original meaning “not so much by changing the lyrics, as by the feeling that she imparted on the song — so that ‘Respect’ became a proclamation of freedom, a proclamation of feminism, a proclamation of an independent spirit.”"

Giuliani Says ‘Truth Isn’t Truth’ in Defense of Trump’s Legal Strategy; The New York Times, August 19, 2018

Melissa Gomez, The New York Times;Giuliani Says ‘Truth Isn’t Truth’ in Defense of Trump’s Legal Strategy

 

"First, the facts were alternative, Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to President Trump, suggested last year.

And now, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, said “Truth isn’t truth,” adding his own phrase to memorable — and sometimes head-scratching — comments made by those close to the president...

After the interview on Sunday, Merriam Webster tweeted the definition of “truth,” while Mr. Comey was more direct, tweeting: “Truth exists and truth matters. Truth has always been the touchstone of our country’s justice system and political life.”

Mr. Giuliani, meanwhile, addressed his remarks on Monday morning. “My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic ‘he said, she said’ puzzle,” he tweeted. “Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t.”"

What Are “Ethics in Design”?; Slate, August 13, 2018

Victoria, Sgarro, Slate; What Are “Ethics in Design”?

"Examples of product design that fail on the ethics front are all too easy to find—like news feeds promoting fake news, ride-hailing companies psychologically exploiting workers, and virtual home assistants perpetuating negative gender stereotypes. It’s not that product designers don’t care about the ethical ramifications of their work—far from it. It’s that, too often, they assume that such considerations fall outside of their job description

Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of Mule Design and author of the influential essay “A Designer’s Code of Ethics,” says that this ignorance has become an issue with the rapid change in scope of design over the past decade. “Designers have been running fast and free with no ethical guidelines,” he told me. “And that was fine when we were designing posters and sites for movies. But now design is interpersonal relationships on social media, health care, financial data traveling everywhere, the difference between verified journalism and fake news. And this is dangerous.” 

Increasingly, though, the industry is taking ethics seriously. Every year at SXSW, John Maeda, the global head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic, presents the “Design in Tech Report,” which serves as a kind of State of the Union on design in technology. This year, Maeda focused on inclusion as the future of design. Maeda defines inclusive design as designing products for a broader audience—whether that’s people with disabilities, people living outside of the U.S., people of color, or older people. On his list of “the top 10 most critical issues and challenges currently facing design,” “ethics in design” came in third, behind “design not having a ‘seat at the table’ ” (No. 1), and “diversity in design and tech” (No. 2)."

We can’t ignore this brutal cleansing in China; The Washington Post, August 14, 2018

Editorial Board, The Washington Post;

We can’t ignore this brutal cleansing in China

 

"Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs, along with Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities, have been sequestered in the camps, which now number more than 1,000, according to outside experts. An estimated 2 million other people have been forced to undergo indoctrination sessions without formal detention. Those detained include Uighur intellectuals and relatives of journalists who have reported on the campaign, including those of U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Asia. Ms. McDougall said more than 100 Uighur students returning from abroad had disappeared and some had died.

Inside the camps, detainees are bombarded with propaganda, forced to recite slogans and sing songs in exchange for food, and pressured to renounce Muslim practices. A statement released by Chinese dissidents last week said torture in the centers is common, as are deaths. In all, the campaign is the largest and most brutal repression the regime has undertaken since the Cultural Revolution."

A Better Way to Ban Alex Jones; The New York Times, August 7, 2018

David French, The New York Times; A Better Way to Ban Alex Jones

"The good news is that tech companies don’t have to rely on vague, malleable and hotly contested definitions of hate speech to deal with conspiracy theorists like Mr. Jones. The far better option would be to prohibit libel or slander on their platforms.

To be sure, this would tie their hands more: Unlike “hate speech,” libel and slander have legal meanings. There is a long history of using libel and slander laws to protect especially private figures from false claims. It’s properly more difficult to use those laws to punish allegations directed at public figures, but even then there are limits on intentionally false factual claims. 

It’s a high bar. But it’s a bar that respects the marketplace of ideas, avoids the politically charged battle over ever-shifting norms in language and culture and provides protection for aggrieved parties."

What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?; The Atlantic, August 7, 2018

Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic; What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?

"In banning the Infowars page, Facebook took the next logical step in restricting access to Infowars content, but it still hasn’t outright banned the domain, and it has not disclosed how the News Feed algorithm is dealing with URLs from Infowars.com.  

All of which is to say: There are many kinds of bans, and they each represent a different tool technology companies can use to police speech. Platforms can weaken the distribution of content they don’t like. They can ban the discovery of content they don’t like, as Apple has with Jones’s podcasts. Platforms can decline to host content they don’t like, as YouTube and Facebook have with InfoWars videos and pages, respectively. Or platforms can ban the presence of content they don’t like, regardless of where it is hosted or discovered."

Twitter will not ban InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; BBC, August 8, 2018

BBC; Twitter will not ban InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

"In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey explained the platform's decision, confirming it would not be following in the footsteps of others like Apple and Spotify and removing Mr Jones' and InfoWars' content...

Mr Dorsey said the accounts had not violated the platform's rules, but vowed to suspend them if they ever did so.

In his explanation, Mr Dorsey said it would be wrong to "succumb and simply react to outside pressure" instead of sticking to the company's codified principles.

He also implied one-off actions risked fuelling new conspiracy theories in the long-run, and said it was critical for journalists to "document, validate and refute" unsubstantiated rumours like the ones spread by Mr Jones "so people can form their own opinions"."

Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech; The New York Times, August 7, 2018

Jack Nicas, The New York Times; 

Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech

"Apple, Google and Facebook this week erased from their services many — but not all — videos, podcasts and posts from the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars site. And Twitter left Mr. Jones’s posts untouched.

The differing approaches to Mr. Jones exposed how unevenly tech companies enforce their rules on hate speech and offensive content. There are only a few cases in which the companies appear to consistently apply their policies, such as their ban on child pornography and instances in which the law required them to remove content, like Nazi imagery in Germany.

When left to make their own decisions, the tech companies often struggle with their roles as the arbiters of speech and leave false information, upset users and confusing decisions in their wake. Here is a look at what the companies, which control the world’s most popular public forums, allow and ban."

The One Law That’s The Cause Of Everything Good And Terrible About The Internet; HuffPost, August 6, 2018

Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost; The One Law That’s The Cause Of Everything Good And Terrible About The Internet

"“We were living in an age where people were talking about the internet like it was a utopia. The problem with utopias is that they are really, for lack of a better word, lies,” Mary Anne Franks, the co-founder of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, told HuffPost. 

“What happens when Congress tells all these corporations, all these intermediaries, ahead of time that nothing’s ever going to happen to you?” said Franks, who is also a University of Miami law professor. “You’ve really got to ask what kind of corporation is going to spend the money or the resources or the time on developing anything like a robust response to harassment when they don’t have to...

“It’s a problem that they’re 10 years behind on,” Franks said. “This is the kind of thing that if you truly wanted to tackle the problem of online abuse you have to do it at the design stage, not on the backend.”

The problem was at the design stage. These companies knew that they would never be legally liable for any of that harassment."

China’s influence on digital privacy could be global; The Washington Post, August 7, 2018

Tiffany Li, The Washington Post; China’s influence on digital privacy could be global

"China’s digital privacy practices have sounded alarms in the West for years. Recent headlines about China highlight the growing use of facial recognition surveillance, the rise of the controversial social credit system and the development of other privacy-invasive technologies, including brain-scanning helmets that some employers use to try to evaluate how hard employees are working.

It’s easy to distance ourselves from these accounts, but there’s a reason we should care about privacy in China. Its rapidly advancing technology industries and massive consumer market are already influencing norms around the world. China will likely impact the way privacy is understood and protected."

The Chinese threat that an aircraft carrier can’t stop; The Washington Post, August 7, 2018

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; The Chinese threat that an aircraft carrier can’t stop

"America’s vulnerability to information warfare was a special topic of concern. One participant recalled a conversation several years ago with a Russian general who taunted him: “You have a cybercommand but no information operations. Don’t you know that information operations are how you take countries down?”"

When do rants exceed First Amendment boundaries and become true threats?; ABA Journal, August 2018

David L. Hudson Jr., ABA Journal; When do rants exceed First Amendment boundaries and become true threats?

"True threats are not protected in part because of the fear and disruption they cause in their recipients. “Speech that places a victim in fear for his or her physical safety is deeply harmful in that it disrupts the target’s life and may deter him or her from engaging in key life activities,” says University of Colorado Law School professor Helen Norton, who writes frequently on First Amendment topics.

“Indeed, true threats may themselves undermine First Amendment values by silencing the speaker’s target.” The push to combat threats is understandable. The problem is discerning the boundaries between protected speech and unprotected true threats. “The unclear part of the definition is what makes a threat ‘true,’ meaning that it is an expression dangerous enough for the government to have the power to punish, and the definition is narrow enough that it does not chill protected speech,” says Leslie Gielow Jacobs, a First Amendment expert who teaches at the University of the Pacific.

“We don’t want to criminalize political hyperbole, jokes or drunken rants,” Norton explains. “Not infrequently, we say extreme things that we don’t mean to be understood literally, such as ‘I am so mad at X that I could kill him.’ Speech of that sort furthers an individual’s First Amendment interests in expressive autonomy, and the government’s regulation of it threatens overreaching and other dangers.”"

India asks telcos to find ways to block Facebook, WhatsApp in case of misuse; Reuters, August 7, 2018

Reuters; India asks telcos to find ways to block Facebook, WhatsApp in case of misuse

"India has asked its telecom operators to find ways of blocking applications such as Facebook and messaging app WhatsApp in the case of misuse, according to a document seen by Reuters.

India has in recent months intensified efforts to crack down on mass message forwards after it found that people were using social media and messaging apps to spread rumors and stoke public anger.

WhatsApp in particular has faced the wrath of Indian regulators after false messages circulated on the messaging platform led to a series of lynchings and mob beatings across the country."

Why Doctors Should Read Fiction: Could a simple literary exercise make physicians more caring?; The Atlantic, July 30, 2018

Sam Kean, The Atlantic;

Why Doctors Should Read Fiction: Could a simple literary exercise make physicians more caring?

"The annals of literature are packed with writers who also practiced medicine: Anton Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Carlos Williams, John Keats, William Somerset Maugham, and on and on. As doctors, they saw patients at their most vulnerable, and their medical training gave them a keen eye for observing people and what makes them tick.

But if studying medicine is good training for literature, could studying literature also be good training for medicine? A new paper in Literature and Medicine, “Showing That Medical Ethics Cases Can Miss the Point,” argues yes. In particular, it proposes that certain literary exercises, like rewriting short stories that involve ethical dilemmas, can expand doctors’ worldviews and make them more attuned to the dilemmas real patients face."

Newseum Says It Made a Mistake and Pulls ‘Fake News’ Shirts; The New York Times, August 3, 2018

Sopan Deb, The New York Times; Newseum Says It Made a Mistake and Pulls ‘Fake News’ Shirts

[Kip Currier: Photos of some items I bought at The Newseum when I was there for a Social Innovation Summit a couple of years ago:]

"The Newseum in Washington, which caused a stir Friday after reports that it was selling a T-shirt reading “You Are Very Fake News,” announced Saturday that it was pulling the shirts from its gift shop and online store.

“We made a mistake and we apologize,” the museum, which is dedicated to press freedom, said in a statement on its website. “A free press is an essential part of our democracy and journalists are not the enemy of the people.”

Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’; The Guardian, August 5, 2018

Andrew Anthony, The Guardian; Interview: Yuval Noah Harari: ‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’

"Why is liberalism under particular threat from big data?
Liberalism is based on the assumption that you have privileged access to your own inner world of feelings and thoughts and choices, and nobody outside you can really understand you. This is why your feelings are the highest authority in your life and also in politics and economics – the voter knows best, the customer is always right. Even though neuroscience shows us that there is no such thing as free will, in practical terms it made sense because nobody could understand and manipulate your innermost feelings. But now the merger of biotech and infotech in neuroscience and the ability to gather enormous amounts of data on each individual and process them effectively means we are very close to the point where an external system can understand your feelings better than you. We’ve already seen a glimpse of it in the last epidemic of fake news.
There’s always been fake news but what’s different this time is that you can tailor the story to particular individuals, because you know the prejudice of this particular individual. The more people believe in free will, that their feelings represent some mystical spiritual capacity, the easier it is to manipulate them, because they won’t think that their feelings are being produced and manipulated by some external system...

You say if you want good information, pay good money for it. The Silicon Valley adage is information wants to be free, and to some extent the online newspaper industry has followed that. Is that wise?
The idea of free information is extremely dangerous when it comes to the news industry. If there’s so much free information out there, how do you get people’s attention? This becomes the real commodity. At present there is an incentive in order to get your attention – and then sell it to advertisers and politicians and so forth – to create more and more sensational stories, irrespective of truth or relevance. Some of the fake news comes from manipulation by Russian hackers but much of it is simply because of the wrong incentive structure. There is no penalty for creating a sensational story that is not true. We’re willing to pay for high quality food and clothes and cars, so why not high quality information?"

Convercent CEO: Encourage Employees to Speak Up on Ethics Issues; Fortune, August 1, 2018

Damanick Dantes, Fortune; Convercent CEO: Encourage Employees to Speak Up on Ethics Issues

"The risk of an ethics scandal is far too great for a CEO to ignore. The conventional approach is to publish a list of ethics guidelines and expect everyone in an organization to follow—but if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s simply not enough. At risk: the image of an organization and the finances of its stakeholders.

Call it the post-Harvey Weinstein era. The court of public opinion holds corporations accountable for saying one thing and doing another, says Patrick Quinlan, CEO of compliance management software company Convercent. Quinlan’s company operates a compliance and ethics cloud platform—think of it as a 21st century whistleblower hotline—for employees of businesses and governments around the world."

Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin; The Daily Beast, August 4, 2018

Anna Nemtsova and Philip Obaji Jr., The Daily Beast; Murdered Russian Journalists In Africa Were Onto Something Dangerous for Putin

"Long before the Russians appeared, the Central African Republic was already a dangerous place for the media. Armed men constantly looted and destroyed the operations of media organizations, forcing quite a number to shut down. Journalists, including foreign correspondents, have faced constant threats and intimidation from both the government and the rebels."

The press isn't the enemy, it's the protector; CNN, August 3, 2018

Joseph Holt, CNN; The press isn't the enemy, it's the protector

"Thomas Jefferson, writing in 1792, maintained, "No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will." The press stands vigilantly as a bulwark against tyranny and the falsehoods that feed it. Truly democratic rulers would not want to live in a country without a vibrantly free press -- only a tyrant or a subject content to live under tyrannical rule would. Far from being the enemy of the people, the press at its best is like a guardian angel that caringly and capably protects us from harm...

We thank soldiers for their service because they devote themselves to protecting our freedoms, and we should. But we should also thank the media for the same reason -- especially when the stakes have never been higher."

Christopher Robin Won't Get China Release Amid Pooh Censorship; ScreenRant, August 3, 2018

Dan Zinski, ScreenRant; Christopher Robin Won't Get China Release Amid Pooh Censorship

 "Though Christopher Robin sounds like the most innocent of movies, THR reveals that China has denied Disney the right to release it in the country. According to sources, the reason for the film’s banning has nothing to do with the movie’s subject matter and everything to do with politics. Winnie the Pooh, it turns out, has become a symbol of resistance groups working against Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Communist Party, and the Chinese government is therefore seeking to clamp down on images depicting the character."

Report – Patent Abuse A Leading Cause Of High Drug Prices In US; Intellectual Property Watch, August 3, 2018

David Branigan, Intellectual Property Watch; Report – Patent Abuse A Leading Cause Of High Drug Prices In US

"The report, “Overpatented, Overpriced: How Excessive Pharmaceutical Patenting is Extending Monopolies and Driving up Drug Prices,” was produced by the New York-based Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK)...

“Spanning twelve drugmakers and a range of conditions such as cancer, arthritis, stroke, and diabetes, the study captures an industry-wide trend of pharmaceuticals ‘evergreening’ their products with excessive patents so they can artificially extend monopolies and boost profits—at the expense of American families and the budgets of public and private payers around the country,” according to the press release."

Trump Fans Are Suckers and QAnon Is Perfect for Them; The Daily Beast, August 3, 2018

Rick Wilson, The Daily Beast; Trump Fans Are Suckers and QAnon Is Perfect for Them

"Conspiracies are hard. They're even harder when you're stupid.

They are, however, deeply compelling. Some people need a single, grand unifying theory of why the world refuses to line up with their expectations. When difficult realities confront people without the intellectual horsepower to understand and accept the truth, some turn to conspiracy theories to paper over the holes in their worldview. No matter how absurd, baroque, and improbable, conspiracies grow on their own like mental kudzu where inconsistencies aren't signs of illogical conclusions, but of another, deeper layer of some hidden truth, some skein of powerful forces holding the world in its grip...

[Q] works because stupid people are stupid and because Donald Trump's Administration loves what QAnon does to stoke the fires of paranoia, resentment, and division. QAnon works for Trump because people who are not knowledgeable about the world, politics, government, the intelligence community and reality more broadly are desperately looking for confirmation that they're on the winning team. Q tells them that they're on the right side of history and that for once in their dreary little lives they and only they possess the secret, hermetic knowledge from inside the esoteric cult."

The Expensive Education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley; The New York Times, August 2, 2018

Kara Swisher, The New York Times;

The Expensive Education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley

"All these companies began with a gauzy credo to change the world. But they have done that in ways they did not imagine — by weaponizing pretty much everything that could be weaponized. They have mutated human communication, so that connecting people has too often become about pitting them against one another, and turbocharged that discord to an unprecedented and damaging volume.

They have weaponized social media. They have weaponized the First Amendment. They have weaponized civic discourse. And they have weaponized, most of all, politics...

Because what he never managed to grok then was that the company he created was destined to become a template for all of humanity, the digital reflection of masses of people across the globe. Including — and especially — the bad ones.

Was it because he was a computer major who left college early and did not attend enough humanities courses that might have alerted him to the uglier aspects of human nature? Maybe."

The ethics of computer science: this researcher has a controversial proposal; Nature, July 26, 2018

Elizabeth Gibney, Nature; The ethics of computer science: this researcher has a controversial proposal

 

"In the midst of growing public concern over artificial intelligence (AI), privacy and the use of data, Brent Hecht has a controversial proposal: the computer-science community should change its peer-review process to ensure that researchers disclose any possible negative societal consequences of their work in papers, or risk rejection.

 

Hecht, a computer scientist, chairs the Future of Computing Academy (FCA), a group of young leaders in the field that pitched the policy in March. Without such measures, he says, computer scientists will blindly develop products without considering their impacts, and the field risks joining oil and tobacco as industries whose researchers history judges unfavourable.

 

The FCA is part of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in New York City, the world’s largest computing society. It, too, is making changes to encourage researchers to consider societal impacts: on 17 July, it published an updated version of its ethics code, last redrafted in 1992. The guidelines call on researchers to be alert to how their work can influence society, take steps to protect privacy and continually reassess technologies whose impact will change over time, such as those based in machine learning."