"In the parlance of 2016, we would probably refer to the Patriot's front page story as “fake news.” It's not so dissimilar to the flimsy or outright false stories that spread online in the United States this year. There may be a shared Russian link too: This week, a number of groups alleged that a Russian propaganda effort had helped spread these “fake news” stories to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton's chances in the 2016 presidential election. But during the height of the Cold War, these false stories were referred to as something else: “disinformation.” That term came into use in the early 1960s, and came into widespread use in the 1980s. It is based upon a Russian word: Dezinformatsiya. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, a high-ranking official in Romania's secret police who defected in 1978, the French-sounding word was invented by Joseph Stalin after World War II. A definition from the 1952 Great Soviet Encyclopedia called it the “dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion” and suggested that the Soviet Union was the target of such tactics from the West."
Monday, November 28, 2016
Before ‘fake news,’ there was Soviet ‘disinformation’; Washington Post, 11/26/16
Adam Taylor, Washington Post; Before ‘fake news,’ there was Soviet ‘disinformation’ :
Turning Promises Of Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Into Reality; Intellectual Property Watch, 11/21/16
Catherine Saez, Intellectual Property Watch; Turning Promises Of Marrakesh Treaty For Visually Impaired Into Reality:
"With the recent entry into force of the Marrakesh Treaty providing copyright exceptions for persons with visual impairments, a panel convened alongside last week’s World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee meeting explored ways to transform the treaty’s promises into reality. The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) met from 14-18 November. The 15 November side event was organised by the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC), which is hosted by WIPO. Recently appointed WIPO Deputy Director General for the Copyright and Creative Industries Sector Sylvie Forbin said at the event that 25 countries have now ratified the 2013 Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, which entered into force on 30 September..." Chris Friend, representing the World Blind Union, in the audience, presented the World Blind Union Guide to the Marrakesh Treaty: Facilitating Access to Books for Print Disabled Individuals, to be published by Oxford University Press in February. The guide is intended to provide an analysis of the treaty to multiple audiences including parliamentarians and policymakers who adopt domestic legislation and regulations to give effect to the treaty, judges and administrators who interpret and apply those laws, and to disability rights organisations and other civil society groups who advocate for the treaty’s implementation and effective enforcement, according to the guide executive summary."
Ethics board aiming to build trust in the city; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/28/16
Adam Smeltz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Ethics board aiming to build trust in the city:
"Since the legislation passed, several organizations designated under the measure — including the Allegheny County Bar Association, the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh and the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership — nominated volunteer board members. City council finished the confirmation process in recent months. “The board is designed to assure an open and transparent government. That’s part of our mission statement,” said Linda A. King, a lawyer hired to be the board’s executive manager on a part-time basis... The full text of the Ethics Code is available through the board’s website at http://pittsburghpa.gov/mayor/group?id=28. Anyone who suspects that a city worker, former worker, vendor or would-be vendor has broken the code can reach Ms. King at 412-255-8882 or linda.king@pittsburghpa.gov, Mr. Peduto’s administration has said."
Saturday, November 26, 2016
FAQ: What you need to know, but were afraid to ask, about the EU Open Science Cloud; Science Business, 11/24/16
Science Business Staff, Science Business; FAQ: What you need to know, but were afraid to ask, about the EU Open Science Cloud:
"Will the data in the EU science cloud be available for free? Some of it, yes; some of it, no. The EU says that not all data ‘will necessarily be free’, due to the legitimate rights of IP holders, so there will be an opportunity for some organisations to sell access to some of their data through the cloud. Private publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer, are also keen to be able to maintain charges for access to some of their services – but have also been unexpectedly enthusiastic about exploring the possible new business models that a very large, very active cloud could permit. On the other hand, some universities and research councils – among the most active proponents of free open access for research reports and text and data mining – are pushing to make the new cloud a tariff-free zone. It’s difficult to predict yet how this issue will be resolved... What about privacy or ethical concerns? Differing privacy and ethical policies and regulations in Europe, the US, and elsewhere could become sticking points which would prevent the cloud becoming fully global. There are legal restraints on where research data can be stored – essentially it has to be located in countries, and under the control of organisations, that are subject to EU data protection legislation, and that should make US-based commercial providers a little wary. Rules will need to be established to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the funding agencies, the data custodians, the cloud service providers and the researchers who use cloud-based data. The Commission has said these legal issues will be resolved as part of its broader rule-making efforts under its Digital Single Market – for privacy, copyright, and security of data. But it may not be so simple. The last time science and data rules collided was in 2014/15, when the EU was rewriting its data-privacy regulation; the original, EU-wide proposal would have had an unintended impact on medical research – leading medical universities across the EU to scream loudly that the EU was about to kill drug research. A muddled compromise resulted. Expect similar surprises in cloud regulation."
No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along; New York Times, 11/23/16
Charles M. Blow, New York Times; No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along:
"[Donald Trump] ended the meeting by saying: “I will say, The Times is, it’s a great, great American jewel. A world jewel. And I hope we can all get along well.”... You slammed Clinton for destroying emails, then Newsweek reported last month that your companies “destroyed emails in defiance of court orders.” You slammed Clinton and the Clinton Foundation for paid speeches and conflicts of interest, then it turned out that, as BuzzFeed reported, the Trump Foundation received a $150,000 donation in exchange for your giving a 2015 speech made by video to a conference in Ukraine. You slammed Clinton about conflicts of interest while she was secretary of state, and now your possible conflicts of interest are popping up like mushrooms in a marsh. You are a fraud and a charlatan. Yes, you will be president, but you will not get any breaks just because one branch of your forked tongue is silver. I am not easily duped by dopes. I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but rather to speak up for truth and honor and inclusion. This isn’t just about you, but also about the moral compass of those who see you for who and what you are, and know the darkness you herald is only held at bay by the lights of truth."
Jared Kushner Considers Losing Democratic Friends “Exfoliation.” But What Kind of Exfoliation?; Slate, 11/23/16
L. V. Anderson, Slate; Jared Kushner Considers Losing Democratic Friends “Exfoliation.” But What Kind of Exfoliation? :
"Asked by Forbes’ Steven Bertoni about the friends who have cut ties with Kushner since he began advising the Trump campaign, Kushner sounded blasé. “I call it an exfoliation,” he replied. “Anyone who was willing to change a friendship or not do business because of who somebody supports in politics is not somebody who has a lot of character.” Exfoliation is an apt choice of metaphor for Kushner, who was recently described by a journalist as having “an eerily flawless complexion.” Surely someone with such glowing skin has ample firsthand knowledge of removing dead surface cells to boost skin’s health and appearance. But Kushner’s metaphor raises more questions than it answers. If losing friends and associates who value equality, tolerance, and inclusion more than social climbing is akin to exfoliation, what kind of exfoliation is it?"
Oh Good, a “Professor Watch List”; Slate, 11/23/16
Rebecca Schuman, Slate; Oh Good, a “Professor Watch List” :
"This Monday, an organization called Turning Point USA launched a website called the Professor Watchlist, which provides the full names, locations, offenses—and sometimes photographs—of liberal academics it has singled out for ignominy. In any other year in recent memory on this continent, these would be two unrelated events. But in the United States in late 2016, as the president-elect’s surrogates cite Japanese internment as a “precedent” for what may come, any “watch list” of any sort is worrying. One that targets outspoken intellectuals with views that oppose a mercurial future president who spent the weekend tweeting petulantly at the cast of a Broadway play? Abjectly terrifying.The mission of the watch list, according to its website, is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The site invites users to nominate candidates, asking that they “submit a tip” about the nefarious pinkos who teach them (that’s S-C-H-U-M-A-N with one n, by the way). Some of the professors on the list have responded thoughtfully to their inclusion; others on social media have trolled the list with complaints about Indiana Jones and Jesus... Don’t misunderstand me. The answer is not to take the site down altogether, for that would be censorship, and censorship is not the solution, just like it isn’t the solution when the 45th president of the United States gets his fee-fees hurt. But in this time of national reckoning, responsible conservatives need to pay attention to context. Why not, for example, a site that indexes classroom bias by incident and date, instead of by the professor’s name?"
Friday, November 25, 2016
United States: Lee v. Tam: Disparaging Trademarks At The Supreme Court; Mondaq, 11/24/16
Mark Hannemann, Thomas R. Makin, Matthew G. Berkowitz, Patrick Colsher, Joseph Purcell and Eric Lucas, Mondaq; United States: Lee v. Tam: Disparaging Trademarks At The Supreme Court:
"On April 20, 2016, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the "PTO") petitioned for a writ of certiorari on the following question: Whether the disparagement provision in 15 U.S.C. 1052(a), which provides that no trademark shall be refused registration on account of its nature unless, inter alia, it "[c]onsists of... matter which may disparage... persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute," is facially invalid under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment."
Have I Got a Play for You; Slate, 11/25/16
Jordana Williams, Slate; Have I Got a Play for You:
"Flipping now through our patchwork golem of a script, aghast, I estimate that 80 percent of what we performed actually appears in the original Company. We left lengthy passages essentially unaltered, but fully rewrote others. Even when the lines and lyrics were unchanged, we took subtler liberties, like converting “Being Alive,” Bobby’s solo meditation on loneliness and longing, into a full company number featuring three-part harmony... So, where were the grown-ups when all of this was happening? Why didn’t they stop us, or at least advise us that our violations of copyright ranged from artistically disastrous to legally actionable? Now that I have kids of my own, I can guess why they stepped back and let us go hog wild. They knew we’d have the rest of our lives to question and edit ourselves (and acquire permission before monkeying with someone else’s art). The heedlessness we displayed would be repellent in an adult, but is arguably kind of awesome in a bunch of kids. My son is working on his first musical, the soon-to-be smash hit Army Chickens. He’s a very practical boy, so early on, he came to my husband and me with a bunch of questions about budgets and ticket prices and actor pay and set construction needs. “No!” I shouted, probably too vehemently. “Just write the thing however you like.” And why not? He’ll never know what his wildest dreams are if he doesn’t start out as if nothing is impossible."
Beyond business: Disgraced Theranos bloodied family, friends, neighbors; Ars Technica, 11/23/16
Beth Mole, Ars Technica; Beyond business: Disgraced Theranos bloodied family, friends, neighbors:
"If you think your Thanksgiving dinner conversation will be awkward and stressful this year, just be glad you and your family weren’t involved with Theranos. As the once highly regarded blood-testing company crumbles under technological scandals and regulatory sanctions, the death toll of relationships among neighbors, friends, families, and long-standing partners is mounting. With lawsuits, investigative reports, and new accounts from a whistleblower, the company’s culture and inner-workings—which Theranos worked hard to obfuscate—are finally becoming clear. And what’s emerged are patterns of dishonesty, callousness, and litigiousness—if not outright belligerence. Test of blood Perhaps most startling of the recent revelations is the identity and family drama of one Theranos whistleblower: Tyler Shultz, grandson of George Shultz, the former secretary of state, who also happens to be a Theranos advisor. An exposé by The Wall Street Journal lays out how in the course of eight months, Tyler Shultz went from a bright-eyed Theranos employee to disgruntled whistleblower, personally disparaged by Theranos’ then-president and desperately trying to convince his grandfather to wash his hands of the doomed company."
Theranos Whistleblower Shook the Company—and His Family; Wall Street Journal, 11/18/16
John Carreyrou, Wall Street Journal; Theranos Whistleblower Shook the Company—and His Family:
"After working at Theranos Inc. for eight months, Tyler Shultz decided he had seen enough. On April 11, 2014, he emailed company founder Elizabeth Holmes to complain that Theranos had doctored research and ignored failed quality-control checks."
A short history of fake news: Conservatives believed all sorts of crap long before Facebook; Salon, 11/25/16
Matthew Sheffield, Salon; A short history of fake news: Conservatives believed all sorts of crap long before Facebook:
"Conspiracy theories have long been popular in book form among conservatives as well. Since the 1950s literally scores of books have been published that promoting the theory that former president Dwight Eisenhower was a secret communist or revealing the liberal plan to force all children to become gay and they managed to sell millions of copies over the years. Most famous of these were probably John A. Stormer’s “None Dare Call It Treason” and Gary Allen and Larry Abraham’s “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” which spread the John Birch Society’s paranoid message about a worldwide conspiratorial elite of bankers, socialists and Jews. (One could hear strong echoes of the Birch message in Donald Trump’s campaign.) “These books circulated far more widely than traditional conservative media — there were millions of copies,” said historian Nicole Hemmer, author of the new book “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” Like the fake news sites of today, the conspiracy-theory literature that was so popular in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, Hemmer said, adopted many of the trappings of more credible publications. “People saw things as having validity if they had footnotes,” she told Salon, noting “there was a validity in things that were presented as news that’s different from other sources of opinion or entertainment.”"
Facebook doesn't need to ban fake news to fight it; Guardian,11/25/16
Alex Hern, Guardian; Facebook doesn't need to ban fake news to fight it:
"Those examples are the obvious extreme of Facebook’s problem: straightforward hoaxes, mendaciously claiming to be sites that they aren’t. Dealing with them should be possible, and may even be something the social network can tackle algorithmically, as it prefers to do. But they exist at the far end of a sliding scale, and there’s little agreement on where to draw the line. Open questions like this explain why many are wary of pushing Facebook to “take action” against fake news. “Do we really want Facebook exercising this sort of top-down power to determine what is true or false?” asks Politico’s Jack Shafer. “Wouldn’t we be revolted if one company owned all the newsstands and decided what was proper and improper reading fare?” The thing is, Facebook isn’t like the newsstands. And it’s the differences between the two that are causing many of the problems we see today."
Germany is worried about fake news and bots ahead of election; The Verge, 11/25/16
Amar Toor, The Verge; Germany is worried about fake news and bots ahead of election:
"Angela Merkel this week warned that fake news and bots may influence Germany’s national elections next year, days after she announced plans to seek a fourth term as the country’s chancellor. In a speech to parliament on Wednesday, Merkel said that fake news and bots have “manipulated” public opinion online, adding that lawmakers must “confront this phenomenon and if necessary, regulate it," the AFP reports. "Something has changed — as globalization has marched on, [political] debate is taking place in a completely new media environment. Opinions aren't formed the way they were 25 years ago," Merkel said. "Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them." Donald Trump’s victory in this month’s presidential elections has sparked a debate over the role that fake news played in the US campaign, with some critics saying that Facebook and Twitter should do more to curb misinformation on its platforms. Facebook and Google this month announced that they will exclude fake news sites from their ad networks, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that the social network is taking steps to limit the spread of misinformation online."
The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy; Guardian, 11/25/16
Andrew Smith, Guardian; The pedlars of fake news are corroding democracy:
"With misinformation being incentivised in this way, who could be surprised when Buzzfeed found a group of young Macedonians copying the most outlandish fabrications to more than 140 specially created pro-Trump websites and sexing up the headlines to gain clicks and go viral on Facebook? This is important, because a recent study by the Pew Research Centre found a majority of American adults using Facebook as a source of news (which means Britain is sure to follow). Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been resistant to the notion that his company, social media, or the web in general are undermining democracy (“a pretty crazy idea”), even after dozens of his own staff formed a covert taskforce to address the problem post-election. It’s easy to see why he bridles too, because if he accepts the truth that his algorithms function no more objectively than a human editor, then he bears responsibility for their choices. And once he does that, he allows the equally obvious truth that Facebook, whether it wants to be or not, is now a media organisation and must vouch for the information it disseminates... What can be done? O’Neil champions the idea of a Hippocratic oath for the “quants”, people who create and nurture algorithms, and of regular algorithmic audits to assess their effects. More fundamentally, it would be easy for us to decide as a society and legislate accordingly that Facebook et al should be treated as media organisations, and held accountable for the information from which they profit. And it’s important that we act now, because the same truth trolls who disgraced the US election are turning their fire on the socially minded entrepreneur Elon Musk, perhaps fearful that he might go into politics – and rest assured that it won’t end there."
Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’; New York Times, 11/25/16
Andrew Higgins, Mike McIntire, Gabriel J.X. Dance, New York Times; Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’ :
"Mr. Latsabidze, who apparently has broken no laws, said that any crackdown on fake news might work in the short term but that “something else will come along to replace it.” “If they want to, they can control everything,” he said, “but this will stop freedom of speech.” For now, the postelection period has been bad for business, with a sharp fall in the appetite for incendiary political news favoring Mr. Trump."
Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say; Washington Post, 11/24/16
Craig Timberg, Washington Post; Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say:
"The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem. There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders."
Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds; NPR, 11/23/16
Camila Domonoske, NPR; Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds:
"Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected. In exercise after exercise, the researchers were "shocked" — their word, not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information. The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a "reasonable bar" of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles... The solution, they write, is to teach students — or, really, all Internet users — to read like fact checkers. That means not just reading "vertically," on a single page or source, but looking for other sources — as well as not taking "About" pages as evidence of neutrality, and not assuming Google ranks results by reliability. "The kinds of duties that used to be the responsibility of editors, of librarians now fall on the shoulders of anyone who uses a screen to become informed about the world," Wineburg told NPR. "And so the response is not to take away these rights from ordinary citizens but to teach them how to thoughtfully engage in information seeking and evaluating in a cacophonous democracy.""
We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned; NPR, 11/23/16
Laura Sydell, NPR: We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned:
"Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it."
America's fake news problem predates Facebook; Vox, 11/21/16
Jason Mittell and Chuck Tryon, Vox; America's fake news problem predates Facebook:
"What these examples suggest is that there is a large infrastructure in place that allows conservative media to circulate and disseminate false information framed as fact. While Facebook can serve as an easy target because of its hypervisibility and its faltering response to the controversies over its newsfeed, it is too simplistic to blame our partisan media culture on a faulty algorithm alone. As Daniel Kreiss argues at Culture Digitally, decades of fake news emerging from right-wing sources have actively and strategically built toward this moment, each helping to make such circulation of misinformation more and more acceptable. And as Jeet Heer contends at the New Republic, the rise of fake news is meeting a demand from right-wing voters looking for reasons to support their team, rather than information to guide their actions — a demand that has been cultivated by decades of conservative news striving to confirm the beliefs of its consumers. Which brings us to today, where, as opponents of Trump’s candidacy and eventual presidency rally to avoid “normalizing” his ideas and approach, the mainstreaming of conservative fake news is a clear case of the dangers of such normalization. As we increasingly accept inaccurate peddlers of politicized misinformation as “news,” we allow our citizenry to be horrifically misinformed as part of this new normal."
I’ve Been Making Viral Fake News for the Last Six Months. It’s Way Too Easy to Dupe the Right on the Internet.; Daily Beast, 11/21/16
Marco Chacon, Daily Beast; I’ve Been Making Viral Fake News for the Last Six Months. It’s Way Too Easy to Dupe the Right on the Internet. :
"For moderates, I think it’s a bit easier to avoid pitfalls: The mainstream news may not always be accurate on everything but there is a lot of it and they get the main points right. For conservatives there is no trusted media. There are only trusted positions. Breitbart, World Net Daily, even InfoWars now count as on-my-side places where they believe the real truth lies. When the only news you are willing to believe is partisan news, you are susceptible to stories written “in your language” that are complete, obvious, utter fabrications."
Here’s How to Fix Facebook’s Fake News; Daily Beast, 11/19/16
Michael Casey, Oliver Luckett, Daily Beast; Here’s How to Fix Facebook’s Fake News:
"[...W]e must demand transparency in the algorithms with which Facebook and other companies curate our newsfeeds. The software should be open to scrutiny and stripped of the secretive distortions with which it creates captive pools of like-minded users. The way Facebook’s software has evolved, it is now relentlessly, iteratively steering human beings into ideology camps, reinforcing groupthink and building an uncompromising liberal-versus-conservative divide. Let’s be clear: This is no accident; this is a business model. Algorithmic curating allows social media platforms to deliver clearly defined, niche markets—Facebook’s ad marketers call them “look-alike audiences”—to advertisers who pay a “boost” fee to gain prominent placement with those targeted feeds."
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Finally Details Fake News Countermeasures; Reuters via Huffington Post, 11/19/16
Reuters via Huffington Post; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Finally Details Fake News Countermeasures:
"[Mark Zuckerberg] also said Facebook would make it easier to report false content, work with third-party verification organizations and journalists on fact-checking efforts, and explore posting warning labels on content that has been flagged as false. The company will also try to prevent fake-news providers from making money through its advertising system, as it had previously announced. Zuckerberg said Facebook must be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content. “We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties,” he said."
Thursday, November 24, 2016
‘Fraud is not a trade secret’: How a 27-year-old blew the whistle on Theranos; MarketWatch, 11/17/16
Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch; ‘Fraud is not a trade secret’: How a 27-year-old blew the whistle on Theranos’ :
[Kip Currier: Ethics instructors of all stripes were served up a whopping good case study with the story of Tyler Schultz (grandson of former Secretary of State George Schultz) exposing the dazzlingly fraudulent actions of health tech powerhouse, Theranos, Inc. and its now-disgraced CEO Elizabeth Holmes. This is one that should and will be studied in MBA programs and ethics courses for years.] "‘Fraud is not a trade secret. I refuse to allow bullying, intimidation and threat of legal action to take away my First Amendment right to speak out against wrongdoing.’"
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Teaching an Algorithm to Understand Right and Wrong; Harvard Business Review, 11/15/16
Greg Satell, Harvard Business Review; Teaching an Algorithm to Understand Right and Wrong:
[Kip Currier: This thought-provoking Harvard Business Review article by Greg Satell marks the 1,000th post to this blog in 2016--more than I've posted in the entire previous 6 years since starting the Ethics blog in 2010. Anecdotally, and unsurprisingly, much of this year's posted corpus was plucked from the avalanche of ethics-related content generated via the most tumultuous Presidential Election in U.S. history. Ethics issues in Cyberhacking, Email and Social Media usage, Cyberbullying, Sexual Harassment, Diversity and Inclusion, Surveillance, Privacy, Censorship, "Truth" (Aside #1: Oxford Dictionaries recently declared "post-truth" the Word of the Year!), Fact-checking, Media responsibility, Self-driving cars (Aside #2: I passed an Uber test car on the way to the University of Pittsburgh campus this morning, giving a nod and a thumbs up to the two people sitting in the front seats of their metallic grey-hued autonomous vehicle wending the curves of Bigelow Boulevard's bluffs), and AI ethics provided a glut (and at times, like this summer, what felt like an unrelenting information-tsunami) of postable fodder. Last week's post-2016 election White-Hot-Topic, "Fake News"--with first-hand accounts of cringe-worthy click-incentivized content crafted by transparently unrepentant fake news scribes--remains a still-smoldering one for the blogosphere this week, vying with Conflicts of Interest for the #1 spot at the top. Or bottom, as it were. No risk in predicting that all of these thorny topics will continue to be dissected and debated in 2017. And that ethics issues--both in general and those with an information twist--are more relevant and wide-ranging than ever in our wired world. ] "In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that it is a fact that “all knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good,” but then continues, “What then do we mean by the good?” That, in essence, encapsulates the ethical dilemma. We all agree that we should be good and just, but it’s much harder to decide what that entails. Since Aristotle’s time, the questions he raised have been continually discussed and debated. From the works of great philosophers like Kant, Bentham, and Rawls to modern-day cocktail parties and late-night dorm room bull sessions, the issues are endlessly mulled over and argued about but never come to a satisfying conclusion. Today, as we enter a “cognitive era” of thinking machines, the problem of what should guide our actions is gaining newfound importance. If we find it so difficult to denote the principles by which a person should act justly and wisely, then how are we to encode them within the artificial intelligences we are creating? It is a question that we need to come up with answers for soon."
Scholars Delve Deeper Into The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence; NPR, 11/21/16
NPR Staff, NPR; Scholars Delve Deeper Into The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence:
"This month, a law firm gave Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University $10 million to explore the ethics of artificial intelligence — or AI. This comes after industry leaders recently joined together to form the group called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. Peter Kalis is chairman of the law firm, K&L Gates. He says technology is dashing ahead of the law, leading to questions that were never taken seriously before. Such as what happens when you make robots that are smart, independent thinkers — and then try to limit their autonomy?... The issues go beyond self-driving cars and renegade robots. Inside the next generation of smartphones, in those chips embedded in home appliances, and the ever-expanding collection of personal data being stored in the "cloud," questions about what's right and wrong are open to study."
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth; New York Times, 11/20/16
Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth:
"Today’s fake news is limited only by the imaginations of its inventors and the number of shares it can garner on Facebook or Twitter. (To wit: The one million shares of the preposterous notion that Mrs. Clinton secretly sold weapons to ISIS. BuzzFeed News — which has excelled at illuminating the fake news problem — highlighted that example in its alarming analysis showing that during the campaign cycle fake news was shared among Facebook users more often than real news was.) That’s why people who care about the truth — citizens, journalists and, let’s hope, social media giants like Facebook, too — will have to come up with a solution to this informational nihilism, fast. It’s easier said than done. The combination of attacks seeking to delegitimize serious news organizations and a drop in overall trust in the news media has made many people wary of legitimate fact-checking."
Monday, November 21, 2016
How to avoid getting conned by fake news sites; CNet, 11/19/16
Laura Hautala, CNet; How to avoid getting conned by fake news sites:
"How to flag fake news sites The best tool at your disposal, of course, is common sense. No matter what your political bent, if a story serves only to reinforce your beliefs, it's best to be extra skeptical before sharing it. If a report is purportedly based on other news stories, find the original source of the information. You might find some of the quotes are correct, but the rest may have been taken out of context or fabricated. If the potentially false story you're reading doesn't link to an original source, well, that's a bad sign. Use a search engine to look for the keywords in the story to see if that "news" is being reported by any other outlets."
Just how partisan is Facebook's fake news? We tested it; PC World, 11/21/16
Mark Hachman, PCWorld; Just how partisan is Facebook's fake news? We tested it:
"We decided to test who’s seeing this partisan fake news, who’s supplying it, and just how obvious it is. We began our investigation last Monday, as the fake-news controversy gained momentum—and Facebook and Google began blocking sites that traffic in disinformation from their respective advertising networks. We set up two Facebook accounts, one favoring Hillary Clinton, and the other supporting Trump, then let Facebook recommend a series of news pages. In effect, we were asking Facebook to be our news service. Then we sat back and watched the news roll in. We looked closely at each post to determine whether it was real news, fake news, or something in between."
City ethics board opens an office; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/21/16
Adam Smeltz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; City ethics board opens an office:
"Pittsburgh officials opened an office last week for the city’s reconstituted Ethics Hearing Board. The board held its first public meeting in several years on Nov. 3, following new ethics legislation approved by Mayor Bill Peduto in October 2015. Board members will receive and investigate complaints under the reworked city Ethics Code, which requires independent and impartial conduct by city workers... The board, which also can offer advice on ethical conduct, has a website."
Obama: Trump should follow my example on ethics; USA Today, 11/21/16
Gregory Korte, USA Today; Obama: Trump should follow my example on ethics:
"Obama said the approach he's taken is to "not just meet the letter of the law but to go well beyond the letter to the spirit." And he said those ethical standards need to extend to top administration officials, even on questions about travel and gifts. He quoted his first White House counsel, Greg Craig: "'If it sounds like it would be fun, then you can't do it.' That's a general test. 'If it sounds like something you would enjoy or appreciate, no go.' "And as a consequence, and I'll knock on some wood here, because we've got two months left, I am extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations," he said."
Beware of imported contacts, social media statements on legal issues, ethics opinion says; ABA Journal, 11/21/16
Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; Beware of imported contacts, social media statements on legal issues, ethics opinion says:
"The ethics committee of the District of Columbia Bar is advising lawyers about some social media dangers in two ethics opinions released this month... One “apparently novel warning” is about lawyers who take positions on legal issues when blogging or tweeting, according to the ABA BNA Lawyer’s Manual. The ethics opinion says a lawyer’s positions on social media could be adverse to the interest of a client, inadvertently creating a conflict... Another new topic addressed is about the danger of allowing social media websites such as LinkedIn to access email contacts."
Gold Star Family Says It Was Booed By First-Class Passengers On Flight To Pick Up Son’s Body; Huffington Post, 11/20/16
Ed Mazza, Huffington Post; Gold Star Family Says It Was Booed By First-Class Passengers On Flight To Pick Up Son’s Body:
"Sgt. John Perry was killed on Nov. 12 in a suicide attack inside Bagram Airfield, a NATO base in Afghanistan. Pfc. Tyler R. Iubelt of Tamaroa, Illinois, and two civilian contractors were also killed, and 17 others wounded. Perry said his son was able to stop the bomber before he reached his target, a 5K race held inside the base... Perry, himself a veteran, called on the public to be more empathetic to the military and their family members. “Generally, as Americans, we need to be more compassionate to each other and to understand and listen and just stay calm,” he told the Army Times."
How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study; New York Times, 11/20/16
Sapna Maheshwari, New York Times; How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study:
"While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere. Here, The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker’s now-deleted declaration on Twitter the night after the election turned into a fake-news phenomenon. It is an example of how, in an ever-connected world where speed often takes precedence over truth, an observation by a private citizen can quickly become a talking point, even as it is being proved false."
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Retired NBA commissioner David Stern went off about cheating and ethics; Quartz, 11/19/16
Oliver Staley, Quartz; Retired NBA commissioner David Stern went off about cheating and ethics:
"Cheating and ethical lapses are pervasive, from soccer stars evading taxes and state-sanctioned doping in the Olympics, to companies giving lip-service to social responsibility while gouging customers, Stern said Nov. 18 at a forum about business ethics and leadership hosted by Columbia Business School... “It’s too easy,” he said. “Every company has a head of corporate responsibility, you form a foundation, you give all your employees Friday off to do charity, blah, blah, blah. Then you fix prices at a business association meeting.” He took aim at Facebook, which said it has misreported how many people view its ads, and allowed the spread of fake news on its platform. The directors of venture-capital backed companies need to speak up, he said. “Where are the boards?” he said."
Whose life should your car save?; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/20/16
Azim Shariff, Iyad Rahwan and Jean-Francois Bonnefon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Whose life should your car save?; Whose life should your car save? :
"The widespread use of self-driving cars promises to bring substantial benefits to transportation efficiency, public safety and personal well-being. Car manufacturers are working to overcome the remaining technical challenges that stand in the way of this future. Our research, however, shows that there is also an important ethical dilemma that must be solved before people will be comfortable trusting their lives to these cars. As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has noted, autonomous cars may find themselves in circumstances in which the car must choose between risks to its passengers and risks to a potentially greater number of pedestrians. Imagine a situation in which the car must either run off the road or plow through a large crowd of people: Whose risk should the car’s algorithm aim to minimize? This dilemma was explored in studies that we recently published in the journal Science... This is why, despite its mixed messages, Mercedes-Benz should be applauded for speaking out on the subject. The company acknowledges that to “clarify these issues of law and ethics in the long term will require broad international discourse.”"
Tim Berners-Lee warns of danger of chaos in unprotected public data; Guardian, 11/1/16
Alice Ross, Guardian; Tim Berners-Lee warns of danger of chaos in unprotected public data:
"Asked about whether open data could have security vulnerabilities, Berners-Lee said criminals could manipulate open data for profit, for example by placing bets on the bank rate or consumer price index and then hacking into the sites where the data is published and switching the figures. “If you falsify government data then there are all kinds of ways that you could get financial gain, so yes,” he said, “it’s important that even though people think about open data as not a big security problem, it is from the point of view of being accurate.”... Berners-Lee said during a presentation that a key challenge, particularly in the era of Brexit and Donald Trump, was making reliable data available to people who felt disenfranchised: “How can we help everyone in the country feel that they have access to good quality information … whether they get it on the web or not – maybe they get it through TV and radio? How can we restore a culture and civilisation based on knowledge … and a democratic system based on knowledge, based on facts and truth?”"
Berners-Lee raises spectre of weaponized open data; Naked Security, 11/4/16
Bill Camarda, Naked Security; Berners-Lee raises spectre of weaponized open data:
"Whether data is coming from governments or corporations – and whether it’s formally “open” or simply “widely available” like AP’s Twitter feed – it’s increasingly vulnerable to deliberate falsification. But, for governments and others who believe in the open data movement, it’s no longer enough to protect privacy when they release data, or even to ensure its quality and consistency – already significant challenges. From now on, they’ll need to protect it against deliberate sabotage, too."
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Fake News in U.S. Election? Elsewhere, That’s Nothing New; New York Times, 11/17/16
Paul Mozur and Mark Scott, New York Times; Fake News in U.S. Election? Elsewhere, That’s Nothing New:
"Well before last week’s American election threw Facebook’s status as a digital-era news source into the spotlight, leaders, advocacy groups and minorities worldwide have contended with an onslaught of online misinformation and abuse that has had real-world political repercussions. And for years, the social network did little to clamp down on the false news... Some governments are pushing back, sometimes with undemocratic consequences. Ms. Merkel has said she is considering plans to force social networks to make public how they rank news online. Some African countries have banned the use of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter before elections. Indonesia’s government has closed sites that it says promote fake news, though experts say some portals were also targeted for political reasons. Facebook said on Thursday that the social network was a place for people to stay informed and that what people saw in their news feed was overwhelmingly authentic. The Silicon Valley company previously denied that it failed to deal with misinformation and said it continues to monitor the social network so that it meets existing standards."
Facebook Considering Ways to Combat Fake News, Mark Zuckerberg Says; New York Times, 11/19/16
Mike Isaac, New York Times; Facebook Considering Ways to Combat Fake News, Mark Zuckerberg Says:
"“The problems here are complex, both technically and philosophically,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “We believe in giving people a voice, which means erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible.”... Mr. Zuckerberg made it clear that Facebook would take care to avoid looking or acting like a media company, a label it has frequently resisted. “We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties.”"
Fixation on Fake News Overshadows Waning Trust in Real Reporting; New York Times, 11/18/16
John Herrman, New York Times; Fixation on Fake News Overshadows Waning Trust in Real Reporting:
"Media companies have spent years looking to Facebook, waiting for the company to present a solution to their mounting business concerns despite, or perhaps because of, its being credited with causing those concerns. Some have come to the realization that this was mistaken, even absurd. Those who expect the operator of the dominant media ecosystem of our time, in response to getting caught promoting lies, to suddenly return authority to the companies it has superseded are in for a similar surprise."
60 percent of Russians think Internet censorship is necessary, poll finds; Washington Post, 11/18/16
Adam Taylor, Washington Post; 60 percent of Russians think Internet censorship is necessary, poll finds:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the country does not have the legal authority to ban websites. Though some smaller websites have been blocked at some points, experts doubted Russia had the capability to implement more widespread online censorship. There have been a number of recent signs that the country may be rethinking its approach, however. In April, Konstantin Malofeev, a wealthy businessman with links to the Kremlin who runs the pro-censorship lobbying group Safe Internet League, traveled to China to meet with the architects of that country's notorious “great firewall.”... Polling by Levada and other organizations in Russia has long shown widespread support for Internet censorship. According to a study conducted in May 2014 by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), 59 percent of Russians believed that websites that showed gay pornographic content should be censored by the government, while 46 percent said social networks that allowed people to organize anti-government protests should be censored and 45 percent said the videos by the anti-government art group Pussy Riot should be banned."
In the war on fake news, school librarians have a huge role to play; The Verge, 11/16/16
Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Verge; In the war on fake news, school librarians have a huge role to play:
"On top of Facebook’s issues, the first Google search result for election results for several hours on Monday was a tiny conspiracy blog that wrongly showed Trump winning the popular vote. Google and Facebook both announced on Monday that they would block fake news sources from using their ad networks (one of the key ways that small to moderately sized websites make money), but the issue of fake news creeping up in search results and news feeds is still an urgent one. All of this is compounded by the reality that a lot of people don’t know fake news when they see it, sensationalized reports are more likely to go viral on social media than sane ones, and distrust of traditional (and genuinely more reliable) media sources is rising. To get a better idea of how we can fight misinformation, The Verge talked to Professor Nicole A. Cooke of the University of Illinois. Professor Cooke works in the University’s top-ranked School of Information Sciences, focusing on human information behavior, information literacy, and diversity in librarianship. We discussed why it seems to be getting harder and harder for people to keep track of the truth, what libraries are doing to help them, and what we all need to do going forward."
Friday, November 18, 2016
2016’s biggest loser; Washington Post, 11/18/16
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post; 2016’s biggest loser:
"What’s clear is that news consumers must be extra-vigilant in selecting news sources, while also being self-critical about those choices. The mainstream media need to work harder at presenting balanced reporting to rebuild trust. And education programs aimed at teaching students how to evaluate news, such as those created by the News Literacy Project, need greater public support and an accelerated timeline."
As fake news takes over Facebook feeds, many are taking satire as fact; Guardian, 11/17/16
Nicky Woolf, Guardian; As fake news takes over Facebook feeds, many are taking satire as fact:
"Facebook has a serious fake news problem, a major contributor to what has been called the “post-truth” era... In a way, the problem is not a new one. Publications such as the National Enquirer in the US have long bent the truth, often shamelessly. But now, a fake story can much more easily masquerade as real because in Facebook’s walled garden all the posts look largely the same. Even the most savvy news consumers can be tricked this way."
Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’; Washington Post, 11/17/16
Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post; Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’ :
"You’ve been writing fake news for a while now — you’re kind of like the OG Facebook news hoaxer. Well, I’d call it hoaxing or fake news. You’d call it parody or satire. How is that scene different now than it was three or five years ago? Why did something like your story about Obama invalidating the election results (almost 250,000 Facebook shares, as of this writing) go so viral? Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it. You mentioned Trump, and you’ve probably heard the argument, or the concern, that fake news somehow helped him get elected. What do you make of that? My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything."
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