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."

What is QAnon? Explaining the bizarre rightwing conspiracy theory; The Guardian, July 30, 2018

Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian; What is QAnon? Explaining the bizarre rightwing conspiracy theory

"Meet Q

On 28 October 2017, “Q” emerged from the primordial swamp of the internet on the message board 4chan. In a thread called “Calm Before the Storm”, and in subsequent posts, Q established his legend as a government insider with top security clearance who knew the truth about a secret struggle for power involving Donald Trump, the “deep state”, Robert Mueller, the Clintons, pedophile rings, and other stuff.

Since then, Q has continued to drop “breadcrumbs” on 4chan and 8chan, fostering a “QAnon” community devoted to decoding Q’s messages and understanding the real truth about, well, everything...

Imagine a mix of Pizzagate, InfoWars and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, multiplied by the power of the internet...

For years now, YouTube has been a quagmire of conspiracy theories, the more outrageous and thinly sourced the better. Under pressure from the mainstream media for the platform’s tendency to promote inflammatory and false information in the aftermath of mass shootings and other breaking news events, YouTube has introduced reforms that it claims will promote more “authoritative” news sources.

A YouTube spokesperson provided a statement that did not directly address the Guardian’s questions about the Hanks videos, but noted that the company’s work to “better surface and promote news and authoritative sources” is “still in its early stages”."

What Is QAnon: Explaining the Internet Conspiracy Theory That Showed Up at a Trump Rally; The New York Times, August 1, 2018

Justin Bank, Liam Stack and Daniel Victor, The New York Times;

What Is QAnon: Explaining the Internet Conspiracy Theory That Showed Up at a Trump Rally

 

"Why should I care about a fringe corner of the internet?

Because QAnon is not limited to a fringe corner of the internet. In addition to its front-and-center presence at Mr. Trump’s rally, it has been promoted by celebrities including Roseanne Barr and Curt Schilling, the former baseball star who has a podcast for Breitbart.

The paranoid worldview has crossed over from the internet into the real world several times in recent months. On more than one occasion, people believed to be followers of QAnon have shown up — sometimes with weapons — in places that the character told them were somehow connected to anti-Trump conspiracies.

“The biggest danger is you are one mentally unstable person away from the next massive incident that defines whatever happens next,” Mr. Decker said. “The next Pizzagate, which for better or worse did define the political conversation for a while.”"

‘We are Q’: A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump’s ‘MAGA’ tour; The Washington Post, August 1, 2018

Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Washington Post; ‘We are Q’: A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump’s ‘MAGA’ tour

"The thread invited “requests to Q,” an anonymous user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance, waging war against the so-called deep state in service to the 45th president. “Q” feeds disciples, or “bakers,” scraps of intelligence, or “bread crumbs,” that they scramble to bake into an understanding of the “storm” — the community’s term, drawn from Trump’s cryptic reference last year to “the calm before the storm” — for the president’s final conquest over elites, globalists and deep-state saboteurs.

What Tuesday’s rally in Tampa made apparent is that devotees of these falsehoods — some of which are specific to faith in the president, others garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones — don’t just exist in the far reaches of the Web."

The Shape of Mis- and Disinformation; Slate, July 26, 2018

[Podcast] April Glaser and Will Oremus, Slate; The Shape of Mis- and Disinformation

"In recent weeks, Facebook and YouTube have strained to explain why they won’t ban Alex Jones’ Infowars, which has used its verified accounts to spread false news and dangerous conspiracy theories on the platforms. Meanwhile, the midterms are approaching, and Facebook won’t say definitively whether the company has found any efforts by foreign actors to disrupt the elections. Facebook did recently say that it will start to remove misinformation if it may lead to violence, a response to worrisome trends in Myanmar, India, other countries. The social media platforms are being called on to explain how they deal with information that is wrong—a question made even more complicated because the problem takes so many forms.

To understand the many forms of misinformation and disinformation on social media, we recently spoke with Claire Wardle, the executive director of First Draft, a nonprofit news-literacy and fact-checking outfit based at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, for Slate’s tech podcast If Then. We discussed how fake news spreads on different platforms, where it’s coming from, and how journalists might think—or rethink—their role in covering it"

China takes its political censorship global. Will America resist?; The Washington Post, July 26, 2018

Josh Rogin, The Washington Post; China takes its political censorship global. Will America resist?

"The Xi regime claims that any public speech criticizing Communist Party propaganda is a grave offense to 1.3 billion Chinese people. Never mind that Twitter and Instagram are blocked in China: Beijing is trying to enforce its political censorship outside its borders and online. That can’t be tolerated. The whole world cannot become a “safe space” for Chinese sensitivities.

By accommodating China’s political demands, even partially, airlines are abetting a false depiction of U.S. policy on Taiwan and playing into China’s game, said Samantha Hoffman, visiting fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies...

The Chinese government is also trying to expand its domestic “social credit system” to apply to foreign firms. It’s Beijing’s way of shaping international norms according to its criteria, Hoffman explained in a report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute."

Google 'working on censored search engine' for China; The Guardian, August 1, 2018

Alex Hern and agencies, The Guardian; Google 'working on censored search engine' for China

"The Chinese human rights community said Google acquiescing to China’s censorship would be a “dark day for internet freedom”.

“It is impossible to see how such a move is compatible with Google’s ‘Do the right thing’ motto, and we are calling on the company to change course,” said Patrick Poon, China Researcher at Amnesty International.

“For the world’s biggest search engine to adopt such extreme measures would be a gross attack on freedom of information and internet freedom. In putting profits before human rights, Google would be setting a chilling precedent and handing the Chinese government a victory."

'Peanuts' First Black Character Franklin Turns 50; NPR, July 30, 2018

Cecilia Lei and James Delahoussaye, NPR; 'Peanuts' First Black Character Franklin Turns 50

"It was especially defining for a 6-year-old Robb Armstrong, author of Fearless: A Cartoonist's Guide to Life and creator of JumpStart, one of the most widely syndicated black comic strips ever.

"1968 is a very vivid year for me," Armstrong told NPR's Renee Montagne in an interview for Weekend Edition. Two months after King was killed, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Armstrong's older brother also died that year, just 30 days before Franklin's debut.

For Armstrong, a young black boy who declared to his mother at the age of 3 that he was going to be a cartoonist, Franklin's inclusion was extraordinary."

Honey Badger may not care, but the ‘creative genius’ who took him viral just won a big victory; The Washington Post, August 1, 2018

Antonia Farzan, The Washington Post; Honey Badger may not care, but the ‘creative genius’ who took him viral just won a big victory

"In June 2015, Gordon filed a lawsuit alleging trademark infringement. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted summary judgment to the greeting card company, saying that the cards were expressive works protected by the First Amendment. Gordon appealed.

On Monday, the appeals court reversed the lower court’s decision, allowing his lawsuit to continue.

In an opinion published Monday, the three-judge panel said that Gordon’s lawsuit against Drape Creative, Inc. and Papyrus-Recycled Greetings, Inc. presents a question that should be tried before a jury: Did the greeting cards add any artistic value that would be protected by the First Amendment, or did they simply appropriate the goodwill associated with Gordon’s trademark?"

Big Data Is Getting Bigger. So Are the Privacy and Ethical Questions.; The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 31, 2018

Goldie Blumenstyk, The Chronicle of Higher Education; Big Data Is Getting Bigger. So Are the Privacy and Ethical Questions.

"Big data is getting bigger. So are the privacy and ethical questions.

The next step in using “big data” for student success is upon us. It’s a little cool. And also kind of creepy.

This new approach goes beyond the tactics now used by hundreds of colleges, which depend on data collected from sources like classroom teaching platforms and student-information systems. It not only makes a technological leap; it also raises issues around ethics and privacy.

Here’s how it works: Whenever you log on to a wireless network with your cellphone or computer, you leave a digital footprint. Move from one building to another while staying on the same network, and that network knows how long you stayed and where you went. That data is collected continuously and automatically from the network’s various nodes.

Now, with the help of a company called Degree Analytics, a few colleges are beginning to use location data collected from students’ cellphones and laptops as they move around campus. Some colleges are using it to improve the kind of advice they might send to students, like a text-message reminder to go to class if they’ve been absent."

Reporting ‘with neither fear nor favor’ earns ethics award for MPR, NPR reporters; Minneapolis Public Radio (MPR), July 30, 2018

Bob Collins, Minneapolis Public Radio (MPR); Reporting ‘with neither fear nor favor’ earns ethics award for MPR, NPR reporters

"To uphold the SPJ Code of Ethics, reporting on your own company is to tread in uncertain territory. You don’t produce a story like this, for example, without taking a fair amount of personal and professional risk.

That’s also true in the case of Folkenflik and Kelly, who outed their bosses’ apparent ability to look the other way with rumors of news boss Michael Oreskes’ behavior toward female subordinates. 

Kelly’s interview of NPR CEO Jarl Mohn remains a textbook example of how to ask tough questions."

Open data offer risks and rewards for conservation; Editorial, July 24, 2018

Editorial, Nature;

Open data offer risks and rewards for conservation

"In a Perspective published this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution (A. I. T. Tulloch et al. Nature Ecol. Evol. 2, 1209–1217; 2018), conservation experts offer a way to help scientists and officials to decide when to publish such sensitive information — and when not to. It’s the latest development in an ongoing debate that pits advocates of open data against those who take a harder line and want more restrictions. The authors warn that a default position in which location data are withheld if a species is identified as being of high biological significance and under high threat — as recommended by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility — risks missing out on the benefits of data sharing.

To aim for a more balanced approach, the scientists drew up a decision tree to help people judge what to do with information gained from wildlife monitoring and surveys. A series of steps asks questions such as “Could data be used to mitigate threats to species?” and “Would sharing location data increase risk of species decline through increased visitation?” In some cases — fish spawning locations for one, because the fishing industry would love to target them — the recommendation is to keep everything from the name of a species to its location under wraps. But in other cases, the need for secrecy is trumped by the possible benefits of transparency. Open data could help local communities fight to protect a habitat when development is threatening a species."

Tech president tightening ethics controls after money scandals; Atlanta Journal Constitution, July 27, 2018

Ty Tagami

 and 

Johnny Edwards, 

Atlanta Journal Constitution; Tech president tightening ethics controls after money scandals

"Georgia Tech President George P. “Bud” Peterson has agreed to tighten his oversight over employee compliance with ethics policies after a series of scandals caught the attention of his bosses.

The University System of Georgia, as it happens, will have an ethics awareness week in mid-November, noted Chancellor Steve W. Wrigley in an email to Peterson last week. “I expect a strong and visible presence and participation from you and your senior leadership team,” Wrigley wrote...

On June 5, Tech removed Andrew Gerber from his leadership role at the affiliated Georgia Tech Research Institute, a spokeswoman said on Friday. Gerber, who was paid about $400,000 a year, subsequently resigned.

Gerber was the focus of an April report by Channel 2 Action Newsthat said GTRI had spent more than $1 million on employee “morale” events. The spending included $73,000 for Georgia Aquarium visits by employees and their families, $109,000 for a staff picnic at Six Flags, $26,000 at a Braves game, nearly $12,000 for go-karts and laser tag at Andretti’s and $7,300 at Topgolf, including more than $1,000 in cocktails, beer and wine."

The framers worried about corruption. Their words may now haunt the president.; The Washington Post, July 27, 2018

Editorial Board, The Washington Post; The framers worried about corruption. Their words may now haunt the president.

"The government is certain to appeal, and the matter will probably be settled in a higher court. Nonetheless, the judge’s ruling opens the way for fact-finding to proceed in the case against Mr. Trump, meaning the plaintiffs may now seek financial records of his hotel and business — as well as his tax returns, which the president has refused to divulge.

In cutting through the definitional underbrush, it’s fair to think of the emoluments clauses as the means by which the framers intended to impede corruption and ensure officials would be beholden to the public interest, not private interests. Mr. Trump has seemed heedless of such distinctions. This lawsuit could change that."

2018 National Trademark Exposition, July 27-28, 2018, Washington, D.C.

2018 National Trademark Exposition

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, in collaboration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, will host the 2018 National Trademark Exposition.  The exposition is a free, family-friendly event where you can learn about trademarks.  It will feature educational workshops, exhibits and hands-on activities demonstrating the important role trademarks play in our economy and our lives. Children's activities, including scavenger hunts, interactive games, and trademark design workshops, will be offered both days.  Free continuing legal education (CLE) seminars will be offered for legal professionals.

Exhibitors

• 1000 Cranes, LLC
• American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)
• DC Rollergirls
• Edible IP, LLC (DBA Edible Arrangements)
• Girl Scouts Nation’s Capital
• Global Brand Council, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• International Trademark Association (INTA)
• Looshes Labs LLC
• Microsoft
• NASA Goddard Space Flight Cente​

• National Park Service (United States Department of the Interior) and National Park Foundation
• NumbersAlive!
• Politics and Prose
• Safeway
• Segway Inc.
• Tenneco Automotive
• The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
• Under Armour, Inc.
• Velcro Companies 
• YMCA

Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles; The Guardian, July 25, 2018

Sam Wolfson, The Guardian; Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles

"“I think for us it was really like we like to work where we are in an expansive space. Somewhere like Condé, understandably, there are a lot of rules,” Paltrow told the Times, adding that they were a company that “do things in a very old-school way”.

She argued that they were interviewing experts and didn’t need to check what they were saying was scientifically accurate. “We’re never making statements,” she said. Elise Loehnen, Goop’s head of content, added that Goop was “just asking questions”."

Why public libraries are still essential in 2018; Forbes, July 24, 2018

Constance Grady, Vox; Why public libraries are still essential in 2018: Libraries exist for the public. Amazon exists to maximize profits.

"This past weekend, Forbes published and then took down a controversial article. “This article was outside of this contributor’s specific area of expertise, and has since been removed,” said Forbes, after significant backlash. The article in question? An op-ed arguing that libraries are a waste of taxpayer money and should be replaced by Amazon stores.

Libraries do seem to be outside of author Panos Mourdoukoutas’s areas of expertise; he’s a professor who specializes in world economy. (A popular tweet suggested that Mourdoukoutas paid for the privilege to be published on Forbes, though it turned out to be an error; he’s a paid blogger for Forbes.) But both the article itself and the backlash against it point to a profound anxiety centered on libraries and the question of whether they should be up for debate.

If we take it as read that public libraries exist and are good and important, then we’re saying that the services they provide are basic rights that it is our government’s responsibility to safeguard. If we suggest that libraries shouldn’t exist — that they’re a waste — then we call into question the rights that they protect.

Enter Mourdoukoutas’s now-deleted op-ed, whose central thrust was that the roles traditionally performed by libraries — lending books, of course, but also serving as community gathering places — are now performed better by “third places” like Starbucks and bookstore-cafes. And since Amazon’s brick-and-mortar bookstores are equipped with easy access to the comprehensive Amazon database of books around the world, the article concluded, Amazon bookstore-cafes are superior to libraries."

Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular; The Atlantic, July 23, 2018

Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic;

Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular

"Even harder to sway may be those concerned not with the methodology’s technical complications, but with its ethical complications. As Wildman told me, “These models are equal-opportunity insight generators. If you want to go militaristic, then these models tell you what the targets should be.”...

Nevertheless, just like Wildman, Shults told me, “I lose sleep at night on this. ... It is social engineering. It just is—there’s no pretending like it’s not.” But he added that other groups, like Cambridge Analytica, are doing this kind of computational work, too. And various bad actors will do it without transparency or public accountability. “It’s going to be done. So not doing it is not the answer.” Instead, he and Wildman believe the answer is to do the work with transparency and simultaneously speak out about the ethical danger inherent in it.

“That’s why our work here is two-pronged: I’m operating as a modeler and as an ethicist,” Wildman said. “It’s the best I can do.”"

My terrifying deep dive into one of Russia's largest hacking forums; The Guardian, July 24, 2018

Dylan Curran, The Guardian; 

My terrifying deep dive into one of Russia's largest hacking forums

[Kip Currier: I had a similar reaction to the author of this article when I attended a truly eye-opening 4/20/18 American Bar Association (ABA) Intellectual Property Law Conference presentation, "DarkNet: Enter at Your Own Risk. Inside the Digital Underworld". One of the presenters, Krista Valenzuela with the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell in West Trenton, New Jersey, did a live foray into the Dark Web. The scope of illicit activities and goods witnessed in just that brief demo was staggering and evoked a feeling that scenes of "black market" contraband and "bad actors" endemic to dystopian sci-fi fare like Blade Runner 2049 and Netflix's Altered Carbon are already part of the present-day real-world.]
 
"It’s fascinating to see how this community works together to take down “western” systems and derive chaos and profit from it. Typically, hackers in first-world countries are terrified to work together due to the multiplicative risk of a group being caught. In Russia, however, the authorities don’t seem to care that these hackers are wreaking havoc on the west. They are left to their own devices, and most users on this forum have been regular members for over six years.

A lot of the information on this forum is incredibly worrying, even if a lot of it is harmless 15-year-olds trying to be edgy and hack their friend’s phones. In any case, it’s important to know these communities exist. The dark underbelly of the internet isn’t going anywhere."

Embracing the privacy-first mindset in the post-GDPR world; AdNovum Singapore via Enterprise Innovation, July 23, 2018

Leonard Cheong, Managing Director, AdNovum Singapore via Enterprise Innovation; Embracing the privacy-first mindset in the post-GDPR world

"Privacy is a fundamental human right.

This is the proclamation that Apple made when updating their App Store policies to ensure that application developers can’t access consumer data without consent, in a bid to demonstrate their commitment to data privacy.

As the world becomes more digital, privacy has indeed become more sought after and consumers today are only willing to share data with companies they trust. On 25 May 2018 the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or EU-GDPR came into effect, sparking numerous conversations on privacy, ethics and compliance."

We Need Transparency in Algorithms, But Too Much Can Backfire; Harvard Business Review, July 23, 2018

Kartik Hosanagar and Vivian Jair, Harvard Business Review; We Need Transparency in Algorithms, But Too Much Can Backfire

"Companies and governments increasingly rely upon algorithms to make decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods – from loan approvals, to recruiting, legal sentencing, and college admissions. Less vital decisions, too, are being delegated to machines, from internet search results to product recommendations, dating matches, and what content goes up on our social media feeds. In response, many experts have called for rules and regulations that would make the inner workings of these algorithms transparent. But as Nass’s experience makes clear, transparency can backfire if not implemented carefully. Fortunately, there is a smart way forward."

Facebook's pledge to eliminate misinformation is itself fake news ; The Guardian, July 20, 2018

Judd Legum, The Guardian; Facebook's pledge to eliminate misinformation is itself fake news

"The production values are high and the message is compelling. In an 11-minute mini-documentary, Facebook acknowledges its mistakes and pledges to “fight against misinformation”.

“With connecting people, particularly at our scale, comes an immense amount of responsibility,” an unidentified Facebook executive in the film solemnly tells a nodding audience of new company employees.

An outdoor ad campaign by Facebook strikes a similar note, plastering slogans like “Fake news is not your friend” at bus stops around the country.

But the reality of what’s happening on the Facebook platform belies its gauzy public relations campaign."

The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union; The New York Times, July 20, 2018

Natan Sharansky, The New York Times; The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union

[Kip Currier: It's enlightening and inspiring to be reminded of the courageous stance that Soviet Union-residing nuclear physicist, dissident activist, and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov took 50 years ago, via his influential essay, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom”. His ideas and invocations on the importance of freedom to think, individual responsibility, moral leadership, and the advancement of human rights for persons living in both open and closed societies are as timely and indispensable today as they were in 1968.]

"Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

Sakharov’s essay carried a mild title — “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” — but it was explosive. “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships,” he wrote. Suddenly the Soviet Union’s most decorated physicist became its most prominent dissident...

[Sakharov's] message was unsettling and liberating: You cannot be a good scientist or a free person while living a double life. Knowing the truth while collaborating in the regime’s lies only produces bad science and broken souls." 

Farting unicorn row: artist reaches settlement with Elon Musk; The Guardian, July 21, 2018

Damien Gayle, The Guardian; Farting unicorn row: artist reaches settlement with Elon Musk

"A Colorado artist says he has reached a settlement with Elon Musk after challenging the Tesla tycoon’s use of a farting unicorn motif that he had drawn as an ironic tribute to electric cars.

Musk used the cartoon image on Twitter, without attribution, to promote his Tesla electric car range, and ignored Tom Edwards’ attempts to come to a licensing arrangement, telling the artist’s daughter it would be “kinda lame” to sue."

It’s impossible to lead a totally ethical life—but it’s fun to try; Quartz, July 15, 2018

Ephrat Livni, Quartz; It’s impossible to lead a totally ethical life—but it’s fun to try

"It’s true that practically everything we do in life has ethical repercussions. “Any decision that has an impact on others now or in the future is an ethical choice,” explains ethicist Christopher Gilbert, author of the new book There’s No Right Way To Do the Wrong Thing. Gilbert says it’s useful to consider ethics like a moral ladder. On the lowest rung, you think only of yourself. Past the middle rung, you’re thinking of the decision’s influence on some. And on the highest rungs, you’re wondering how every choice impacts all affected by it. “When we step up that ladder and consistently strive to stay at the top rung, we are living an ethical life,” he says.

Will we be at the top rung all of the time? Almost certainly not. But the answer isn’t to throw up our hands. Rather, we can keep on trying, every day and throughout our lives, to approach the world thoughtfully and consider the implications of our individual actions on others."

Two men charged with stealing more than $8 million in rare books from Carnegie Library; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 20, 2018

Paula Reed Ward, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Two men charged with stealing more than $8 million in rare books from Carnegie Library 

[Kip Currier: This is a deeply troubling "library theft" and "breach of the public trust" story, with enormous implications about ethics, management, leadership, and Board responsibility and oversight. It'll definitely be a case study in my courses at the University of Pittsburgh and in the ethics textbook I'm writing.

Reading the Perry Mason-esque True Crime-confessional details (e.g. Priore: "greed came over me. I did it, but Schulman spurred me on") in The Post-Gazette's front-page article brought to mind the oft-heard adage "Crime doesn't pay"--a favorite slogan of the FBI, starting in 1927, and then used in the comic strip Dick Tracy in 1931.] 


"It ranks as one of the largest library thefts in history.

Greg Priore, 61, of Oakland, who worked as the sole archivist and manager of the library’s rare book room since 1992, is charged with theft, receiving stolen property, conspiracy, retail theft, library theft, criminal mischief and forgery.

John Schulman, 54, of Squirrel Hill, who owns Caliban Book Shop, is charged with theft, receiving stolen property, dealing in proceeds of illegal activity, conspiracy, retail theft, theft by deception, forgery and deceptive business practices...

“Priore explained that he took a lot of maps and pictures – in all possibly 200 items – from the Oliver Room. Priore then stated ‘You got me, I screwed up.’ He also stated, ‘Please tell [library executive director] Mary Frances [Cooper] I am sorry and I let the whole place down.’”"

The intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like this; The Washington Post, July 19, 2018

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; The intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like this

"The American intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like President Trump — a commander in chief who is suspected by a growing number of Republicans and Democrats of deferring to Russia’s views over the recommendations of his own intelligence agencies.

“There are almost two governments now,” worries John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director. He discusses the Trump conundrum with the same vexation as a dozen other former intelligence officials I’ve spoken with since the president’s shockingly acquiescent performance onstage Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

How are current intelligence chiefs handling this unprecedented situation? They are operating carefully but correctly, trying to balance their obligations to the president with the oaths they have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. The officials continue to serve the elected president, but they are also signaling that they work for the American people."

Trump Wants Putin to Keep Meddling to Get Himself Reelected; The Daily Beast, July 19, 2018

Margaret Carlson, The Daily Beast; Trump Wants Putin to Keep Meddling to Get Himself Reelected

"From the gist of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments, Trump knows how sophisticated, how costly the Russian actions were, and how likely they are to take place again. Yet he’s made no moves to deny Putin a glide path to a sequel, no elevating election security to a priority as he did for the calamitous separating children at the border, which has all the money and attention in the world.

To the contrary, the White House hasn’t spearheaded anything close to the kind of Manhattan Project that protecting our democracy deserves, not even the cost-free appointment of an election czar, or a request to Silicon Valley to help. Small efforts to counter voting machine fraud, bots, fake news (the real kind) go along at a snail’s pace at the FBI and Homeland Security. Congress has allotted a mere $380 million, a pittance to the cause. It’s likely that Russia is putting more money into interfering in 2020 than the U.S. is putting in to stopping it."

Stop calling it ‘meddling.’ It’s actually information warfare.; The Washington Post, July 17, 2018

Brian Klaas, The Washington Post; Stop calling it ‘meddling.’ It’s actually information warfare.

"“And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” That’s the catchphrase that comes at the end of “Scooby-Doo” cartoons, always right at the moment when some monster turns out to just be a creepy old man in a mask. The zany adventures are over — until the next episode.

That’s the appropriate use of the word “meddling.” It is not, however, an appropriate word to use when referring to the ongoing Russian attacks on American democracy that gained prominence in the 2016 presidential election and will accelerate as we head into the November midterms. This isn’t “Scooby-Doo.” The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the monsters we face are real...

But that phrase is woefully inadequate. These continuing attacks are neither meddling nor “interference,” another euphemism. They’re a part of gibridnaya voyna — Russian for “hybrid warfare.” The best term for what we’re talking about would be “information warfare.

One of the jarring realizations of the 21st century is that democratic governments are only as good as the quality of information that their voters receive. Influence the information flow voters receive, and you’ll eventually influence the government."

Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News; Wired, 7/18/18

Issie Lapowsky, Wired; Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News

"After about 36 hours of work, during which his software crashed dozens of times under the weight of  all that data, he was able to map out these links, transforming the list into an impossibly intricate data visualization. “It was a picture of the entire ecosystem of misinformation a few days after the election,” Albright says, still in awe of his discovery. “I saw these insights I’d never thought of.”

And smack in the center of the monstrous web, was a giant node labeled YouTube."

“I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets; Vanity Fair, July 1, 2018

Katrina Brooker, Vanity Fair; “I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets

"For now, chastened by bad press and public outrage, tech behemoths and other corporations say they are willing to make changes to ensure privacy and protect their users. “I’m committed to getting this right,” Facebook’s Zuckerberg told Congress in April. Google recently rolled out new privacy features to Gmail which would allow users to control how their messages get forwarded, copied, downloaded, or printed. And as revelations of spying, manipulation, and other abuses emerge, more governments are pushing for change. Last year the European Union fined Google $2.7 billion for manipulating online shopping markets. This year new regulations will require it and other tech companies to ask for users’ consent for their data. In the U.S., Congress and regulators are mulling ways to check the powers of Facebook and others.

But laws written now don’t anticipate future technologies. Nor do lawmakers—many badgered by corporate lobbyists—always choose to protect individual rights. In December, lobbyists for telecom companies pushed the Federal Communications Commission to roll back net-neutrality rules, which protect equal access to the Internet. In January, the U.S. Senate voted to advance a bill that would allow the National Security Agency to continue its mass online-surveillance program. Google’s lobbyists are now working to modify rules on how companies can gather and store biometric data, such as fingerprints, iris scans, and facial-recognition images."

One Job AI Won't Replace? Chief Ethics Officer; Fortune, July 17, 2018

Robert Hackett, Fortune; One Job AI Won't Replace? Chief Ethics Officer

"We’ve heard the warnings: The robots are coming, and they’re coming for your job.

Whose roles will be safe as the usurper, artificial intelligence, enters the workforce? Jeetu Patel, chief product officer at Box (box, -1.65%), a cloud storage and file-sharing company, says the secure ones will be those who fine-tune the machines’ moral compasses.

“I think chief ethics officer will be a big role in the AI world,” Patel said at a breakfast roundtable at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo. on Tuesday morning. “Lots of jobs will be killed, but ethics jobs will move forward.”"

“A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin; Salon, July 17, 2018

Shira Tarlo and Joseph Neese, Salon; “A shameless lie”: Holes poked in Donald Trump’s assertion that he misspoke when praising Putin

"As controversy mounted over his assertion that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's word over the findings of the U.S. intelligence community, President Donald Trump attempted to walk back his remarks, in part, by claiming that "other people" could have also meddled in the 2016 presidential election."

This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man; The Washington Post, July 17, 2018

George F. Will, The Washington Post; This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man

"Americans elected a president who — this is a safe surmise — knew that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret. The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth, too. A more ominous explanation might be that his redundantly demonstrated incompetence as a businessman tumbled him into unsavory financial dependencies on Russians. A still more sinister explanation might be that the Russians have something else, something worse, to keep him compliant.

The explanation is in doubt; what needs to be explained — his compliance — is not. Granted, Trump has a weak man’s banal fascination with strong men whose disdain for him is evidently unimaginable to him. And, yes, he only perfunctorily pretends to have priorities beyond personal aggrandizement. But just as astronomers inferred, from anomalies in the orbits of the planet Uranus, the existence of Neptune before actually seeing it, Mueller might infer, and then find, still-hidden sources of the behavior of this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man."

After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press; The Washington Post, July 16, 2018

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post; After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the American press

"Journalism, writ large, can be proud of the Associated Press’s Jon Lemire and Reuters’s Jeff Mason, who asked well-honed, incisive questions on Monday and asked them in just the right way. (Historical note: Lemire, back in October 2016, was thrown out of a room by Trump’s campaign people, as the candidate called him a “sleazebag” for asking tough questions about sexual misconduct claims against him.)

Mason and Lemire held Trump’s feet to the fire.

If any such pride is to continue in the hours and days ahead, news organizations need to step up to the job of driving home to American citizens the larger picture, too.

It’s not enough to offer such pallid assessments as those we’ve heard too often, that “this is outside the norm,” or “there’s little precedent for what we’re hearing.

Clarity of purpose and moral force are called for. They are not always in ample supply by a too-docile press corps.

Fallows called Monday’s news conference a “moment of truth” for Republican lawmakers

So, too, for American journalists."

We are a deeply stupid country; The Washington Post, July 16, 2018

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; We are a deeply stupid country

"How foolish are we?

We brainlessly criticized Russia when it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. We idiotically protested when Russia poisoned people in Britain. Like dunces, we punished Russians for killing human rights activists. Morons that we are, we complained when Russia shot down a passenger jet. And then, revealing ourselves to be truly daft and inane, we blamed Russia for interfering in our election.

Standing at Putin’s side Monday, Trump let the world know just how doltish the people are who made this judgment, including the cretins at the CIA and the nitwits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia,” Trump announced. “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia."

Trump and Putin vs. America; The New York Times, July 16, 2018

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times;Trump and Putin vs. America 

"Listening to Trump, it was as if Franklin Roosevelt had announced after Pearl Harbor: “Hey, both sides are to blame. Our battleships in Hawaii were a little provocative to Japan — and, by the way, I had nothing to do with the causes for their attack. So cool it.”