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Daily Archives: September 17, 2018

Google China Prototype Links Searches to Phone Numbers

The Intercept: “Google built a prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers,thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries, The Intercept can reveal. The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, was designed for Android devices, and would remove content deemed sensitive by China’s ruling Communist Party regime, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. Previously undisclosed details about the plan, obtained by The Intercept on Friday, show that Google compiled a censorship blacklist that included terms such as “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize” in Mandarin. Leading human rights groups have criticized Dragonfly, saying that it could result in the company “directly contributing to, or [becoming] complicit in, human rights violations.” A central concern expressed by the groups is that, beyond the censorship, user data stored by Google on the Chinese mainland could be accessible to Chinese authorities, who routinely target political activists and journalists…”

Artificial Intelligence and Policing: Hints in the Carpenter Decision

Joh, Elizabeth E., Artificial Intelligence and Policing: Hints in the Carpenter Decision (August 24, 2018). __ Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law __, 2018. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3238212 “In the 2018 Carpenter case, Chief Justice Roberts focuses on the quality of the information sought by the police as a means of deciding the case in… Continue Reading

The Future of Jobs Report 2018

World Economic Forum: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution is interacting with other socio-economic and demographic factors to create a perfect storm of business model change in all industries, resulting in major disruptions to labour markets. New categories of jobs will emerge, partly or wholly displacing others. The skill sets required in both old and new occupations… Continue Reading

UK Serious Fraud Office trialling AI for data-heavy cases

naked security – sophos: “The BBC says it looks like a kids’ digital game: a mass of blue and green rubber balls bounce around the screen like they’re on elastic bands in a galaxy of paddle balls. It’s no game, however. It is a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that connects, and then visualizes, the… Continue Reading

10 Investigative Tools You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

Global Investigative Journalism Network: “Investigations, the saying goes, are just regular stories with a lot more labor put in. Investigative reporters spend inordinate amounts of time sifting through documents, verifying sources and analyzing data — and that’s if they can even get the data. As an investigative reporter with way too many stories I want… Continue Reading

The text and data mining exception in the proposal for a directive on copyright: why the European Union needs to go further than the laws of member states

Nicolas Jondet, ‘The text and data mining exception in the proposal for a directive on copyright: why the European Union needs to go further than the laws of member states’, Propriétés Intellectuelles , no. 67 (April 2018): 25– 35. “The European Union is currently debating the adoption of a copyright exception for text and data… Continue Reading

Study Shows the Best Times of Day to Post to Social Media

Harvard Business Review: “U.S. companies are expected to spend more than $37 billion dollars on social media promotion annually each year by 2020, representing 24% of the economy’s total digital advertising spend. It’s an astounding number, given that the vast majority of social media managers charged with getting customers to click on posts and through… Continue Reading

Report – Almost half of US cellphone calls will be scams by next year

Cision Newswire: “First Orion, a leading provider of phone call and data transparency solutions, today announced their inaugural 2018 Scam Call Trends and Projections Report, detailing the need for new, adaptive technologies to combat the exponential increase in scam calls. First Orion powers call protection solutions to tens of millions of mobile subscribers in the… Continue Reading

LII Announces U.S. Constitution Annotated

U.S. Constitution Annotated – “This edition of the Congressional Research Service’s U.S. Constitution Annotated is a hypertext interpretation of the CRS text, updated to the currently published version. It links to Supreme Court opinions, the U.S. Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations, as well as enhancing navigation through search, breadcrumbs, linked footnotes and tables… Continue Reading

The Latest Course Catalog Trend? Blockchain 101

Wired: “On a clear, warm night earlier this year, several dozen University of California, Berkeley students folded themselves into gray chairs for a three-hour class on how to think like blockchain entrepreneurs. The evening’s challenge, presented by Berkeley City Councilmember Ben Bartlett, was to brainstorm how blockchain technology might be used to alleviate the city’s… Continue Reading

Potential Insurance Bill From Hurricane Florence Could Take Toll on Wallets Far From NC Coast

ProPublica – Insurance companies retreated from some communities amid stronger storms, leaving a “last-resort” plan to fill the growing gap: “For years, North Carolina has bet against a storm like Hurricane Florence. Even as nationally known insurance companies pulled out of the state’s coastal communities, development boomed along the shore, despite the threat from a… Continue Reading