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Daily Archives: May 5, 2024

The race to build a better internet before it’s too late

NBC News Analysis: A new book proposes a framework for the internet that would give consumers more control over their own personal data. One of the worst attributes of our society at times is the search for someone to blame. Sometimes we prioritize figuring out who is at fault rather than focusing on how to fix the problem. Our current politics are dominated by debates over who is to blame for various problems. Take immigration: The debate over whom to blame takes up more time and space than the debate about how to implement the various ideas we actually all kinda-sorta agree on for fixing the issue at the center of the blame game. Even the ideas to mitigate the current immigration problems at the border are tied up in a cycle of paralysis that has been repeated over and over in a number of areas, not just immigration, over the past decade. In fact, about the only thing the country agrees on is that political polarization has stopped us from solving even the smallest problems. But other than agreeing about the existence of our disagreements, we appear incapable of trying to bridge these hardening divides. One idea to fix our polarization is to come up with a better incentive structure for our politicians so that they act more often for the greater good than for their own personal gain. Right now, it’s clearly broken…As a new book argues, Big Tech appears to have perfected a model that has created rhetorical paralysis. Using our own data against us to create dopamine triggers, tech platforms have created “a state of perpetual disagreement across the divide and a concurrent state of perpetual agreement within each side,” authors Frank McCourt and Michael Casey write, adding: “Once this uneasy state of divisive ‘equilibrium’ is established, it creates profit-making opportunities for the platforms to generate revenue from advertisers who prize the sticky highly engaged audiences it generates.”…

Justice Outcomes Explorer

United States Census: “The Justice Outcomes Explorer (JOE) is a Census Bureau experimental data product that measures the economic and health outcomes of people who have been involved with the criminal justice system. Criminal justice involvement can include criminal charges, prison releases, and probation and parole sentences. Outcomes measured include employment, earnings, government program participation,… Continue Reading

2023 Imperva Bad Bot Report

“The 11th annual edition of the Imperva Bad Bot Report examines and investigates the nature of automated internet traffic, mainly automated bot attacks. Such attacks are getting more sophisticated by the day, bypassing traditional detection methods and causing chaos on the internet. The report analyzes data collected from the Imperva global network in 2023, including… Continue Reading

Hacking America’s Health Care: Assessing the Change Healthcare Cyber Attack and What’s Next

Wyden Hearing Statement on Change Healthcare Cyberattack and UnitedHealth Group’s Response, May 1, 2024 – “This morning the Finance Committee examines the Change Healthcare hack that nearly brought the nation’s health care system to a standstill six weeks ago. Joining the committee is Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, which owns Change Healthcare. I’ll… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 4, 2024

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 4, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading

Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly

ProPublica – Cigna Threatened to Fire Her: “Cigna tracks every minute that its staff doctors spend deciding whether to pay for health care. Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers,” Day said…Day was, in her own words, persnickety. If… Continue Reading

Antisemitism Worldwide Report for 2023

The Times of Israel: “In 2023, France registered the highest increase in recorded antisemitic incidents of any country with reliable statistics, according to data released in a new report that warned that current trends could threaten the very “ability to lead Jewish lives in the West.” Published Sunday by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation… Continue Reading

Extremist Militias Are Coordinating In More Than 100 Facebook Groups

Via Wired: Facebook Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List (Reproduced Snapshot Original Document (PDF) » [100 pages] Contributed by SooHee Cho (The Intercept). “This is a reproduction of an internal Facebook list used to regulate speech on company platforms. This snapshot of the list has been lightly edited for clarity. Notes associated with the entries were… Continue Reading