George Carlin on power…
Tag: technology
US cops served over 20,000 ‘invasive’ geofence warrants targeting users by location data in last 3 years, Google report shows
Google has revealed that over a quarter of all data request warrants it gets from US authorities involve identifying people by location history. These orders, which pinpoint devices near a crime scene, have been called “invasive.”
The so-called ‘geofence warrants’ allow law enforcement agencies to specify area and timeframe and have the tech giant gather information, including names and other details, about persons of interest in that window – from location information recorded by apps and services like Google Maps.
As part of its latest transparency report, the tech giant on Thursday revealed that it received more than 20,000 geofence warrants in the US between 2018 and 2020. It was the first time Google disclosed the volume of these controversial requests, having resisted demands to do so in the past.
Noting that these warrants are only “one subcategory” of the search warrant requests the company gets, Google noted it had “seen a rise” in the number of warrants ordering it to identify users by location info since 2018. That year, it received 982 geofence warrants, and the figure spiked to 11,554 in 2020.
As well, the vast majority of such warrants – to the tune of nearly 96% – are obtained by local and state law enforcement bodies, while federal agencies account for the remainder. Authorities in California made the most information requests between the years specified in the report.
The Internet of Bodies Will Change Everything, for Better or Worse
Ross Compton was there when a fire ravaged his $400,000 home in Middletown, Ohio, in September 2016. Fortunately, Compton told investigators, he was able to stuff a few bags with several possessions—including the charger for an external heart pump he needed to survive—before shattering a window with his cane and escaping.
But as the smoke cleared, police began to suspect that Compton’s story was a fabrication.
His statements were inconsistent. The rubble smelled of gasoline. And it seemed implausible that someone fleeing a burning house—especially someone with a medical condition like Compton’s—could execute such a complex escape plan.
Eventually, investigators were able to indict Compton on felony charges of aggravated arson and insurance fraud. Their star witness? His pacemaker.
Police obtained a warrant to retrieve data on Compton’s heart activity before, during, and after the fire. After reviewing this information, a cardiologist concluded that it was “highly improbable” Compton would’ve been able to escape the flames so quickly, while lugging so many belongings.
Compton pleaded not guilty. His attorney argued that the pacemaker data should be thrown out; including it would violate doctor-patient privilege and Compton’s constitutional right to privacy, the lawyer said.
The case was strange, arguably sad, and fraught with difficult questions. Regardless of whether Compton really torched his house, should a life-saving device inside someone’s body be part of a case that might put them behind bars?
We may not know the answer for some time. Compton passed away in July at the age of 62, leaving his case—and whatever precedent it might have set—unresolved.
This may seem like a one-of-a-kind chain of events, an aberration. But as industries usher in a new era of devices that track personal information by leveraging the internet and the human body in equal measure, it won’t be the last.
Seeing the future: the bionic eye
Those of us with healthy vision often take our sight for granted. From admiring masterpieces at the art gallery to being able to find the vegemite in the fridge, we rarely consider how different our lives would be if our vision was impaired. But reduced sight is a reality for more than half a million Australians, who currently experience blindness or low vision in a manner that affects their daily functioning.
The development of a bionic eye is therefore exciting technology. As with other medical bionic devices, however, it is not suitable for everyone. At least, not yet.
Scientists Grew Stem Cell ‘Mini Brains’. Then, The Brains Sort-of Developed Eyes
Mini brains grown in a lab from stem cells have spontaneously developed rudimentary eye structures, scientists report in a fascinating new paper.
On tiny, human-derived brain organoids grown in dishes, two bilaterally symmetrical optic cups were seen to grow, mirroring the development of eye structures in human embryos. This incredible result will help us to better understand the process of eye differentiation and development, as well as eye diseases.
“Our work highlights the remarkable ability of brain organoids to generate primitive sensory structures that are light sensitive and harbor cell types similar to those found in the body,” said neuroscientist Jay Gopalakrishnan of University Hospital Düsseldorf in Germany.
“These organoids can help to study brain-eye interactions during embryo development, model congenital retinal disorders, and generate patient-specific retinal cell types for personalized drug testing and transplantation therapies.”
Will $500M for Smart Cities in Historic US Senate Spending Bill Fund Biometric Surveillance?
Half a billion dollars was written into the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate to pay cities to experiment with technologies for ‘Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation,’ which could include remote biometric systems, sensors and drones.
Reaction to the inclusion was rapid. The Intercept spoke with a senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation who said the ‘SMART’ money will buy more surveillance using facial recognition. The industry has yet to convince critics alleging face biometrics introduce racial and gender bias and misuse by law enforcement of the technology’s safety.
Also of concern is how this technology, if not the funding, will become tangled with relevant military programs as has happened with other software and hardware being deployed to monitor and quell dissent.
Healthcare professionals app Doximity promises crackdown after doctors are accused of sharing “misinformation”
Doctors who take to social media to discuss their opposition to various COVID measures are facing calls for censorship from media outlets.
CNBC says it discovered plenty of vaccine skeptic statements on Doximity, a doctor-to-doctor networking site. While the reports shared on the app are from well-known news organizations and scientific journals, the comments, CNBC says, appear to be full of “misinformation” about vaccination safety, mask use, and natural immunity, among other things.
Dr Paul Malarik, a retired psychiatrist, spends up to 50 hours a month in pop-up clinics near his home in San Luis Obispo, California, helping to deliver COVID-19 vaccines. According to him, when he logs onto Doximity and sees vaccine skeptic remarks, he’s particularly disturbed.
Doximity is only open to healthcare professionals in the United States, and members must be verified before they can join. No one may post anonymously on the site.
It has long been branded as “LinkedIn for doctors,” had its stock market debut in June and quickly rose to a market valuation of $10 billion. According to the company’s IPO prospectus, it has 1.8 million members, including 80% of doctors. They utilize the site to remain in touch with one another, discuss research, keep up with industry news, and securely interact with patients.
Doximity likewise doesn’t let users publish their articles or stories; instead, it curates content from medical and scientific journals as well as mainstream news. Each user receives a personalized feed of aggregated material depending on their choices, such as their field of medical practice.
Members of Doximity may comment on articles, which is where the alleged “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories” appear to thrive, according to CNBC.
Scanning your iPhone for Pegasus, NSO Group’s malware
In collaboration with more than a dozen other news organizations The Guardian recently published an exposé about Pegasus, a toolkit for infecting mobile phones that is sold to governments around the world by NSO Group. It’s used to target political leaders and their families, human rights activists, political dissidents, journalists, and so on, and surreptitiously download their messages/photos/location data, record their microphone, and otherwise spy on them. As part of the investigation, Amnesty International wrote a blog post with their forensic analysis of several compromised phones, as well as an open source tool, Mobile Verification Toolkit, for scanning your mobile device for these indicators. MVT supports both iOS and Android, and in this blog post we’ll install and run the scanner against my iOS device.
The Pentagon Is Experimenting With Using Artificial Intelligence To “See Days In Advance”
U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) recently conducted a series of tests known as the Global Information Dominance Experiments, or GIDE, which combined global sensor networks, artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and cloud computing resources in an attempt to “achieve information dominance” and “decision-making superiority.” According to NORTHCOM leadership, the AI and machine learning tools tested in the experiments could someday offer the Pentagon a robust “ability to see days in advance,” meaning it could predict the future with some reliability based on evaluating patterns, anomalies, and trends in massive data sets. While the concept sounds like something out of Minority Report, the commander of NORTHCOM says this capability is already enabled by tools readily available to the Pentagon.
General Glen VanHerck, Commander of NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters at the Pentagon this week that this was the third test of GIDE, conducted in conjunction with all 11 combatant commands “collaborating in the same information space using the same exact capabilities.” The experiment largely centered around contested logistics and information advantage, two cornerstones of the new warfighting paradigm recently proposed by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A full transcript of VanHerck’s press briefing is available online.
Militaries Plunder Science Fiction for Technology Ideas, But Turn a Blind Eye to the Genre’s Social Commentary
Military planning is a complicated endeavour, calling upon experts in logistics and infrastructure to predict resource availability and technological advancements. Long-range military planning, deciding what to invest in now to prepare armed forces for the world in thirty years’ time, is even more difficult.
One of the most interesting tools for thinking about future defence technology isn’t big data forecasting and the use of synthetic training environments, but narrative and imagination. And we get this from science fiction.
That might sound fanciful, but many militaries are already engaging with the genre. The US military and the French army use science fiction writers to generate future threat scenarios. The Australian Defence College advocates for the reading of science fiction and, in Germany, Project Cassandra uses novels to predict the world’s next conflict. The Sigma Forum, a science fiction think tank, has been offering forecasting services to US officials for years.
But while science fiction provides military planners with a tantalising glimpse of future weaponry, from exoskeletons to mind-machine interfaces, the genre is always about more than flashy new gadgets. It’s about anticipating the unforeseen ways in which these technologies could affect humans and society – and this extra context is often overlooked by the officials deciding which technologies to invest in for future conflicts.
Hellbound and Down 
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