Category: United States

Trump’s chief technology officer is treating AI regulation like the net neutrality repeal


Did you ever notice how the Trump administration’s chief science and technology officer Michael Kratsios never talks while FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is drinking water? I bring this up because there’s a greater chance than zero that they’re the same awful human being. We all know that Pai sold out 80% of US citizens when he chose to ignore the will of the people and repeal the government’s net neutrality guidelines. And now, with Kratsios, we’re seeing the same playbook brought out again for the same reason: money. Only this time, there’s more at stake. Kratsios is proposing we take…

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FBI and Apple seemingly headed toward another showdown over locked iPhone


Apple appears headed toward another showdown with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as the agency this morning revealed it had asked Apple for assistance in recovering data from two iPhones in a recent case. Apple, so far, has declined to unlock the devices. The devices belong to the gunman in last month’s naval base shooting in Pensacola, Florida. The shooter, Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani of the Saudi Royal Air Force, gunned down three servicemen in the attack: Ensign Joshua Watson, 23; Airman Mohammed Haitham, 19; and Airman Apprentice Cameron Walters, 21. Alshamrani was killed at the scene. Dana Boente,…

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Everything you need to know about the drone used by the US to assassinate an Iranian general


Meet the Reaper, a $64M death-dealing assassination drone straight out of a science-fiction nightmare. Designated the MQ-9 Reaper multi-purpose drone, it’s widely considered the deadliest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the sky. And for good reason. On 3 January 2020, US President Donald Trump authorized the military’s use of an MQ-9 in the assassination of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleiman, a Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who served as the commander of its clandestine operations division since 1998. According to the White House, Soleiman was targeted because he represented an “imminent threat.” As of the time of this…

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US Navy officers can’t use TikTok on government-issued phones because it’s a ‘cybersecurity threat’


Reuters reports that last week, the US Navy banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, as it represented a “cybersecurity threat,” and employees were ordered to remove the app “to safeguard their personal information.” The bulletin noted that devices that had the short video sharing app installed would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. The move, according to a Pentagon spokesman who issued a statement to Reuters, is part of an effort to “address existing and emerging threats”. Other social media apps are generally allowed on government-issued devices in the US. Last month, the Committee on Foreign Investment in…

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How Huawei powered through a tough 2019 and came out on top


Huawei has had a tough year. The company’s fight with the US government impacted its business across the globe, but this isn’t the only issue the business has had.  In this story, we’re going to look at Huawei’s tumultuous recent history.  The arrest of the CFO Last December, Candian authorities arrested the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou — who happens to be the daughter of the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei — on request of the US government. She was charged with violation of the US’ sanctions on Iran, allegedly helping Huawei cover up wire frauds run by China.  She was…

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Federal study: Facial recognition systems most benefit middle-aged white males


The US National Institute of Standards and Technology today released its 2019 report on facial recognition. And there are no surprises here, it’s just as dystopian as we’ve been warning you about all year. On the group’s conclusions, Patrick Grother, a NIST computer scientist and the report’s primary author, said: While it is usually incorrect to make statements across algorithms, we found empirical evidence for the existence of demographic differentials in the majority of the face recognition algorithms we studied. While we do not explore what might cause these differentials, this data will be valuable to policymakers, developers and end…

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Report: Palantir took over Project Maven, the military AI program too unethical for Google


Palantir, the surveillance company founded by Peter Thiel, has unsurprisingly stepped up to fill the void left behind after Google abandoned Project Maven earlier this year over ethical concerns. Project Maven, for those unfamiliar, is a Pentagon program to build an AI-powered surveillance platform for unmanned aerial vehicles. Basically, the job is to build a system for the US military to deploy and monitor autonomous drones. This system would, supposedly, give the government real-time battlefield command and control and the ability to track, tag, and spy on targets without human involvement. The limited, unclassified information available makes it appear as though…

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Why China’s ‘military AI budget’ is irrelevant (spoiler: all AI is military AI)


A recently published study from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), a think-tank at Georgetown University, indicates commonly held perceptions about China‘s supposed AI spending may be grossly off-base. Key takeaways suggest the PRC spends much less than the US on ‘military‘ and ‘defense‘ AI. Here’s a hot take: All AI is military AI. Let’s start with the study. You can read it here, but to briefly sum up, the authors write: We assess with low to moderate confidence that China’s public investment in AI R&D was on the order of a few billion dollars in 2018. With…

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Google finally takes a stance on political ads with microtargeting restrictions


Google has become the latest company to reconsider its approach to political ads. The internet giant has announced a crack down on political ads that limits advertisers from targeting ads based on voters’ political leanings or public voter records. Outlining its new approach to microtargeting of election ads, the company said it’s limiting ad targeting to voters based on age, gender, and general location at the zip code level. While ads based on an individual’s specific location or those with false claims will no longer be allowed, contextual targeting — i.e. serving ads to people based on their reading or…

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US Senator: ‘Amazon Ring’s policies are an open door for privacy and civil liberty violations’


US Senator Edward Markey yesterday revealed the results of a months-long investigation into Amazon‘s Ring camera-doorbells and the company’s relationship with law enforcement. The Senator’s press team dubbed the findings “alarming” and called the company’s policies “an open door for privacy and civil liberty violations.” The press release, which you can read in full here, describes several key findings indicating that Amazon executives took little or no action to prevent or discourage misuse of camera footage by law enforcement, even going so far as to urge officers to “to take steps that will increase rates of video sharing” and approaching…

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