AGC Networks completed the takeover of rival IT firm Black Box, with AGC saying Monday that taking it private adds about 3,000 employees and $600 million in annual revenue to AGC, which also provides cybersecurity. “In the immediate term, Black Box and its subsidiaries will continue to operate as is," said Sanjeev Verma, AGC and Black Box CEO.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans support police using facial recognition technology to find suspects if the software is correct 100 percent of the time, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reported Monday. Top facial recognition technology is now at least 99.8 percent accurate, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported in November (see 1811210044). About 47 percent support the technology’s use for identifying suspects if it’s correct 90 percent of the time. About 54 percent of respondents disagreed government should strictly limit the technology “even if it means airports can’t use it to speed up security lines,” the survey found. An ITIF affiliate polled 3,151 U.S. adults online Dec. 13-16.
More than 5 million unencrypted passport numbers and about 2,000 unencrypted payment card numbers were exposed in Marriott’s recently disclosed breach (see 1812120034), the company said Friday. The hotel company decreased its original estimate of total guests affected from some 500 million to fewer than 383 million unique guests. The attack, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo linked to the Chinese government, included 5.25 million unencrypted passport numbers and 20.3 million encrypted passport numbers, Marriott said. Compromised data included 8.6 million encrypted payment cards and potentially fewer than 2,000 unencrypted payment card numbers. There’s no evidence hackers accessed master encryption keys needed to decrypt the secure numbers, the hospitality company said. Marriott discontinued operation of its Starwood reservations database, which was compromised.
A quarter of U.S. broadband homes plan to buy a smart video doorbell in the next 12 months, but concerns over IoT privacy and security are hampering wider adoption, blogged Parks Associates Thursday. Paul Palmer, F-Secure global director-business development, said 68 percent of consumers are concerned about security and privacy of IoT devices, with 48 percent postponing buying IoT devices for that reason.
Global IoT spending is expected to rise 15.4 percent this year to $745 billion, reported IDC Thursday. IDC forecasts that worldwide IoT spending will surpass the $1 trillion mark in 2022. “Adoption of IoT is happening across industries, in governments, and in consumers' daily lives,” it said. “We are increasingly observing how data generated by connected devices is helping businesses run more efficiently, gain insight into business processes, and make real-time decisions. For consumers, access to data is changing how they are informed about the status of households, vehicles, and family members as well as their own health and fitness." Consumer IoT spending is expected to reach $108 billion in 2019, making it the second largest IoT industry segment behind manufacturing, said IDC: “The leading consumer use cases will be related to the smart home, personal wellness, and connected vehicle infotainment."
Facebook, Google and Twitter aren't liable for radicalization of ISIS-linked attackers behind the 2015 San Bernardino, California, mass shooting (see 1603280054), a federal judge ruled Monday, dismissing lawsuits from a group that included the victims’ relatives (docket 17-06894 in Pacer). Alleged “radicalization through exposure to online content does not establish the necessary direct relationship between the defendants’ conduct and the attacks on the victims,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled for U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The lawsuits can't be filed again because they were dismissed “with prejudice.” The plaintiffs alleged that online platforms “aided and abetted international terrorism and provided material support to international terrorists.”
Platforms should share online content moderation responsibilities with their users, said Tarleton Gillespie, a researcher at Microsoft Research, on C-SPAN's The Communicators, recorded earlier but shown for the first time over the weekend. Reddit is an example of a major platform that relies heavily on user content moderation. Given the size of these platforms, it’s basically impossible to moderate content proactively, said Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet. One thrust of the book is for platforms to take more ownership of content moderation, with a regime that addresses extreme content. Content moderation has become a major part of what platforms do, commanding a tremendous amount of resources, he said. The websites need to weigh a balance between creating a safe, open forum without committing politically biased censorship, he said. Gillespie regarded claims of anti-conservative bias as a “superficial” scoring of political points.
Hate speech and election interference create problems that “can never fully be solved,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote Friday. But the platform altered its “DNA” to address harmful issues like interference, harmful speech, misinformation and data control, he added. It will be more than a “one-year” challenge, he said, but the transformation is underway. The platform now employs more than 30,000 staffers to focus on safety, and Facebook invests billions in security annually, he said. “In the past we didn't focus as much on these issues as we needed to, but we're now much more proactive.”
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) signed legislation making cyberbullying a misdemeanor punishable by up to 93 days in jail and/or a $500 fine. Repeat offenders are subject to as many as 10 years in prison and fines up to $10,000, according to the legislation. The law defines cyberbullying as messages or posts on public forums that threaten violence, death and other harmful acts, and show a pattern of harassment.
The administration should promote data-sharing when updating national artificial intelligence strategy (see 1812040056), industry groups and Amazon said in comments to the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program posted last week. Microsoft and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) voiced support for “de-identification” techniques for anonymous data gathering and sharing. Access to large data sets is essential for Al and machine learning research and development, Amazon said. The e-commerce platform also argued against policies and regulations that might “hamper” tech R&D. The Information Technology Industry Council called data the “gasoline that fuels AI engines,” cautioning that data and privacy concerns must be considered. Sharing data would allow industry to better train algorithms, ITI said. In 2018, the U.S. didn’t properly fund AI R&D, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Center for Data Innovation said, citing better-financed competition from China, France and the U.K. Exposing source code for AI technology wouldn’t be useful, ITIF said, arguing “transparency guarantees neither accurate nor unbiased results.” The Software & Information Industry Association highlighted passage of the National Quantum Initiative Act, which President Donald Trump signed last week, authorizing $1.2 billion over five years for quantum activities across the federal government. People have a right to transparency, including data on human decision-making and the identities of groups behind the technology, EPIC said, offering 12 core principles endorsed by more than 200 experts and 50 NGOs. No group should be able to maintain “secret” profiling systems, and groups should be obligated to terminate a system if “human control of the system is no longer possible,” EPIC said. Echoing comments from EPIC, Microsoft backed de-identification data-sharing, or methods that preserve confidentiality, privacy and security. “However, AI systems that are used in contexts that involve people would need access to data about people to make informed decision[s],” Microsoft said.