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REFERENCE: https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2022/06/new-technology-helps-reveal-inner-workings-of-human-genome

ACCESS: Google News

CONNECTION:  This relates to the biology class I teach because it deals with tech and the human genome.

EMOTION: As a person who loves seeing scientific advancements, this made me feel hopeful that technology is helping scientists see how the human genome works and how it can help us understand ourselves better. I really enjoyed reading about how the technology can help scientists better understand how the genome works and how it could be used to understand diseases.

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REFERENCE: https://www.kcci.com/article/ubiquitous-energy-revolutionizing-solar-collector-and-power-technology/40362059

ACCESS: Google News

CONNECTION: This relates to my science classes that I teach because it talks about energy and how solar power can be harnessed more efficiently.

EMOTION: This article made me feel hopeful that renewable energy sources are becoming more and more integrated into homes instead of just having solar panels. I think that this type of solar panel engineering is really great for homes because not all roofs are eligible for solar panels.

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REFERENCE: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-israeli-military-technology-allows-operators-to-see-through-walls-2022-6

ACCESS: Google News

CONNECTION: This relates to all of the CS Courses we’re taking because it talks about how technology is changing and allowing for different applications to arise such as this one.

EMOTION: This article makes me feel a little weird about my privacy. The article talks about technology that can help the Israeli military see through walls. However, this makes me think about how they can deploy this type of technology into a much smaller, commercial scale where just anyone can buy it. The thought of that makes me afraid because I don’t want people being able to see through walls, especially when they’re there for privacy.

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Reference: https://www.newfoodmagazine.com/news/107004/does-using-technology-impact-our-food-consumption/

Access: Google Search

Connection: This food article summarizes the effect devices may have on our eating habits. A small scale study found that participants that had access to a phone ate significantly less than their counterparts who ate without access to a device. In addition, those who had access to a phone were on average less satisfied with the food. Although it was a small scale study and there were many confounding variables, it was interesting to read about the complex impacts of technology has on our eating habits.

Emotion:

I am not surprised that participants with access to a device demonstrated more mindless eating habits. I am interested in reading more about the complex impact technology has on our eating habits; for example, low self-esteems have resulted in more eating disorders. Healthy eating habits greatly impact an individual’s school performance; it is important to discuss healthy habits with our students. One of the health modules we watched encouraged teachers to only let students eat healthy snacks (fruits, granola bars) in class.

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Reference: https://www.nu.edu/resources/negative-effects-of-technology-on-children-what-can-you-do/

Access: Google Search

Connection: This article highlights the use of negative effects of technology on children including higher obesity rates, lower self-esteem, limited social skills, and decreased attention span. According to a research study conducted in Canada, the average attention span has decreased from 12 to 8 seconds since 2000. This article reminds me of our class discussions on technology in the classroom.

Emotion: I was very surprised to read about the average attention span being 8 seconds, how can students learn with a limited attention span?! I also began to think about how phones were a big issue in the classroom coming from the pandemic. I am still trying to figure out how much technology I want to embed in my classroom.

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Reference -> https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/summer2020/pages/artificial-intelligence-based-hiring-concerns.aspx

Access: Google Search

Connection: This article highlights the ever-growing presence of AI in the hiring process. I was not aware of how certain AI functions are used to evaluate and analyze a candidate’s facial expressions and mannerisms during video interviews. There is a growing hesitancy regarding these functions since emotions and facial expressions vary greatly across different cultures. In response to the complaints, several states have passed transparency laws that regulate the use of AI in interviews. For example, the laws in Illinois require jobs to receive consent before interviews and explain to candidates how AI will be used to analyze their interviews.

Emotion: This article makes me wonder in what other ways AI was used during virtual interviews during the pandemic due to the limitations regarding in-person interviews. I think analyzing facial expressions and mannerisms will always have consequences since AI does not consider culture or other determining factors. It was surprising to read that only a few states have regulations on the use of AI during interviews and It also reminded me of the film Coded Bias and how individuals’ faces were being scanned as they walked without consent.

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Reference: https://www.himss.org/resources/ai-healthcare-how-its-changing-industry

Access: Google - >  HIMSS

Connection: This article reminded me of Algorithms of Oppression, the film Coded Bias, and our discussions on the implications of using AI. The article provides a list of how artificial intelligence is positively changing the health care industry including clinical decision support, patient data, and precision medicine. The article claims that AI algorithms can be used to provide individualized treatment plans by using large quantities of genetic, social, and preference data. Although AI can analyze large data sets much more quickly than medical researchers, AI cannot consider ethics.

Emotion:

I am extremely hesitant about further embedding AI into health care since the decisions made will directly impact individuals’ health. Although AI is able to analyze large data sets and pick the most effective treatment, the data available on health outcomes is largely based on white individuals. The limited data on black and brown communities and health treatments needs to be considered before decisions are made.

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Reference: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/03/19/1-communications-technology-in-emerging-and-developing-nations/

Access: Google -> Pew Research Center

Connection: This article discusses internet access across developed and developing nations. Within countries, internet access differs greatly based on multiple factors. The study found that age, education, computer ownership, and English language ability were the most significant determining factors of whether someone uses the Internet. In addition to these factors, being male and having a higher income also increases the probability of Internet access. This connects to our discussions on equity and the discrepancies across Internet access. There is no equal access to the web and as a result, only certain groups are able to create content on the web.

Emotion:

This article made me reflect on the many barriers preventing Internet access even in developed countries. I also liked how the data included “determining factors” of Internet use since it highlights underrepresented groups on the web. As a result, their perspectives are also missing. Although the authors are not attempting to influence the reader, I do think the user-friendly visualizations help readers understand the extreme inequity found in Internet access.

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Reference: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-shouldn-rsquo-t-try-to-make-conscious-software-mdash-until-we-should/

Access: Scientific American

Connection: This article looks at the ethical question of creating conscious AIs. At the moment the scientific community has not decided what consciousness is and what it would need to present to be acknowledged, therefore we currently are unable to understand if anything we have made is or can be conscious. This article doesn’t delve deeply into algorithms or how AIs are being created but it does explore the role of AIs as a tool and popular images of them.

Emotion: I thought this article posed a really interesting ethical question. Because the scientific community cannot agree on a definition we can’t know whether there are conscious AI exist right now. This article also poses other interesting questions about what humans owe to AIs if they were conscious. I’m glad that there’s none that fit the description of sci-fi AIs and it always baffles me that we would want to try (it would be interesting but there would be so many questions I don’t think society is ready to handle).

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#1

Reference: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-can-predict-potential-nutrient-deficiencies-from-space/

Access: Scientific American

Connection: This article discusses how a team of researchers are building an AI to predict and notice geographic patterns and nutrient deficiencies in local populations. They hope to look at both macro- and micro-  nutrient deficiencies. The AI is learning the patterns between geographic patterns and real lab-collected specimen data.

Emotion: This is really interesting! It sounds like it would be really helpful for humanitarian purposes in third-world countries, but I don’t think geographic markers alone will be enough to determine nutrient deficiencies in a country like the United States where this type of health disparity is associated with historic oppression and socioeconomic status.

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Reference: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/tech/instagram-age-verification-tool/index.html

Access: CNN

Connection: This article describes a new age verification feature Instagram wants to use where they ask users to take a video and a facial recognition AI determines their age. This connects to the ideas of AI, algorithms, digital privacy, and technology.

Emotion: I dislike the idea of this and I hope they don’t implement this. I think age is something very difficult to predict and I foresee this AI having a lot of issues.

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Journal #5:

1. REFERENCE: https://apple.news/A7XVRcf5lSJOgzMBujNuADQ

2. ACCESS: Apple News

3. CONNECTION:

This article connects to our conversations around cybersecurity and hackers. It also connects to peoples digital data and why others may want to obtain it. This article discusses spyware “Hermit” that is targeting Android and IOS users. I don't believe that we really touched on “hermit” kind of attacks in this class. I think it speaks to the vast amounts of different kinds of cyber attacks that can happen. I was able to follow along with the language that the article was using which I think is pretty cool. Before this class I dont think I would have been able to follow along lol.

1. EMOTION:

It is scary to read articles like these because you never know when something like this can happen to you. At the same time this class has really gotten me to think about the kind of securities that I have on my devices and how I can better protect my accounts. It is scary to hear about people who are able to create things and take your personal information. Sometimes articles like this makes me think about the vulnerability of my information but also makes me cautious of not clicking on anything that may compromise my device and make it easier for hackers to obtain my information.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220531102702.htm

Access: sciencedaily

Connection: This article describes an AI currently in the research phase that can examine the face of a patient to see if they might have Alzheimer’s. This new technology would be used for early diagnosis but the algorithm has not been fully tested and completed.

Emotion: I’m skeptical about the inherent bias that might be present in this system. This is still in the research phase and I hope they train the machine to identify different ethnicities as well.

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Journal #4:

1. REFERENCE: https://apple.news/AJnFC6YgcQaOZ9ossNzT6Ow

2. ACCESS: Apple News

3. CONNECTION:

The article focuses on Microsoft's ability to now ban players on Minecraft even when using private servers. In the past these players on private servers had complete freedom. However, now Microsoft will be able to suspend players that are abusing the chat feature and aren't in line with Community Standards and in severe cases, players will be banned. Players will be able to access a help page that explains how to report players who go against the Community Standards or may be in a harmful situation. It seems that the gaming community is torn between those who may abuse these new features and others who say leave the game as it is. This article connects to our conversations on who has control over what they can access online and how that affects what users are able to do. Microsoft is making big changes to the types of behaviors that are expected from players and is doing so by restricting the power they have on Minecraft.

1. EMOTION:

As a sister whose 9 year old brother plays Minecraft, I actually stand in favor of this change. Many kids play this game and I think it's important that at least there is a baseline of behavior that is tolerated on these platforms. I always worry about the type of conversations that kids are exposed to when playing these kinds of games. Many play these games unsupervised and parents may not know what they are being exposed to. When it comes to technology I think there are many more conversations to be had on how children can be protected.

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Journal #3:

1. REFERENCE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/10/elon-musk-twitter-plans/

2. ACCESS: Washington Post

3. CONNECTION:

Our program focuses on social justice and how our students can be agents of change. I think students can use the CML framework to analyze this article and have discussions about the ideologies in our society and power structures. It also is a great way to have discussions around the regulations on most of technology and the power that a few people who control these outlets have on dictating which information gets spread and how that shapes the way people think.

1. EMOTION:

The author seeks to inform on Musk’s intentions around Twitter but at the same time raises concerns that people had in regards to Musk. This article made me think  about the amount of power that people control social media because they don't really have to answer to anyone. In a society that probably gets most of their news from social media it is scary to think that anything can be said because someone's definition of freedom of speech means that any kind of speech is okay. Elon Musk’s plan would make it easier for people to spread fake news and hate speech. This is why it is important that students don't just consume media but are able to critique it and create their own opinions and media content.

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Journal #10:

1. REFERENCE: https://apple.news/AMydQco2gT7aeqJvXorUTgw

2. ACCESS: Apple News

3. CONNECTION:

When looking at power in the tech industry, we have looked at how algorithms have the power to leave people out and carry with them the opinions and biases of those who create them. This article looks at workers being laid off from companies. Many of them had already laid off workers at the start of the pandemic and continue to do so now. It goes to show how indispensable workers are when companies are struggling to stay economically stable.

1. EMOTION:

The article for the most part seems to be informative. It provides a list of companies that are laying off workers and how many. Furthermore, it provides the reasoning that the company provided for the layoffs. However, reading this made me feel a bit sad because these are all people whose livelihoods are at risk and may not have anything to fall back on. It shows us how we are still feeling the consequences of the pandemic and how unstable employment stil is.

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Journal #9:

1. REFERENCE: https://apple.news/ATWtarEHuSeO3lYlPkI_yEQ

2. ACCESS: Apple News

3. CONNECTION:

This article touched on topics of espionage but at the same time Julian’s family is saying that what he did is because he is a journalist. At the start of the course when I thought about cyber security, I thought about it on a large scale such as government espionage. However, after this unit I have been thinking more about my risks and why cyber security is something that should be important for everyone.

1. EMOTION:

I don't know much about Julian Assage so I probably need to do more research on what this article is all about. What I found the most interesting is that the US is claiming he broke espionage laws but at the same time Julian’s side is claiming that as a journalist he was doing just that. I think that it's complicated to draw a line between what is considered espionage or journalism. Obviously, governments don't want any of their secrets to be leaked but what about when those secrets shed light on secrets that people want to know?

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Journal #1:

1. REFERENCE: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/06/iran-internet-protection-bill-curbs-restrictions-unrest/

2. ACCESS: Google search

3. CONNECTION:

Thinking about our discussions around critical media literacy, I think this article depicts the importance of students being able to think critically about the internet and how it is being monitored in different areas of the world. We can use this article as an entry discussion on the internet and peoples rights to it but also thinking about whether limitations should be imposed on by the government and when those laws are fair or unfair.

1. EMOTION:

I found this article to be shocking and I was surprised I haven't heard about this happening. It really puts into perspective the role of the internet has on shaping societies and how some governments are scared of this kind of power. The internet when used correctly can really unite people to find a common objective and generate social change. Passing these kinds of laws would make it difficult for people to come together but also make it hard for their realities to be shared with the rest of the world. It goes to show just how oppressive some leaders are and how politicians will say anything to get elected and then go back on their promises.

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Journal #2:

1. REFERENCE: https://apple.news/AwtAUIYVUSQiMdrYkqPmoJA

2. ACCESS: Apple News

3. CONNECTION:

Thinking deeper about social media’s role and the way that these apps work. Students and people overall have social media but may not know exactly how it works. I think it is important to think about the algorithms that go into social media apps and their function. Looking at the very little regulation that exists within technology and the responsibilities that tech companies should have. When having conversations around difficult moments such as these, I think it's important that students find ways in which they can generate change.

1. EMOTION:

I felt angry and lots of grief while reading this piece because it's just crazy that things like these continue to occur. I think it's great that the app is trying to add more safeguards but the real issue isn't really that the app did not catch this person’s intentions but also why guns are so unregulated in this country. I feel like I haven't seen many articles that talk about the real issue but rather focus on other aspects. We have had many mass shootings,when will people actually regulate guns and tackle the real problem.

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Reference: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319262-are-period-tracking-apps-still-safe-to-use-in-the-us-post-roe-v-wade/

Access: Newscientist

Connection: This article talks about how user data is sold to data brokers. On something like a period tracking app, could this user data be used to to find the users location and report them in states that aggressively push the anti-abortion legislation.

Emotion: I hate that this is something we have to worry about. These apps and services were meant to help women but that data is easy to access as, like any other app, user data is dispersed for marketing and such.

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REFERENCE: https://www.techradar.com/news/one-of-the-best-password-managers-around-just-picked-up-an-excellent-new-feature

ACCESS: Tech Radar

CONNECTION: The content of this article was focused on additional security features within this password manager firm, that allows users to send time-limited confidential records. This reminded me of the importance of protecting your shared information against not only human error, but also malicious hackers. This definitely related to what I’ve been learning in module 4 of this unit, and aligned with the following standard: 9-12.NI.6 Compare and contrast security measures to address various security threats. I am reminded that cybersecurity is constantly evolving and adapting to new threats. The fact that this feature can be utilized across a variety of sharing methods and with others who don’t have a Keeper account is great because it lowers the barrier to accessing this important safety feature.

EMOTION: Something I really liked about this article was an accessibility feature on the website, where you could choose to listen to the article. Having this feature easily accessed and prominently displayed increases equitable access to the content. It’s in everyone’s best interest to have information available in multiple mediums. It made me feel like the website had a wide audience in mind.

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REFERENCE: Twitter closed captioning toggle available on mobile

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23180819/twitter-video-closed-captions-ios-android-accessibility-subtitles

ACCESS: The Verge

CONNECTION: The contents of this article reminded me of our CML class, as I had to think about who benefitted from this feature, as well as the positionality of the article’s author. The author definitely agreed that it was a good thing, as they noted, “Hopefully, the toggle being available to everyone will encourage anyone uploading a video to Twitter to consider adding captions.” Because I agree with this statement, it made me more inclined to read the article. Highlighting the ways that tech can push us towards equitable access is important to my classroom goals, as well as the goals of this class, as exemplified in the course standard below. Clearly twitter received feedback that pushed them towards implementing this feature.

9-12.IC.24 Identify impacts of bias and equity deficit on the design and implementation of computational artifacts and apply appropriate processes for evaluating issues of bias.

EMOTION: I think it’s really important that we push for more accessibility features like this, and that we make them more visible. The article states that captions may have been available if you had them enabled in your phone’s settings, but pushing for them at the browser and site levels will increase visibility and help make them the norm. Unfortunately this doesn’t include an auto captioning feature, so it’s still up to the person who uploaded the video to include captioning in the first place, but it makes me happy to see options like this more widely available.

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Week Three

REFERENCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61828900

ACCESS: Googled “technology news” and clicked this link to BBC

CONNECTION: How does this relate to one or more of the courses that you're teaching/ taking or one or more of the objectives of this course?

This article is about teens using social media and new ways for instagram to verify their ages. This is something that would affect our students and I am really interested to get student’s opinions on this. One method of age verification presented is a “video selfie” that uses facial recognition technology to confirm a user’s age. This also connected to the conversation about facial recognition in Coded Bias.

EMOTION: How did this article make you feel? Does it appear that this publisher/author/hosting site had intentions to influence the reader in any particular way?

This article was presented very objectively. They presented the different methods of age verification and interviewed some of the people working on the technology. I think it is really important for minors to be protected online. I grew up with pretty unlimited access to the internet and knew lots of people who lied about their age and got into dangerous situations online. I think some kind of age verification system is good because young people do need restrictions for their own safety. For example, adults who aren’t accepted followers shouldn’t be able to message minors.

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Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61813845
Access: BBC News
Connection: This article connects to our class because it raises a lot of questions about who dictates technology use and if it's really beneficial to those impacted by it. In this article, one of the people interviewed mentions that she is against El Salvador's bitcoin policy because of a lack of transparency from the government surrounding when and with what money they buy bitcoin. And the article also talks about how this policy was introduced by the president, not the public. It seems like in this case the government, in addition to the tech company, is keeping information from and flexing control over the public (something that all large tech companies do through the use of their products).
Emotion: Something that I found strange in this article was that  bitcoin started at a large scale in El Salvador because of an anonymous donor. That, in addition to the president introducing these policies without the public asking, just sort of made me very skeptical. Even if the bitcoin crash doesn't have a large negative impact, this approach seems very fishy to me.

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Cryptocurrencies have continued to tumble this week with billions wiped from the value of tokens like Bitcoin. The crash is affecting investors worldwide, including the government of El Salvador. The Central American country has poured millions of dollars into Bitcoin and made it legal tender nine months ago, encouraging people to use it for day-to-day transactions.

From trinkets and tacos to petrol and even houses - you can shop for pretty much anything in El Salvador with Bitcoin. Buying with cryptocurrency from street sellers and major chains alike is a remarkable experience.

It shows how far Bitcoin has come since it was dreamt up on internet forums back in 2008.

The decision by President Nayib Bukele to make the cryptocurrency legal tender means that in theory it must now be accepted by all businesses, alongside El Salvador's other currency, the US dollar.

But the latest cryptocurrency crash has prompted more questions about the policy, especially the use of nearly $100m of public funds to buy Bitcoin - each purchase celebrated by the president with a tweet.

The country's 2,300 bitcoins are now worth half what the government paid for them, but the finance minister has brushed off criticism, saying there is "extremely minimal fiscal risk".

Bitcoin Beach

The place where El Salvador's Bitcoin movement started is El Zonte, a small surfing and fishing town on the south coast. Here, in 2019, an anonymous donor gave a group of cryptocurrency fans the first of many large donations of Bitcoin.

No-one admits to knowing who he or she is, but the deal was that the town could keep the digital coins on condition they weren't converted into dollars.

The idea was to create the world's first circular Bitcoin economy, where people can be paid in Bitcoin - a peer-to-peer internet cash system - and live on it.

It's a radical idea. In the rest of the world Bitcoin can be used for online purchases, but except in a small number of trendy cafes or one-off projects, it hasn't been possible to use it on the high street.

El Zonte has so far received about $350,000 from its anonymous benefactor, a significant amount for this shabby but beautiful town, now also known as Bitcoin Beach.

Katerina Contreras was one of the first beneficiaries.

Two years ago, during the pandemic, she was offered a lifeguard course, and it seemed like a good deal. The organisers paid for the trainees' transport and food in Bitcoin.

"Then for six months we worked as lifeguards and were paid our wages in Bitcoin," she says.

Some businesses in the town say they have seen a 30% uptick in trade as Bitcoin Tourists, fuelled by crypto YouTuber channels, are attracted to the novelty of spending their digital coins on holiday.

However, Bitcoin adoption remains patchy.

My travels led me to conclude that the further you move from Bitcoin Beach, the less likely you are to be able to buy things in the digital currency.

In Bitcoin Beach just over half the businesses I came across accepted Bitcoin, but drive north 80 minutes to the capital, San Salvador, and it's more like a quarter.

Subsidised wallet

The government says it has no plans to force businesses to accept Bitcoin, even though they should under the country's Bitcoin Law. So far it has restricted itself to offering incentives.

Cash is still very much king here, with more than half of Salvadoreans not owning a bank account, but President Bukele has poured $200m of public money into a subsidised Bitcoin wallet app, called Chivo.

Anyone who downloads the app receives $30 in Bitcoin for signing up, which may explain why it has been downloaded four million times, in a country of 6.5 million.

But many people use the app for transactions in dollars, not Bitcoin. It's often used this way, for example, by people who work abroad and send money home to their families, as there are no commission or transfer fees.

And there are signs that after the initial surge of interest, people are using Chivo less.

Another incentive to use it came into existence at the end of February, with the opening of the country's most advanced animal hospital.

Large queues are common, with people and pets sheltering in lines under gazebos for their appointments. And that's because all animal care, even complex surgery, costs only 25 cents - as long as it's paid for with the Chivo app, and preferably in Bitcoin.

Staff say the centre is being paid for with "the profits of Bitcoin", but government officials didn't answer requests to explain how these profits were made.

Public money

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been urging El Salvador to reverse its decision to make Bitcoin legal tender, arguing that it's too unstable for this purpose, and local economists like Tatiana Marroquin are increasingly concerned.

She says the government doesn't have enough money to help vulnerable people, so shouldn't be taking risks by pouring public funds into cryptocurrency.

She also says there is a lack of transparency.

"We don't know exactly when or with what money they've bought bitcoins."

Tourism Minister Morena Valdez, however, insists Salvadoreans have confidence in President Bukele, despite Bitcoin's falling value.

"We know that each of the president's decisions are made in the right moment. People have a lot of trust in his decisions and in how the country's economy is going," she says.

Other countries were thought to be considering following El Salvador's move, before the latest crash began in May, though the Central African Republic is the only one that has done it. The country's president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, announced the step on Twitter, describing Bitcoin as "universal money".

El Salvador now wants to go further.

President Bukele has announced plans for a new city - Bitcoin City - to be built at the foot of a volcano that will provide geothermal energy, and power a giant Bitcoin mine.

He's hoping to raise the money by selling $1bn of Volcano Bonds, though these were meant to go on sale in March and have not yet appeared.

Officials say they are confident they will be able to raise the funds - and pay a looming foreign debt bill of $800m.

But the cryptocurrency crash is piling pressure on this government as it continues to bet big on Bitcoin.

Watch the documentary El Salvador's Big Bitcoin Gamble this weekend on the News Channel and BBC World News

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Bitcoin: Will El Salvador's big crypto gamble pay off?

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Cryptocurrencies have continued to tumble this week with billions wiped from the value of tokens like Bitcoin. The crash is affecting investors worldwide, including the government of El Salvador. The Central American country has poured millions of dollars into Bitcoin and made it legal tender nine months ago, encouraging people to use it for day-to-day transactions.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220622101316.htm
Access: Science Daily
Connection: This article connects to our class because it shows an example of a technology meant to address a social justice concern, and also shows a way to thinking about technology that could be useful. In the documentaries we've watched this semester, a recurring theme has been that tech companies aren't thinking about how to better society with their products. But this tech is specifically designed to address a global issue: microplastics. And as inspiration, researchers have drawn from fish and clams for their design. I thought it was interesting that researchers were using aquatic animals to give them ideas, and (like we've talked about in class) this willingness to look at communities in the environment your technology will operate in is a way to safeguard against some of the negative impacts tech can have.
Emotion: I am intrigued by this idea because I think it's a really innovative way to solve this issue, and I think it strangely shows a big respect for the environment it will operate in by mimicking animals (fish) that already live there. A question / concern I have is how these robotic fish are to be collected and how operators can insure they don't get broken or go missing and become another source of litter in the ocean.

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Microplastics are found nearly everywhere on Earth and can be harmful to animals if they're ingested. But it's hard to remove such tiny particles from the environment, especially once they settle into nooks and crannies at the bottom of waterways. Now, researchers in ACS' Nano Letters have created a light-activated fish robot that "swims" around quickly, picking up and removing microplastics from the environment.

Because microplastics can fall into cracks and crevices, they've been hard to remove from aquatic environments. One solution that's been proposed is using small, flexible and self-propelled robots to reach these pollutants and clean them up. But the traditional materials used for soft robots are hydrogels and elastomers, and they can be damaged easily in aquatic environments. Another material called mother-of-pearl, also known as nacre, is strong and flexible, and is found on the inside surface of clam shells. Nacre layers have a microscopic gradient, going from one side with lots of calcium carbonate mineral-polymer composites to the other side with mostly a silk protein filler. Inspired by this natural substance, Xinxing Zhang and colleagues wanted to try a similar type of gradient structure to create a durable and bendable material for soft robots.

The researchers linked β-cyclodextrin molecules to sulfonated graphene, creating composite nanosheets. Then solutions of the nanosheets were incorporated with different concentrations into polyurethane latex mixtures. A layer-by-layer assembly method created an ordered concentration gradient of the nanocomposites through the material from which the team formed a tiny fish robot that was 15-mm (about half-an-inch) long. Rapidly turning a near-infrared light laser on and off at a fish's tail caused it to flap, propelling the robot forward. The robot could move 2.67 body lengths per second -- a speed that's faster than previously reported for other soft swimming robots and that is about the same speed as active phytoplankton moving in water. The researchers showed that the swimming fish robot could repeatedly adsorb nearby polystyrene microplastics and transport them elsewhere. The material could also heal itself after being cut, still maintaining its ability to adsorb microplastics. Because of the durability and speed of the fish robot, the researchers say that it could be used for monitoring microplastics and other pollutants in harsh aquatic environments.

The authors acknowledge funding from a National Key Research and Development Program of China Grant, National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants and the Sichuan Provincial Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.

Journal Reference:

Yuyan Wang, Gehong Su, Jin Li, Quanquan Guo, Yinggang Miao, Xinxing Zhang. Robust, Healable, Self-Locomotive Integrated Robots Enabled by Noncovalent Assembled Gradient Nanostructure. Nano Letters, 2022; DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01375

Cite This Page:

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robotics research; optics; engineering; ecology; air quality; environmental policy; robotics; artificial intelligence; computer science

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Tiny fish-shaped robot 'swims' around picking up microplastics

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Microplastics are found nearly everywhere on Earth and can be harmful to animals if they're ingested. But it's hard to remove such tiny particles from the environment, especially once they settle into nooks and crannies at the bottom of waterways. Now, researchers have created a light-activated fish robot that 'swims' around quickly, picking up and removing microplastics from the environment.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220622101303.htm
Access: Science Daily
Connection: This article connects to our class because it describes researchers debugging self-driving car technology. The researchers have used how human's learn (memories) to inspire their solution.
Emotion: I thought this article was interesting because it points out some complications I didn't realize would be issues for self-driving cars. The biggest of these was severe weather conditions because the cars don't have their usual ability to detect their surroundings. I thought the idea to have the cars basically write descriptions of objects and store them in an internal map was very creative and unique, as well as the idea to have cars share their maps with each other. This is essentially how human brains work at their best (although our memories aren't usually that accurate). This technology is beginning to solve a lot of issues surrounding location and the ability to use self-driving cars.

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REFERENCE: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/google-abortion-misleading-results-lawmakers/index.html

ACCESS: CNN

CONNECTION: This article reminded me of our critical media literacy class, as well as the book Algorithms of Oppression. The opaque way that search engines work, specifically google, makes us believe that the top results are the most trustworthy or relevant to our search. Which is absolutely not true, as Google’s algorithm is still a reflection of the biases that exist in the humans that created it. It’s scary to think that tech can have such a major impact on our bodies and access to healthcare. We have to be reminded that search engines are a product with a purpose, much of which is ad profit. If the top results for a search for abortion services are anti-abortion clinics, it’s clear who is profiting off this result and that Google is complicit in attempting to govern bodies.

EMOTION: This article made me angry, as there is already so much misinformation when it comes to abortion. If people are being limited in their ability to conduct their own research and make this decision, this could have a major impact on people’s lives. The fact that a search engine or web browser is complicit in limiting access to abortion is so heartbreaking.

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REFERENCE: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-long-form-content-with-upcoming-twitter-notes-feature/

ACCESS: This article was found by searching “twitter tech news” on google

CONNECTION: 9-12.IC.27 Use collaboration tools and methods to increase connectivity with people of different cultures and careers. This course’s standard asks us to consider how network systems allow us to communicate across physical space and with people from varied backgrounds. Twitter’s platform has played a big role in the social media landscape, changing how we communicate, and has launched people’s careers. The ability to use Twitter for long-form writing will change the existing culture of twitter threads, which are a beloved and highly recognizable way of utilizing the platform. I wonder if this new feature will increase opportunities for communication or become an ineffective tool that users do not embrace.

EMOTION: This article made me wary as I feel like longform reads are not the point of Twitter, and this type of content belongs elsewhere. The appeal of threads on the platform is that it creates a natural conclusion and chunks information into bite-sized pieces, thus the audience can choose how much they’d like to engage with it. Readers can better abstract the key info from the thread in this format, as compared to having to read a long essay and then summarize the info. I feel that this article is fairly neutral in its presentation of the information.

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REFERENCE: Can crumbling cookies sweeten UK data-protection plans? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61865575

ACCESS:I searched “tech news” and this article was recommended at the top of google

CONNECTION: 9-12.IC.30 Evaluate the social and economic implications of privacy in the context of safety, law, or ethics. This course standard asks us to engage with technology in more thoughtful and safe ways, as the internet becomes increasingly opaque and our information becomes decreasingly private. I wonder how I would think about internet privacy if I were to opt in once to tracking at the browser level, rather than having cookie opt-out pop ups on every new site I visit. Privacy proponents take up the issue with the reform bill potentially placing the onus of consent on individuals to prevent their data from being tracked instead of opting into it.

EMOTION: This article made me curious, because I had to consider my own privacy practices online. I think the author was fairly comprehensive in presenting both sides of the issue, but the framing, from the title of the article, to the presentation of the information, was confusing and lacked meaning.

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REFERENCE: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/277040/20220622/microsoft-will-longer-allow-companies-access-facial-recognition-technologies-heres.htm

ACCESS: I searched “tech news ethics” and this was the top result under news tab on google

CONNECTION: I think it’s great that Microsoft is limiting access to their facial recognition technology, mainly by implementing an application for use of the software, to ensure companies requesting use meet their AI ethics policies. This article is a reminder that the power of computing has ethical concerns that need to be integrated in the design of the technology, not considered after the fact.

EMOTION: I found this article to be underwhelming, as they merely stated the basic facts. I think the author could have gone farther in outlining what Microsoft’s AI ethic policies are, and what sort of misuse or advocacy may have led them to limiting access to the technology.

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REFERENCE: Do Online Voter Guides Empower Citizens? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Digital Trace Data*

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/50cd/47f0d88a27f6cf9657ef710b14696b1299d2.pdf

ACCESS: I was wondering if anyone had done any studies on the topic, so I searched it online

CONNECTION: I think this is an example of the simple, but powerful ways in which we now communicate online. I am very excited that my district elected Eunisses Hernandez, a community activist, for city council. Thinking about the messaging that led to my decision to vote for her, among the majority in my district, I considered the role of digital media. One of the forms of research I conducted was on voting guides, which are published online, often by non-profits, that align with a set of values. This article highlights the fact that, while the actual impact of these guides alone is limited, promotion and access of such information is what truly empowers citizens, much of which is mediated by online communications. In connection to our CML class, this article highlights the importance of investigating who publishes these guides and for what gain. In connection to this course’s standards ( 9-12.IC.23 Evaluate the ways computing impacts personal, ethical, social, economic, and cultural practices), this article is a simple reminder that computing has a real life impact on our society, even in the simplest of ways, such as information dissemination.

EMOTION: This research excited me, as I am very interested in finding new ways to empower my students, as young citizens. I want them to know that they can have an impact on their community, even if they cannot yet vote. Highlighting the importance of shared knowledge and critical media literacy in evaluating voter guides will guide them towards future critical thinking.

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REFERENCE: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/google-lamda-chatbot-sentient-ai/661322/

ACCESS: I heard about these claims via my boyfriend, who was reading a twitter thread about this AI software and the engineer in question; then I found a relevant article online

CONNECTION: The philosophical concerns about AI outlined in this writer’s argument were helpful in understanding the following standard for this course:

9-12.IC.23 Evaluate the ways computing impacts personal, ethical, social, economic, and cultural practices.

In comparing the ethical concerns around computing to those around animal and human welfare, this article thoughtfully articulated the humanity in computing and bridged the so-called “objective” world of CS with the emotional world of subjective philosophy. It shows that our qualms about AI come from a very real human reaction, and that even engineers, who clearly understand and work with this software daily, are not infallible.

EMOTION: I found the framing of this article to be very compelling, as its author did not simply interview engineers about what AI is logically capable of, but rather connected the question of AI sentience to other scientific ethical issues, such as animal welfare and human development. Because of this comparison,, I found this incidence to be much more nuanced than a typical shut-down of AI sentience claims.

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REFERENCE: AI software called DALL-E turns your words into pictures

ACCESS: Seen these images via twitter, looked up an article about their origins

CONNECTION: I think this is a comprehensive article that balances the fun of such outrageous images with the potential for biases, which relates to our focus on social justice in software in CS 492. Our CML class reminds me that we have to be cognizant of this software’s origins, and what intentions they have in creating it, as well as who is/is not benefitting from it. As with other AI technologies, biases are built into the program, so as we encounter these images online, it’s helpful to understand how they were created and from what source material.

EMOTION: The novel applications of this software so far have made me laugh, as images that get posted to twitter are mostly funny and clearly AI, given how imperfect they are. I think this article was well intentioned in addressing the pros and cons of such software, and mainly focused on its limited user access so far.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220622101303.htm

Access: Science Daily

Connection: This article explores a new feature that may potentially be added to self-driving cars, an ‘hindsight’ feature, where the car stores memories in its local database so that it can better approach a situation and/or location after encountering it a second time.

Emotion: My sister is a big fan of self-driving cars and I picked this article up because I thought of her. This seems like an interesting idea because hindsight works well for us humans, we tend to do similar tas

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Reference:https://www.sciencenews.org/article/core-memory-weavers-navajo-apollo-raytheon-computer-nasa

Access: Google Search

Connection: This article talks about the women behind the moon landing, namely the Navajo women that were asked to assemble the microchips. Their unique rug weaving skills came in handy as the same precision and creativity was needed for the microchip creation. Without this work, the core memory of the project would have had to use a much older and would have slowed the overall performance of the computers. This article talks about the intersection of technology, computing, and art.

Emotion: I was amazed to hear about this! I knew many women worked on the computing part of the moon landing, but I had no idea that Navajo women were essential due to their skills! I love to hear about the intersection between art and science, I think we often overlook that and I want to help my students see it also.

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REFERENCE: That smiling LinkedIn profile face might be a computer-generated fake

ACCESS: I heard this piece on NPR’s Up First podcast one morning, then found the transcription on their website

CONNECTION: This article explores an investigation into AI-generated profile pictures on LinkedIn, launched by disinformation researcher, Renée DiResta. I first thought about this media piece in relation to our critical media literacy class this quarter. In this article, DiResta noted the photos looked like a typical corporate headshot. Therefore, the people who developed these AI-generated avatars coded the avatars to match our expectations of what a corporate American looks like. In this second article about fake LinkedIn profiles, they include a collage of such avatars. It's interesting to note the general characteristics of the stereotypical corporate employee- primarily white or light-skinned, mostly straight hair, plain features, and a wide grin. It made me wonder why we think this is what a corporate employee must look like? What schemas have we developed around the corporate employee stereotype, that we so readily accept these profiles? In regards to software, this is a reminder that the biases of the creator are coded into the programs we create.

EMOTION: I thought this article was interesting, but didn’t go deep enough into the social issue. Much of the social issue I’ve touched upon in my connection reflection wasn’t included in the article- rather it focused on the use of AI in disinformation campaigns. The way the title of the article is written also seems to intend to incite fear- but for what reason? I think the media likes to make AI out to be this scary thing that we should be afraid of, but if we had even a basic understanding of how AI works, we’d know that the onus of this emotion should be on its creators.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220527085230.htm

Access: Tumblr → Science daily site

Connection: This is an interesting use of technology in the field! Hydrophones are deployed to capture the sounds of the corals to understand the health of the environment. They also used computing to make an AI that can learn these sound patterns and tell the scientists what is going on.

Emotion: This was a really interesting use of AI! It makes me hopeful to see articles like this where scientists are trying their hardest to preserve and sustain the environment using new and innovative methods.

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Reference: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/google-abortion-misleading-results-lawmakers/index.html
Access: CNN news

Connection: This article explores the algorithms and biases still present in Google today. Search engines are a part of technology we use daily yet the algorithm it uses continues to have biases that can be harmful to its users. This is something important to remember! Algorithms are made by humans and humans have biases.

Emotion: I am becoming more and more aware of the biases in the Search Engines and it disapppoints me to see how Google does not always respond or take action when they are pointed out.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220621141810.htm
Access: Science Daily

Connection: The scientists behind this project worked at creating a code that allows these little bots to communicate with each other without any network or bluetooth. They took inspiration from Fireflies and figured out how to create tiny bots that produced electroluminescence. The bots can track each other through the lights, keep data on each other’s motion, and respond according to their programming to locate targets of interest and call for help.

Emotion: At first glance this seems like a cute idea but makes me doubt the scientists thought about the ecological ramifications of this. On further inspection this is a really interesting idea for projects that need a simple track and communicate function from the devices, it could be useful for field studies where network function is low.

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Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/amazon-extends-its-quantum-efforts-with-a-focus-on-networking/
Access: TechCrunch
Connection: This article relates to the earlier unit on networking.  This article states that Amazon is investing in Quantum networking by launching the AWS Center for Quantum Networking.  Similar to the way today's devices are connected via the internet, quantum devices need to be connected together into a quantum network to unlock the full potential of these devices.
Emotion: Overall this article made me feel hopeful, as our computers are moving towards quantum computers, we need to have a network that can connect them together, both for building more powerful, multiprocessor networks for computation and for creating secure quantum communication networks.

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Amazon today announced a new effort in bringing quantum computing to its cloud - at least in the long term. The company today launched the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, a new research effort that aims to push forward the science and engineering of networking quantum computers together, both for building more powerful, multi-processor networks for computation and for creating secure quantum communication networks.

In recent years, Amazon and its AWS cloud computing unit made a number of major investments in quantum computing. With Amazon Braket, the company offers developers access to quantum computers from the likes of IonQ, Oxford Quantum Circuits, Rigetti and D-Wave, as well as other software tools and simulators. In addition to that, the company is also already running two more research-centric efforts: the AWS Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, California, which focuses on basic science like building better qubits and error correction algorithms, and the Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab, which puts an emphasis on helping enterprises prepare for the future of quantum computing.

Basically, while Braket and the Quantum Solutions Lab focus on near-term practical solutions, the Center for Quantum Computing and now the Center for Quantum Networking focus on long-term research efforts.

"To unlock the full potential of quantum devices, they need to be connected together into a quantum network, similar to the way today's devices are connected via the internet," the company explains in today's announcement. "Despite not receiving the same level of attention as quantum computers, quantum networks have fascinating possible applications. One of them is enabling global communications protected by quantum key distribution with privacy and security levels not achievable using conventional encryption techniques. Quantum networks will also provide powerful and secure cloud quantum servers by connecting together and amplifying the capabilities of individual quantum processors."

As of now, most of the research efforts around quantum networking have been at the level of start-funded research labs. Most commercial quantum computing efforts have been at the processor level (and the ecosystem around that), so it's definitely a bit of a novelty that Amazon is now focusing on that, but now may be the time to focus on this aspect of quantum computing, especially given that quantum processing units are now starting to reach a level of maturity that would've been considered science fiction only a decade or two ago.

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Amazon extends its quantum efforts with a focus on networking

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Amazon today announced a new effort in bringing quantum computing to its cloud - at least in the long term. The company today launched the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, a new research effort that aims to push forward the science and engineering of networking quantum computers together, bo...

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Reference: https://www.wired.com/story/north-korea-hacker-internet-outage/#intcid=_wired-bottom-recirc_b0ed85d7-43a0-410b-b29d-2ac0498d41a5_timespent-1yr-evergreen
Access: Wired
Connection:  This article relates to the types of hackers we learn in our class, and in this article he is a grey hat.  An independent hacker who goes by P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies.  Because the US government's lack of response to North Korean targeting of US individuals, he took issues into his own hands and launched a cyberattack aimed at unpatched vulnerabilities "denial-of-service" attacks.
Emotion: Good for him! If he waited a year and the government did not step in, I agree with what he did. I believe we need to perform attacks and gather information in order to keep North Korea from hacking the western world completely unchecked.

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Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands.

For the past two weeks, observers of North Korea's strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet began to notice that the country seemed to be dealing with some serious connectivity problems. On several different days, practically all of its websites-the notoriously isolated nation only has a few dozen-intermittently dropped offline en masse, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un's government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country's networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom's digital connections to the outside world.

Some North Korea watchers pointed out that the country had just carried out a series of missile tests, implying that a foreign government's hackers might have launched a cyberattack against the rogue state to tell it to stop saber-rattling.

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But responsibility for North Korea's ongoing internet outages doesn't lie with US Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks-and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally-and by the lack of any visible response from the US government.

So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands. "It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don't see we have teeth, it's just going to keep coming," says the hacker. (P4x spoke to WIRED and shared screen recordings to verify his responsibility for the attacks but declined to use his real name for fear of prosecution or retaliation.) "I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while."

P4x says he's found numerous known but unpatched vulnerabilities in North Korean systems that have allowed him to singlehandedly launch "denial-of-service" attacks on the servers and routers the country's few internet-connected networks depend on. For the most part, he declined to publicly reveal those vulnerabilities, which he argues would help the North Korean government defend against his attacks. But he named, as an example, a known bug in the web server software NginX that mishandles certain HTTP headers, allowing the servers that run the software to be overwhelmed and knocked offline. He also alluded to finding "ancient" versions of the web server software Apache, and says he's started to examine North Korea's own national homebrew operating system, known as Red Star OS, which he described as an old and likely vulnerable version of Linux.

P4x says he has largely automated his attacks on the North Korean systems, periodically running scripts that enumerate which systems remain online and then launching exploits to take them down. "For me, this is like the size of a small-to-medium pentest," P4x says, using the abbreviation for a "penetration test," the sort of whitehat hacking he's carried out in the past to reveal vulnerabilities in a client's network. "It's pretty interesting how easy it was to actually have some effect in there."

"If they don't see we have teeth, it's just going to keep coming."

P4x, Hacker

Those relatively simple hacking methods have had immediate effects. Records from the uptime-measuring service Pingdom show that at several points during P4x's hacking, almost every North Korean website was down. (Some of those that stayed up, like the news site Uriminzokkiri.com, are based outside the country.) Junade Ali, a cybersecurity researcher who monitors the North Korean internet, says he began to observe what appeared to be mysterious, mass-scale attacks on the country's internet starting two weeks ago and has since closely tracked the attacks without having any idea who was carrying them out.

Ali says he saw key routers for the country go down at times, taking with them not only access to the country's websites but also to its email and any other internet-based services. "As their routers fail, it would literally then be impossible for data to be routed into North Korea," Ali says, describing the result as "effectively a total internet outage affecting the country." (P4x notes that while his attacks at times disrupted all websites hosted in the country and access from abroad to any other internet services hosted there, they didn't cut off North Koreans' outbound access to the rest of the internet.)

As rare as it may be for a single pseudonymous hacker to cause an internet blackout on that scale, it's far from clear what real effects the attacks have had on the North Korean government. Only a tiny fraction of North Koreans have access to internet-connected systems to begin with, says Martyn Williams, a researcher for the Stimson Center think tank's North Korea-focused 38 North Project. The vast majority of residents are confined to the country's disconnected intranet. Williams says the dozens of sites P4x has repeatedly taken down are largely used for propaganda and other functions aimed at an international audience.

While knocking out those sites no doubt presents a nuisance to some regime officials, Williams points out that the hackers who targeted P4x last year-like almost all the country's hackers-are almost certainly based in other countries, such as China. "I would say, if he's going after those people, he's probably directing his attentions to the wrong place," says Williams. "But if he just wants to annoy North Korea, then he is probably being annoying."

For his part, P4x says he would count annoying the regime as a success, and that the vast majority of the country's population that lacks internet access was never his target. "I definitely wanted to affect the people as little as possible and the government as much as possible," P4x says.

He acknowledges that his attacks amount to no more than "tearing down government banners or defacing buildings," as he puts it. But he also says that his hacking has so far focused on testing and probing to find vulnerabilities. He now intends to try actually hacking into North Korean systems, he says, to steal information and share it with experts. At the same time, he's hoping to recruit more hacktivists to his cause with a dark website he launched Monday called the FUNK Project-i.e. "FU North Korea"-in the hopes of generating more collective firepower.

"This is a project to keep North Korea honest," the FUNK Project site reads. "You can make a difference as one person. The goal is to perform proportional attacks and information-gathering in order to keep NK from hacking the western world completely unchecked."

P4x says his hacktivist efforts are meant to send a message not only to the North Korean government, but also his own. His cyberattacks on North Korean networks are, he says, in part an attempt to draw attention to what he sees as a lack of government response to North Korean targeting of US individuals. "If no one 's going to help me, I'm going to help myself," he says.

P4x knows the exact moment last year when he was hit by North Korea's spies. In late January of 2021, he opened a file sent to him by a fellow hacker, who had described it as an exploitation tool. Just 24 hours later, he spotted a blog post from Google Threat Analysis Group warning that North Korean hackers were targeting security researchers. Sure enough, when P4x scrutinized the hacking tool he'd received from a stranger, he saw that it contained a backdoor designed to provide a remote foothold on his computer. P4x had opened the file in a virtual machine, digitally quarantining it from the rest of his system. But he was nonetheless shocked and appalled by the realization that he'd been personally targeted by North Korea.

P4x says he was later contacted by the FBI but was never offered any real help to assess the damage from North Korea's hacking or to protect himself in the future. Nor did he ever hear of any consequences for the hackers who targeted him, an open investigation into them, or even a formal recognition from a US agency that North Korea was responsible. It began to feel, as he put it, like "there's really nobody on our side."

When WIRED asked the FBI about its response to the North Korean targeting of US security researchers, it responded in a statement: "As the lead agency responsible for threat response we rely on the public and private sector to report suspicious activity and intrusions, and work together to ensure we understand what's happening, prevent it from happening to others, and hold those responsible accountable," the FBI statement reads. "The FBI is committed to pursuing the malicious actors and countries behind cyberattacks, and will not tolerate intellectual property theft or intimidation."

After his experience as a target of state-sponsored cyberespionage, P4x spent much of the next year on other projects. But after a year had passed, still without public or private statements from the federal government about the targeting of security researchers and no offer of support from any US agency, P4x says he decided it was time to make his own statement to both the North Korean and American governments.

Other hackers targeted by North Korea don't all agree that P4x's hacking spree is the right way to make that statement. Dave Aitel, a former NSA hacker and the founder of security firm Immunity, was similarly targeted in the same espionage campaign. But he questions whether P4x has taken a productive approach to getting even, given that he may actually be getting in the way of stealthier intelligence efforts targeting the same North Korean computers.

"I would not want to disrupt real Western intelligence efforts that are already in place on those machines, assuming there is anything of value there," Aitel says.

Aitel agrees, though, that the government response to North Korea's campaign has been lacking. He says he never received any contact from a government agency and lays the blame for that silence specifically at the feet of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. "This is one of the biggest balls CISA, in particular, has dropped," Aitel says. "The United States is good at protecting the government, OK at protecting corporations, but does not protect individuals." He points out that many of the targeted security researchers likely had significant access to software vulnerabilities, enterprise networks, and the code of widely used tools. That could result, he says, in "the next SolarWinds."

When WIRED reached out to CISA, a spokesperson responded in a statement that the agency "is committed to supporting the cybersecurity community in detecting and protecting against malicious cyber actors," adding that "as part of this work, we encourage any researcher that is being targeted by cyber threats to contact the US government so we can provide all possible assistance."

US government criticisms aside, P4x is clear that his hacking aims primarily to send a message to the Kim regime, which he describes as carrying out "insane human rights abuses and complete control over their population." While he acknowledges that his attacks likely violate US computer fraud and hacking laws, he argues he hasn't done anything ethically wrong. "My conscience is clear," he says.

And what's the final goal of his cyberattacks on that totalitarian government's internet infrastructure? When will he end them?

"Regime change. No, I'm just kidding," P4x says with a laugh. "I just want to prove a point. I want that point to be very squarely proven before I stop."

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North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet

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Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands.

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Reference: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-explorer-dead-security-risks/#intcid=_wired-verso-hp-trending_3cb1a3b4-c9e8-42ef-bcb3-7594132bf9f8_popular4-1
Access: Wired
Connection: This article relates to this class because of the lack of internet security of the browser Internet Explorer.  Hackers are still exploiting IE vulnerabilities even though IE has been phasing out since 2015.  Attackers have shifted to increasingly target the MSHTML browser engine through malicious files like tainted Office documents, meaning that even though IE might be dead, the corrupted files are still in your computer.
Emotion:  This article shocked me about the lingering problems IE users have even though they might not have used IE as an browser for a long time. Since hackers tainted Office documents, us users might not know which file is corrupt, and continue to store this file thinking nothing of it. Hopefully users have installed some sort of antivirus programs that could identify the file and remove it from storage.

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After years of decline and a final wind-down over the past 13 months, on Wednesday Microsoft confirmed the retirement of Internet Explorer, the company’s long-lived and increasingly notorious web browser. Launched in 1995, IE came preinstalled on Windows computers for almost two decades, and like Windows XP, Internet Explorer became a mainstay—to the point that when it was time for users to upgrade and move on, they often didn’t. And while last week’s milestone will push even more users off the historic browser, security researchers emphasize that IE and its many security vulnerabilities are far from gone.

In the coming months, Microsoft will disable the IE app on Windows 10 devices, guiding users instead to its next-generation Edge browser, first released in 2015. The IE icon will still remain on users’ desktops, though, and Edge incorporates a service called “IE mode” to preserve access to old websites built for Internet Explorer. Microsoft says it will support IE mode through at least 2029. Additionally, IE will still work for now on all supported versions of Windows 8.1, Windows 7 with Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates, and Windows Server, though the company says it will eventually phase IE out in these, too.

Seven years after the debut of Edge, industry analysis indicates that Internet Explorer may still hold more than half a percent of the total global browser market share. And in the United States, that share may be closer to as much as 2 percent.

“I do think we’ve made progress, and we probably won’t see as many exploits against IE in the future, but we will still have remnants of Internet Explorer for a long time that scammers can take advantage of,” says Ronnie Tokazowski, a longtime independent malware researcher and principal threat advisor at the cybersecurity firm Cofense. “Internet Explorer as the browser will be gone, but there are still pieces that exist.”

For something that’s been around as long as IE, backward compatibility is difficult to balance with the desire for a clean slate. “We haven’t forgotten that some parts of the web still rely on Internet Explorer’s specific behaviors and features,” Sean Lyndersay, the general manager of Microsoft Edge Enterprise, wrote in an IE retrospective on Wednesday, pointing to IE mode.

But he added that there was a real need to start over with Edge rather than trying to salvage IE. “The web has evolved and so have browsers,” he wrote last week. “Incremental improvements to Internet Explorer couldn’t match the general improvements to the web at large, so we started fresh.”

Microsoft says it will still support IE’s underlying browser engine, known as “MSHTML,” and it has its eye on versions of Windows still “used in critical environments.” But Maddie Stone, a researcher for Google’s Project Zero vulnerability hunting team, points out that hackers are still exploiting IE vulnerabilities in real-world attacks.

“Since we began tracking in-the-wild 0-days, Internet Explorer has had a pretty consistent number of 0-days each year. 2021 actually tied 2016 for the most in-the-wild Internet Explorer 0-days we’ve ever tracked, even though Internet Explorer’s market share of web browser users continues to decrease,” she wrote in April, referring to previously unknown vulnerabilities, called zero-days. “Internet Explorer is still a ripe attack surface for initial entry into Windows machines, even if the user doesn’t use Internet Explorer as their internet browser."

In her analysis, Stone particularly noted that while the number of new IE vulnerabilities Project Zero has detected has remained fairly constant, attackers have shifted over the years to increasingly target the MSHTML browser engine through malicious files like tainted Office documents. This could mean that neutering the IE application won’t immediately change attack trends that are already in motion.

Given how difficult it has been to rein in Internet Explorer at all, Microsoft and IE users around the world have certainly come a long way. But for a browser that’s supposed to be dead, IE still very much loads with the living.

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The Ghost of Internet Explorer Will Haunt the Web for Years

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Microsoft’s legacy browser may be dead—but its remnants are not going anywhere, and neither are its lingering risks.

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Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61865575
Access:  BBC News
Connection:  This article was about settings for cookies in the UK.  The UK government wants to limit these cookie consents to a "one-stop" data-privacy setting applied at the browser level.  Tracking and data gathering has become the way in which a "free-to-use" internet is funded - by content providers who can turn it into advertising revenue.  Critics are outraged that it might involve opting out of tracking, saying this wrongly places the onus on individuals preventing their online lives being monitored.
Emotion:  This article makes me question if the UK government is doing the right thing on protecting the privacy and data of its citizens. Although it would save businesses a lot of money over 10 years, I feel that they are going to only prosecute cases that are large and causes the most harm while ignoring the smaller individual cases.

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Would you like a cookie - or are you absolutely fed up of being asked?

When the government published its proposals for striking new data-protection plans in the UK, all eyes were on cookie consents - those annoying pop-ups that appear in the foreground on many websites, asking whether you will accept cookies, tiny bits of text that can be used to track things about you, including:

what you do on the site

whereabouts in the world you are

what device you are using

where you go online afterwards

The companies behind the sites use this information for a number of reasons - ad targeting being a huge one.

But it also, they say, gives you a more bespoke version of the site.

If it knows you look at lots of technology news, it can serve you up more - and less about gardening, for example.

If you choose not to enable cookies, it can mean the site has no other way of storing this choice, leaving you to opt out every visit.

But now, the government wants to limit these cookie consents - suggesting instead a one-stop data-privacy setting applied at browser level.

Advertising revenue

Google tried something similar years ago, a "Do not track," header - but it was not legally enforceable, users could not check to see whether sites were respecting it and it has largely been dropped. A note on the Mozilla developer pages advises against using it.

The more privacy-focused technology giant Apple gives owners of its products regular reports about how many sites and apps are trying to track them.

But like it or loathe it, tracking and data gathering has become the way in which a "free-to-use" internet is funded - by content providers who can turn it into advertising revenue.

Even for those who fundamentally disagree with cookies, it has become a wearying war of attrition. "Yes, you can have my damn cookie!" tweeted a despairing Elon Musk.

Many critics say the pop-ups in their current form are pointless. A 2019 study found most cookies were "not compliant with EU privacy law".

But the TechUK trade association says there are "outstanding questions" around exactly how the UK's alternative would work, suggesting more consultation is needed.

And privacy campaigners the Open Rights Group are outraged it might involve opting out of tracking, rather than opting in, saying this wrongly places the onus on individuals preventing, rather than permitting, their online lives being monitored.

The Data Reform Bill is an attempt to move away from what the government calls the "red tape" of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation - most of which has been adopted into British law.

The GDPR puts enormous weight on protecting the privacy and data of individuals, with steep penalties for non-compliance, but cookie consent is not covered.

The Data Reform Bill also proposes:

removing the requirement for small and medium-sized businesses to employ data-protection officers and conduct thorough impact assessments of data-gathering activities

allowing the Information Commissioner's Office, which currently has to investigate every data-protection complaint it receives, to, according to commissioner John Edwards, "be more flexible and target our action in response to the greatest harms"

widening data access for public services and research - currently, if you consent to your health data being used in a particular Covid 19 study, for example, similar future studies have to ask again for your permission

All this can be done without reducing Britain's data-protection "gold standard", the government says. It could save businesses £1bn over 10 years and remove "box-ticking" exercises.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries calls it "cementing post-Brexit Britain's position as a science and tech superpower".

'Welcome package'

But so far, reaction has been mixed, with industry broadly more supportive than privacy campaigners.

TechUK - which worked with the government on the proposals - calls them "a welcome package".

"The reforms... find a good balance between making the UK's data-protection system clearer, more flexible, and more user friendly to researchers, innovators, and smaller companies," chief executive Julian David says.

But the Open Rights Group calls the bill a "bonfire" of rights.

"At a time when personal data can be leveraged to do all sort of wrong things, depicting data protection as a burden is wrong, irresponsible and negligent," it said.

Meanwhile, the lawyers are looking at how the proposals may affect the passage of data between the UK and the EU.

Vinod Bange, of law firm Taylor Wessing, says his initial response was "relief" there was no entire rewrite of existing policy.

But he adds: "The most impactful changes for UK organisations will be the unintended consequences, so changes that could derail the current data-flow adequacy with the EU will be the ones to watch."

Nothing is likely to change overnight - the bill first has to trundle its way through Parliament - but expect much more debate in the coming months.

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Can crumbling cookies sweeten UK data-protection plans?

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Would you like a cookie - or are you absolutely fed up of being asked?

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Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/9/23160948/google-maps-air-pollution-purpleair-wildfire-smoke-smog

Access: Google Search

Connection: This article connects to the “Designing Software Experiences for Classroom Interactions with Data” course we are currently taking.The article discusses a feature on Google Maps that allows IOS and Android users to check the air quality in their current location or other locations of interest. It uses government data gathered from agencies such as EPA and PurpleAir. We are currently in the process of designing an App that has widgets for our students to explore data on a topic. In this example, Google Maps is the app and the feature that allows users to check the air quality is the widget.

Emotion: Overall, I felt good reading this article. I think it is great that people can check the air quality of their locations and other locations they may be looking to go to later in the day. As I think about the software we have to develop for the class, I am wondering if this is a tool I can use. I am interested in the topic of stadiums in LA and one component I am considering is the air quality of these surrounding communities. Since the data from Google Maps is supposed to be updated, I think it could be a great tool to use in the classroom.

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Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/15/23169718/roe-wade-elizabeth-warren-location-data-tracking-ban-sale-brokers

Access: Google

Connection: This article relates to this class, “Data Flow in the Digital Age: Networks, Devices and Their Data.” The article discusses how Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a sweeping ban on location and health data sales to protect people’s privacy. In this class, I have learned about the internet and how we are all connected by the network. With everything we do, we are leaving data for companies or other individuals to use. As I have read articles for this class and looked up my IP address, I have felt uncomfortable and wondered how companies can get away with collecting our data. Many people are disturbed by this because they do not want people to have access to their personal information.

Emotion:

I would like to say that I felt good reading this. However, I feel more sadness, anger, and disappointment because I am sure this is something that unfortunately will not pass. Companies have been making so much profit off us and if there is something that can hurt their profit, they will do whatever they can to protect it.

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REFERENCE: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/elon-musk-twitter-bots/index.html
ACCESS: CNN
CONNECTION: Elon Musk pressured Twitter, in the wake of acquiring the company, to give him access to a 'firehose' of data to evaluate bots. The Twitter firehose is the real-time stream of the millions of public tweets on the platform daily, and information on the accounts behind them. The problem with this access is that Musk does not work for the company, is not a researcher, and does not belong to the handful of companies who pay to access the data. This means there are hazy restrictions and regulations on how he uses this data, which could mean threats to privacy. Furthermore, Musk has proven to be erratic and difficult to predict, unlike highly regulated companies. This article connects to the question we ask in Unit 3: Should the Internet be controlled, and if so, by whom? The fact that a single white man is the recipient of millions of data and has little restrictions on what he does with it definitely raises the question of what the big "controllers" of the Internet look like and act like.
EMOTION: This article made me feel angry and frustrated, as has most of the articles about Musk. His intentions for acquiring Twitter seem hazy and unclear, and the lack of oversight over what he is able to do seems highly unfair and dangerous.

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New York (CNN Business)Elon Musk spent weeks raising alarms that Twitter may have far more fake, spam and bot accounts than previously disclosed and threatening to abandon his $44 billion deal to buy the company if it didn't provide him with more information to evaluate the matter.

Now, Twitter apparently plans to provide Musk with its "firehose" of data about tweets on the platform, according to recent reports from the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Twitter firehose is the real-time stream of the millions of public tweets posted on the platform daily and information on the accounts behind them, although it does not contain private information such as the IP address from which the tweet was posted.

Twitter may have been backed into a corner after Musk's lawyer argued he was being denied information to which he is entitled through the deal. But in handing over access to the data firehose, Twitter (TWTR) risks attempting to address one problem — Musk's questionable threats to ditch the acquisition over bot activity, which some analysts believe is simply a pretext to abandon a deal he now feels is overpriced — while possibly creating new issues.

The seemingly unprecedented nature of sharing such data with Musk — an individual who doesn't work for the company, isn't a researcher and doesn't belong to the handful of companies who pay to access the data — could create a number of unknowns, from competitive risks to privacy concerns, some industry watchers note. And that's not to mention Musk's history of inflammatory and sometimes erratic behavior online and offline.

"Musk in the past, we've seen he's an iconoclast, he loves to air grievances openly, on social media," said Inga Trauthig, a senior research fellow at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Other companies have access to this data, she notes, but "surely they have extremely detailed NDA contracts. 'Will Musk have the same?' is the first part of the question, and the second will be, 'will he stick to them?'"

In the letter requesting more data from Twitter, Musk's lawyer said the billionaire would ensure that "anyone reviewing the data is bound by a non-disclosure agreement" and would not "retain or otherwise use any competitively sensitive information if the transaction is not consummated." However, Musk tweeted just last month that Twitter's legal team had contacted him to "complain that I violated their NDA" with another comment he made about bots.

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on the report that the company will share the firehose with Musk but pointed to a previous statement saying the company has and would continue to proactively share information with Musk in accordance with the acquisition agreement.

Beyond the unknowns of how exactly Musk will use the data, there are questions about what, if anything, Musk will be able to deduce from the data that the company itself cannot. Twitter regularly releases its own estimates of the number of bots on the platform, and has said such accounts make up less than 5% of monetizable daily active users. Among its social media peers, Twitter has historically been the most transparent about bot activity on its platform by making public disclosures, among other steps, according to Trauthig.

That he is now suddenly fixated on bots as an issue "either means that Musk really was completely unaware of how social media works in general, and Twitter in particular, or this is some sort of political maneuvering," she said.

Musk said at a Miami tech conference last month that he believes bots and fake users make up at least 20% of Twitter's user base, and perhaps as much as 90%. While some experts do think the presence of bots could be slightly higher than the company's estimates, most believe the number isn't as high as Musk has suggested.

The exact number of bots seems "largely beside the point" if Musk's claim is that "due to his business acumen and technical knowledge ... he can make this company profitable and more useful," said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a founding co-director of the UW Tech Policy Lab.

Moreover, there is no clear definition of what a bot or spam or fake account is, and they're not all problematic — though Musk, who is known to have many spam accounts following him, has painted them broadly as a scourge. "I think that trust is extremely important and just for the usefulness of the system, getting rid of troll farms and bots and spammers is incredibly important," he told Twitter employees at a company town hall event Thursday.

Typically, bots are considered to be accounts that use automated computer systems, in whole or in part, to post and interact with other users, according to Kaicheng Yang, who researches inauthentic actors on social media with the Indiana University Observatory on Social Media. Some automated accounts are harmless, like news update accounts or a Big Ben account that tweets "BONG" on the hour, every hour. And some accounts are run by humans who appear to intentionally mimic computer behavior to throw off other users.

"We don't even have a clear definition of what we are talking about," said Yang, who created a tool called Botometer that examines the bot-like activity of Twitter accounts. He added that automation itself is not bad, "it's a feature that Twitter offers and does help in many cases, and sometimes it's just for entertainment."

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal referenced those inherent challenges in counting bots during a back-and-forth with Musk on Twitter last month. "Spam isn't just 'binary' (human / not human)," Agrawal tweeted. "The most advanced spam campaigns use combinations of coordinated humans + automation ... they are sophisticated and hard to catch." (Musk responded to Agrawal's tweet thread with a poop emoji.)

Simply examining data on the tweets that are posted to Twitter may also leave out some bot or fake accounts that don't actually post to the platform. "One of the main ways that inauthentic behavior is used in the political environment is to make someone look more popular than they are by generating a bunch of random accounts and following them ... by getting access to the firehose, it doesn't even give you an accurate picture of inauthentic behavior that could be problematic," said Calo.

"I think it defies imagination that Musk and his collaborators would be in a better position to give a good faith estimate of what the automated activity is," Calo said. "So, this is kind of like sharing a lot of information for no good reason, and whenever you do that, it raises concerns."

Even if Musk comes up with a number of bots that makes him feel comfortable with completing the takeover deal for Twitter, it's not clear exactly what he'll do about the issue.

During the town hall Thursday, Musk suggested that the company should authenticate users behind accounts in order to label accounts that are not automated — potentially by requiring them to sign up with Twitter's subscription service, Twitter Blue — and to promote content from those verified accounts. However, some online safety experts and Twitter employees have raised concerns that such a system could do away with the anonymity that allows, for example, users in certain countries to speak freely.

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Elon Musk pressured Twitter to give him access to a ‘firehose’ of data to evaluate bots. Now what?

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Elon Musk spent weeks raising alarms that Twitter may have far more fake, spam and bot accounts than previously disclosed and threatening to abandon his $44 billion deal to buy the company if it didn’t provide him with more information to evaluate the matter.

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REFERENCE: https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/features/as-facebook-plans-the-metaverse-it-struggles-to-combat-harassment-in-vr/ACCESS: Hyper-linked in previous article
CONNECTION: This article discusses the numerous instances of race and gender harassment occurring on VR platforms. Although VR isn't widely used or available, there are people who have started using VR spaces for social interactions and games, and those spaces have proven to not be very safe. Multiple instances of racial slurs and sexual harassment have surfaced, but repercussions and consequences for these have been minimal. This is because of the difficulty of recording interactions (privacy, data storage) and because of the general lack of oversight. This connects to ideas in Unit 4 about cybersecurity. How do you oversee interactions in VR without jeopardizing privacy?
EMOTION: This article made me feel angry and frustrated, but also not surprised. Companies need to find ways to protect users against harassment, especially in these early times where people with hateful things to say might go into VR spaces specifically with the intention of hurting others without repercussions.

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Sydney Smith had dealt with lewd, sexist remarks for more than a month while playing the Echo VR video game. But the 20-year-old reached her breaking point this summer.

Echo VR places players in the bodies of futuristic robots, allowing them to compete in a zero-gravity sports game that's similar to Ultimate Frisbee. Players, each identified by a username that floats above their avatar, split up into two teams and score points when they throw a disc through an opponent's goal.

In July, Smith was playing the game on an Oculus Quest 2 headset when she missed catching the disc and uttered the F-word out of frustration. A player, who'd been hurling insults at her teammates earlier, quickly took notice. The player taunted Smith, telling the Missouri resident that he'd recorded her and was going to "jerk off" to her cursing.

Smith tried to figure out which player had harassed her, so she could file a report. But that was tough because multiple people were talking at the same time. Since she hadn't been recording the match, Smith couldn't rewatch the encounter and look for a username.

"That really really bothered me," Smith said of the incident. "I couldn't touch the game for two weeks after that."

Smith isn't the only virtual reality player who's had trouble reporting an ugly run-in. Though Oculus and Echo VR, both owned by Facebook, have ways to report users who violate their rules, people who've experienced or witnessed harassment and offensive behavior in virtual environments say a cumbersome process deters them from filing a report. Content moderators have to examine a person's behavior, as well as words. ( Oculus' VR policy says users aren't allowed to follow other users against their wishes, make sexual gestures or block someone's normal movement.)

As Facebook focuses on creating the metaverse -- a 3D digital world where people can play, work, learn and socialize -- content moderation will only get more complex. The company, which recently rebranded as Meta to highlight its ambitions, already struggles to combat hate speech and harassment on its popular social media platforms, where people leave behind a record of their remarks. The immersive spaces such as envisioned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be more challenging to police.

This story is partly based on disclosures made by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which were also provided to Congress in redacted form by her legal team. A consortium of news organizations, including CNET, received redacted versions of the documents obtained by Congress.

"The issue of harassment in VR is a huge one," Haugen said. "There's going to be whole new art forms of how to harass people that are about plausible deniability." The tech company would need to hire substantially more people, and likely recruit volunteers, to adequately deal with this problem, she said.

Facebook has more than 40,000 people working on safety and security. The company doesn't break down how many are dedicated to its VR platform.

A well-known problem

An internal post from Jan. 28 that was part of Haugen's disclosures shows that Facebook employees are aware VR reporting systems fall short.

In the post, an unnamed Facebook employee reports not having a "good time" using the social VR app Rec Room on the Oculus Quest headset, because someone was chanting a racial slur. The employee tried reporting the "bigot" but mentions being unable to identify the username. The employee reported exiting the virtual world "feeling defeated."

Rec Room is a good example of what the metaverse might become. The app allows people to dress up their avatars. Users can chat, create or play games such as paintball, laser tag and dodgeball with other Rec Room users.

The Facebook employee, a first-time user of Rec Room, doesn't specify why there was difficulty identifying the speaker. Rec Room's avatars display lines to indicate they're speaking. Users can also look up each other in the app's people tab and initiate a vote to kick someone out of a room. To mute another player, an avatar holds up a hand.

In an email, Rec Room CEO and co-founder Nick Fajt said a player using the same racial slur was banned after reports from other players. Fajt believes the banned player is the same person the Facebook employee complained about.

"We want Rec Room to be a fun and welcoming experience for everyone, and we spend a lot of time building systems and growing our moderation teams to meet that goal. Still, there's always more work to be done here, and we plan to continue investing heavily to improve," he said.

The internal post prompted a thread of 106 comments. One Facebook employee said Rec Room ranked high in a survey that Facebook conducted to understand the "prevalence of integrity issues/abusive interactions at the app level." Another employee said Echo VR also ranked high in the survey.

"We see similar issues in Echo VR where while the user is able to identify the aggressor, at times those evaluating the abuse are unable to pinpoint who is saying what," a third employee said.

Meta declined to make the survey available to CNET.

Bill Stillwell, Oculus' product manager of VR privacy and integrity, said in a statement that the company wants people to "feel like they're in control of their VR experience and to feel safe on our platform."

Users can report problems, and developers have tools to moderate their apps, Stillwell says. "But the tools can always improve," he said. "Our job isn't just to identify the tech that works for today, it's to invent entirely new tools to meet current and future ecosystem needs."

Meta is exploring a way to allow users to retroactively record on its VR platform. It's also looking at the best ways to use artificial intelligence to combat harassment in VR, said Kristina Milian, a Meta spokeswoman. The company, though, can't record everything people do in VR, because it would violate privacy, as well as use up the headsets' storage and power. Andrew Bosworth, who will become Meta's chief technology officer, told employees in a March internal memo that he wants virtual worlds to have "almost Disney levels of safety" but acknowledged that moderating users "at any meaningful scale is practically impossible," according to The Financial Times.

Online harassment is still a big problem. Four in 10 US adults have experienced online harassment, and those under 30 are more likely to not only encounter harassment but also more serious abuse, according to a study released this year by the Pew Research Center. Meta declined to say how many reports Oculus has received about harassment or hate speech.

A 2019 study about harassment in VR from Oculus researchers also found that the definition of online harassment is highly subjective and personal but that the sense of presence in VR makes harassment feel more "intense."

Brittan Heller, a lawyer at Foley Hoag and the founding director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Technology and Society, says the nature of VR will make moderating user behavior difficult.

"The challenge with harassment in VR is its presence," Heller said. "It feels real, like a person is stepping next to you and saying and doing things that violate your personal space."

Toxic players

Facebook didn't develop Rec Room, but the game became available on the Oculus Quest in 2019 and the Oculus Quest 2 in 2020. It's available for other platforms, such as Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, so Quest users might be interacting with Rec Room users on other services. Oculus offers a way to report users who violate its rules. But it can take action only against users on its platform. It can't, for example, disable an account from another platform, like Xbox or PlayStation.

To understand Echo VR's and Rec Room's harassment problems, I put on an Oculus Quest headset and visited both virtual worlds in November. It wasn't long before I encountered toxic behavior.

In an Echo VR lobby, I overheard one player telling another user who appeared confused to "Go shove your dick down your throat," before the abuser vanished completely. On another day, I heard two players calling each other names, but I was too far away to read their usernames. As I flew closer, they flew away, making it tough to see who was speaking, even when a sound icon appeared above a robot's head.

In Rec Room, a player started shooting others, including my female avatar, with confetti and shouting, "You're gay now!" Other users in the Rec Center reported him for violating the app's rules.

Part of the challenge with VR is that players are new to the environment. They have to learn how to hold an object and move. It isn't immediately obvious how to report abusive players or find safety tools.

Both games encourage users to be nice to one another, displaying posters with their code of conduct. They also have moderators. Echo VR teaches new users how to mute other players and set up a personal bubble. It's also possible to change the pitch of your voice so you can disguise your gender. The game doesn't include a tutorial for reporting other players, though information is available online in a blog post. Rec Room has YouTube tutorials for reporting and muting players.

In November, Rec Room started testing automatic voice moderation. In a blog post, Rec Room says users might start noticing that the "person yelling racial slurs quickly gets their mic muted, or the person making explicit sexual statements to everyone around them gets sent back to their dorm."

Policing gestures, behavior

Jason Lemon, a 36-year-old in Texas, said verbal harassment and racism in virtual reality don't feel different from similar bullying in console gaming.

"What makes Echo VR different is the type of mannerisms and body language that you can also put off," said Lemon, who is Black. He thinks that personal bubbles should be automatically activated even if the user doesn't have the feature turned on after goals are scored, a period of dead time when he's seen players hump others or make sexual gestures.

Theo Young, 17, said he started noticing more toxic behavior, including homophobic language, in Echo VR's social lobbies last spring. Young, who's played enough Echo VR to reach the game's top level, said he stopped playing when he saw other players harassing a female player. The Iowa resident said he tried to tell the female player how to mute or ghost others but she couldn't hear him among all the screaming users crowding around her and making sexual comments.

"That's the part that got to me. Just seeing other people have such an awful time," Young said. "I dropped off the game pretty hard after that experience. It just wasn't fun anymore."

As for Smith, she thinks Echo VR should have a strike system, a way to identify players by pointing at them, or features to make the avatars look different so everyone doesn't look like the same robot.

"Companies need to step up and come up with new ways to moderate and help us," she said, "because we're the ones getting harassed."

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As Facebook Plans the Metaverse, It Struggles to Combat Harassment in VR

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Sydney Smith had dealt with lewd, sexist remarks for more than a month while playing the Echo VR video game. But the 20-year-old reached her breaking point this summer. Echo VR places players in the bodies of futuristic robots, allowing them to compete in a zero-gravity sports game that's similar to Ultimate Frisbee.

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REFERENCE: https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/meta-offers-look-at-what-might-follow-the-quest-2-as-it-pursues-a-vr-future/
ACCESS: CNET
CONNECTION: This article discusses Zuckerberg's vision for the metaverse, which is an evolution of the internet that's more immersive than today's version. The metaverse are virtual spaces for work, play, and socializing, and is accessed through VR headsets that are being developed at Meta. It discusses the multiple iterations of headsets being developed at Meta, and its insistence on a VR future. This connects to Unit 2, in which we discussed how the internet has changed how we communicate with each other. In the future, Meta's vision coming to fruition would mean even more changes in how the Internet has changed communication. It also is connected to ideas about who should control the Internet in Unit 3. Clearly, Meta would be the founding company of the metaverse and have a lot of data on users, and they would need to be held accountable for the ways they use that data.
EMOTION: This article made me feel a bit uncomfortable with where Meta plans to take the Internet. It makes me uncomfortable that Zuckerberg plans to create an entirely new realm of communication and connection, and that he would be in charge of that entire realm and have access to all its data. He's shown irresponsibility, recklessness, and unaccountability in his dealings with Facebook, and it makes me weary of the mistakes and exploitations that will occur in this new phase of technology.

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What's happening

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined new technology, including improved resolution, that could appear in his company's virtual reality headsets in the future.

Why it matters

Headsets are a key component of Meta's vision for the metaverse, an evolution of the internet that's more immersive than today's version.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds up a bulky virtual reality headset called Butterscotch. It's a prototype, used only for research. But it's part of the puzzle Meta is trying to solve to make its plans for the metaverse a reality.

The image resolution in Butterscotch is about two and a half times better than the Quest 2, the VR headset Meta sells to consumers and is critical to making virtual worlds seem more realistic. In a video conference, Zuckerberg said the resolution is good enough for people to see objects clearly from 20 feet away.

Creating more realistic VR images, Zuckerberg said, will help people feel like they're physically there with another person, even if they're not in the same room. A more realistic sense of presence, though, will take more than just improving the resolution in VR headsets, he said.

"Being able to express yourself in as immersive and realistic of a way as possible is a very powerful thing," he said. "We're in the middle right now of a big step forward towards realism."

Meta has big plans for the metaverse, virtual spaces for work, play and socializing. But the company, formerly known as Facebook, has a long and daunting to-do list to check off before it can reach that goal. Headsets need to properly track motion and be more comfortable if Meta wants more people to buy these devices.

Meta hasn't said how many headsets it's sold, but it's not making a profit from its metaverse business and doesn't expect to for a long time. In the first three months of this year, Meta's metaverse business Reality Labs lost $2.96 billion, Meta said in an earnings report. The company is making a long-term bet on what comes after the mobile internet, pinning its future to the metaverse. Zuckerberg has been trying to get people interested in VR for years after the company purchased VR headset maker Oculus for more than $2 billion in 2014.

Zuckerberg's ambitious vision for the metaverse sounds like it's straight out of science fiction. He wants people strapping on his headsets to feel like they're in the physical presence of a loved one or coworker. In the future, he says, people might not even need to buy TVs.

"If you have a good mixed reality headset or augmented reality glasses, then that screen or TV that's on your wall could just be a hologram," he said.

That vision is a long way off. Though Meta has improved its VR headsets, using them takes you to cartoon-like virtual spaces that feel more like video games than the real world. The company has tried to clear out its list of projects -- Meta has reportedly scrapped a smartwatch and postponed the release of AR glasses -- to cut down on expenses. It still plans to release wrist wearables and AR glasses to consumers. And it still has to address harassment and privacy in virtual worlds, problems Meta has struggled to combat on its social media sites.

Still, improving the displays in VR headsets might entice people to try out more virtual spaces.

Mixed reality goggles

During the video conference, Zuckerberg and Meta employees showcased an illustration of Mirror Lake, one of the company's most ambitious projects. The headset resembles a pair of ski goggles and blends the physical and digital worlds, a technique known as mixed reality.

Mixed reality goggles, like Mirror Lake, are also in their early stages. Mirror Lake is just a concept and Meta hasn't built these goggles yet, so they don't know if their idea works.

It could be a step toward sunglasses-like AR headsets, which overlay digital information on scenes of the real world. Meta wants to bring these AR products to market eventually, but they're still a lot of hardware to wear anywhere outside a home.

Meta hopes Mirror Lake will harbor a retina resolution-level display with HDR, eye tracking, a method for creating multiple eye focus points, prescription lenses and holographic lenses that use lasers to create 3D visuals.

The headset could eventually include displays on the outside to show a wearer's eye and face expressions while wearing the goggles, a research idea Meta has previously presented and Apple is reportedly working on too.

New visual tech in an array of experimental headsets

Meta also showed off Holocake 2, its thinnest and lightest VR headset capable of playing PC VR games. The prototype could help the company build smaller VR headsets in the future. And reducing a headset's weight will enable people to be in virtual worlds for a longer time.

Resembling the design of Microsoft's HoloLens 2, the device uses holographic lenses, which simulate a regular lens' optics but are flatter than the curved lenses used in VR devices like the Quest 2. Most VR headsets have thick lenses, which is why the front of the device looks so heavy, Zuckerberg said. Instead of sending light through a thick lens, Holocake 2 sends light through a hologram of a lens. Meta also reduced the distance between the eye and the VR display to reduce the bulk of the headset.

Holocake 2, though, requires lasers to make its holographic lens optics work, and finding consumer-ready lasers that would work in headsets is still tough. Using holographic optics can shrink down the bulky VR headset design so Meta can add other tech, like more cameras, eye tracking and a type of lens that could make VR more comfortable.

To improve VR, Meta is applying a test that evaluates whether what's displayed in a VR headset can be distinguished from the real world, said Meta Reality Labs Research head Michael Abrash. The company is calling this the visual Turing test, a reference to English mathematician Alan Turing, who developed another test in the 1950s to determine if a computer can think like a human.

No VR technology has passed the visual Turing test, Abrash said. While VR creates a sense of presence, people know that what they're looking at is virtual and not real.

Meta outlined four obstacles to creating better displays: resolution, focus, distortion and high dynamic range, used to improve an image's brightness and contrast.

One issue is that VR headsets have substantially less color range, brightness and contrast than TVs, laptops and cell phones, Abrash said.

Holding up a prototype VR headset called Starburst, Zuckerberg noted the device includes a bright lamp. He called Starburst "wildly impractical" but said researchers are using the heavy headset to improve future devices.

Meta also developed another prototype called Half Dome that includes a varifocal lens that can help people's eyes focus better in VR, making nearby objects look sharper. People who used this type of lens experienced less fatigue and blurry vision. They also had an easier time identifying smaller objects, reading text in VR and reacting to environments more quickly.

Even after years of development, Half Dome isn't ready for consumers because Meta is trying to make sure eye tracking and other parts of the device work properly. The technology needed to make varifocal work is still difficult to get into a consumer headset.

"As hard as it is to build the first version of something, it can often be even harder to get it into a shipping product," Zuckerberg said, adding he's "optimistic" consumer units "will come soon."

Later this year, Meta is expected to release a new, more expensive VR headset called Project Cambria, which will be the company's first VR headset with eye tracking. After that, it's unclear when or if any of this next-gen display tech will make it into any headset. What's notable is that Zuckerberg and Abrash acknowledge that current VR displays still don't rival the quality of 2D displays on a TV or smartphone.

If they want VR to be more than a novelty, it's a problem they'll need to solve.

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Meta Offers Look at What Might Follow the Quest 2 as It Pursues a VR Future

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What's happening Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined new technology, including improved resolution, that could appear in his company's virtual reality headsets in the future. Why it matters Headsets are a key component of Meta's vision for the metaverse, an evolution of the internet that's more immersive than today's version.

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REFERENCE: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220428125430.htm
ACCESS: Science Daily
CONNECTION: This article builds on the ideas of cybersecurity we are discussing in Unit 4. In particular, it discusses that there is a new form of security identification that allows for a person's geographical location to be used as a personal ID that is secure even against the most advanced cyber attacks. Scientists used laws of quantum physics to guarantee that a person is communicating with the right person. For example, if they are talking with someone at the bank, they can see for sure that the person is located at a bank office. This would make hacking and scamming almost impossible to do over the phone or through communication networks.
EMOTION: This article made me feel interested in the possibilities of quantum physics and its connections to the Internet. A lot of the words in this article went over my head, but the idea that something I learned in Chemistry class could be applied to computer science was very intriguing.

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A new form of security identification could soon see the light of day and help us protect our data from hackers and cybercriminals. Quantum mathematicians at the University of Copenhagen have solved a mathematical riddle that allows for a person's geographical location to be used as a personal ID that is secure against even the most advanced cyber attacks.

People have used codes and encryption to protect information from falling into the wrong hands for thousands of years. Today, encryption is widely used to protect our digital activity from hackers and cybercriminals who assume false identities and exploit the internet and our increasing number of digital devices to steal from us.

As such, there is an ever-growing need for new security measures to detect hackers posing as our banks or other trusted institutions. Within this realm, researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Mathematical Sciences have just made a giant leap.

"There is a constant battle in cryptography between those who want to protect information and those seeking to crack it. New security keys are being developed and later broken and so the cycle continues. Until, that is, a completely different type of key has been found." , says Professor Matthias Christandl.

For nearly twenty years, researchers around the world have been trying to solve the riddle of how to securely determine a person's geographical location and use it as a secure ID. Until now, this had not been possible by way of normal methods like GPS tracking.

"Today, there are no traditional ways, whether by internet or radio signals for example, to determine where another person is situated geographically with one hundred percent accuracy. Current methods are not unbreakable, and hackers can impersonate someone you trust even when they are far far away. However, quantum physics opens up a few entirely different possibilities," says Matthias Christandl.
Quantum physics makes hacking impossible
Using the laws of quantum physics, the researchers developed a new security protocol that uses a person's geographical location to guarantee that they are communicating with the right person. Position-based quantum encryption, as it is called, can be used to ensure that a person is speaking with an actual bank representative when the bank calls and asks a customer to make changes to their account.

"Ask yourself, why do I trust an employee at the bank counter? Because they're in a bank. Their location creates trust. This explains the principle behind pposition-based cryptography, where physical location is used to identify oneself," explains postdoc Andreas Bluhm.

The researchers' recipe for securing a person's location combines the information in a single quantum bit -- a qubit -- followed by classical bits, consisting of the ones and zeroes that we are familiar with from ordinary computers.

Both types of bits are needed to send a message that is impossible for cybercriminals to read, hack or manipulate, and which can confirm whether a person is in your bank's office or in some far-off country.

The quantum bit serves as a kind of lock on the message, due to the role of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which causes quantum information to be disrupted and impossible to decode when trying to measure it. It is also due to what is known as the "no-cloning theorem," which makes quantum information impossible to intercept and secretly copy. This will remain the case for quite some time.

"Until a full-fledged quantum computer is built and hackers gain access to one, our method is completely secure and impossible to hack," says Andreas Bluhm.
Could soon be a reality
The researchers highlight the fact that the new method is particularly handy because only a single quantum bit is needed for position verification. So, unlike many other quantum technologies that require further development, this new discovery can be put to use today. Suitable quantum sources that can send a quantum bit of light already exist.

"The particular strength of our technique is that it is relatively straightforward to implement. We're already able to send individual quantum bits, which is all this technique requires," says Matthias Christandl.

The security ID needs to be developed commercially, by a company for example, before it can be widely adopted. However, its quantum foundation is in place.

The new research result is particularly useful in contexts where communications between two parties need to be extremely secure. This could be payments on the internet or transmission of sensitive personal data.

"Secure communication is a key element of our daily lives. Whenever we communicate with public authorities, our banks or any party that manages our personal data and information, we need to know that the people we're dealing with are those who we expect them to be -- and not criminals," says Andreas Bluhm.

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hacking; encryption; quantum computers; computers and internet; spintronics research; information technology; markets and finance; internet

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Scientific advance leads to a new tool in the fight against hackers

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A new form of security identification could soon see the light of day and help us protect our data from hackers and cybercriminals. Quantum mathematicians have solved a mathematical riddle that allows for a person's geographical location to be used as a personal ID that is secure against even the most advanced cyber attacks.

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REFERENCE: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-explorer-dead-security-risks/
ACCESS: Wired
CONNECTION: This article discusses how Microsoft finally confirmed that they will retire Internet Explorer, the company's long-lived web browser. Despite being launched in 1995 and upgraded to the new Edge browser in 2015, there are users still using IE as their default browser-- analysis indicates that IE may still hold more than a half percent in the global browser market share, and in the US, that may be closer to as much as 2 percent. The danger of this is that IE is a common subject for scams and hacking due to it being outdated and vulnerable without much security. This connects to our discussions in  Unit 4 about cybersecurity, and how easy hacking can be.
EMOTION: This article made me think about the people without the technological literacy to move on to different browsers-- particularly older generations of computer users who got used to using IE in 1995 and weren't able to keep up with all the changes in the Web since then. It makes me angry that those are the people targeted by scammers and hackers, because they likely don't have the knowledge to understand how or why it's happening to them.

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After years of decline and a final wind-down over the past 13 months, on Wednesday Microsoft confirmed the retirement of Internet Explorer, the company's long-lived and increasingly notorious web browser. Launched in 1995, IE came preinstalled on Windows computers for almost two decades, and like Windows XP, Internet Explorer became a mainstay-to the point that when it was time for users to upgrade and move on, they often didn't. And while last week's milestone will push even more users off the historic browser, security researchers emphasize that IE and its many security vulnerabilities are far from gone.

In the coming months, Microsoft will disable the IE app on Windows 10 devices, guiding users instead to its next-generation Edge browser, first released in 2015. The IE icon will still remain on users' desktops, though, and Edge incorporates a service called "IE mode" to preserve access to old websites built for Internet Explorer. Microsoft says it will support IE mode through at least 2029. Additionally, IE will still work for now on all supported versions of Windows 8.1, Windows 7 with Microsoft's Extended Security Updates, and Windows Server, though the company says it will eventually phase IE out in these, too.

Seven years after the debut of Edge, industry analysis indicates that Internet Explorer may still hold more than half a percent of the total global browser market share. And in the United States, that share may be closer to as much as 2 percent.

"I do think we've made progress, and we probably won't see as many exploits against IE in the future, but we will still have remnants of Internet Explorer for a long time that scammers can take advantage of," says Ronnie Tokazowski, a longtime independent malware researcher. "Internet Explorer as the browser will be gone, but there are still pieces that exist."

For something that's been around as long as IE, backward compatibility is difficult to balance with the desire for a clean slate. "We haven't forgotten that some parts of the web still rely on Internet Explorer's specific behaviors and features," Sean Lyndersay, the general manager of Microsoft Edge Enterprise, wrote in an IE retrospective on Wednesday, pointing to IE mode.

But he added that there was a real need to start over with Edge rather than trying to salvage IE. "The web has evolved and so have browsers," he wrote last week. "Incremental improvements to Internet Explorer couldn't match the general improvements to the web at large, so we started fresh."

Microsoft says it will still support IE's underlying browser engine, known as "MSHTML," and it has its eye on versions of Windows still "used in critical environments." But Maddie Stone, a researcher for Google's Project Zero vulnerability hunting team, points out that hackers are still exploiting IE vulnerabilities in real-world attacks.

"Since we began tracking in-the-wild 0-days, Internet Explorer has had a pretty consistent number of 0-days each year. 2021 actually tied 2016 for the most in-the-wild Internet Explorer 0-days we've ever tracked, even though Internet Explorer's market share of web browser users continues to decrease," she wrote in April, referring to previously unknown vulnerabilities, called zero-days. "Internet Explorer is still a ripe attack surface for initial entry into Windows machines, even if the user doesn't use Internet Explorer as their internet browser."

In her analysis, Stone particularly noted that while the number of new IE vulnerabilities Project Zero has detected has remained fairly constant, attackers have shifted over the years to increasingly target the MSHTML browser engine through malicious files like tainted Office documents. This could mean that neutering the IE application won't immediately change attack trends that are already in motion.

Given how difficult it has been to rein in Internet Explorer at all, Microsoft and IE users around the world have certainly come a long way. But for a browser that's supposed to be dead, IE still very much loads with the living.

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The Ghost of Internet Explorer Will Haunt the Web for Years

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After years of decline and a final wind-down over the past 13 months, on Wednesday Microsoft confirmed the retirement of Internet Explorer, the company's long-lived and increasingly notorious web browser. Launched in 1995, IE came preinstalled on Windows computers for almost two decades, and like Windows XP, Internet Explorer became a mainstay-to the point that when it was time for users to upgrade and move on, they often didn't.

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REFERENCE: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/20/23175477/frances-haugen-facebook-whistleblower-nonprofit-beyond-the-screen-lawyers-researchers
ACCESS: The Verge
CONNECTION: This article discusses Frances Haugen's plan to create a non-profit focused on keeping tech companies accountable. The organization, called Beyond the Screen, would have 3 goals: to educate lawyers going up against social media companies, to incentivize investors to look into social responsibilities of tech companies, and giving regulators and researchers an inside look into how platforms work by making a mock social network. We've discussed the dangers of social media algorithms and their parasitic advertising regimes, and the lack of oversight over these large tech companies at a legal level. This article connects to the movement towards change and accountability.
EMOTION: This article made me feel hopeful that eventually tech companies will be held accountable by people who, like Frances Haugen, see through their manipulative tactics and have the ability and platform to speak up and make change. Haugen says her goal is to get to a point where this type of organization isn't necessary and that she's "not relevant" anymore. However, this will take a monumental effort, especially pushing for legislation world-wide, not just in the US.

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Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who released a trove of internal documents and data from Facebook and testified in front of lawmakers about the social network's behavior, is now looking to start a non-profit focused on holding companies like Meta accountable, according to a report from Politico.

The organization, which Haugen wants to call Beyond the Screen, plans to focus on three main goals: educating lawyers who could potentially be going up against social media companies, incentivizing investors to look into how socially responsible a tech company is before giving it money, and giving regulators and researchers an inside look into how platforms work. Politico reports that Haugen is currently working with two other people on the project, and is looking to raise around $5 million in funding to get it off the ground. The report also mentions that she has already received at least some funding from some currently unnamed backers.

The goal is to give helping lawyers, researchers, and investors a chance against social media companies.

Haugen hopes that Beyond the Screen can give lawyers a leg up when they're involved with class-action lawsuits against social media giants by making sure they know what to look for when filing. She also wants to create a metric that investors can use to compare how well companies do at keeping their users safe - potentially giving them a way to justify why they're divesting from a company that may be good for business, but bad for society.

Eventually, Haugen wants to make a mock social network, that can be used to demonstrate and test how platforms and their algorithms work under the hood. The idea is that a simulated platform could help people better understand how companies do things, without those companies actually having to be involved - that could be a boon for researchers, who have struggled in the past with Facebook and others feeding them inaccurate data.

This sounds like a more focused version of a concept Haugen told Vogue about last year, when she explained that she wanted to build "an open-source social network for students of all ages to learn and experiment on," as the article puts it. ( Vogue also mentions that Haugen was invested in crypto, which seems like it could be unfortunate given the current state of the market.)

Haugen says her goal is to get to a point where this type of organization isn't necessary: "my greatest hope is that I'm not relevant anymore," she told Politico. It could be a long while before that's the case though. As Haugen herself points out, there are countries where Facebook is essentially the entire internet - while she's pushed for legislation in the US and EU, she says she wants Beyond the Screen to focus on the rest of the world too. That'll likely mean trying to push for change in places where a lot of the groundwork hasn't been done, which could be a monumental effort.

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Frances Haugen wants to train lawyers to fight Facebook

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Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who released a trove of internal documents and data from Facebook and testified in front of lawmakers about the social network's behavior, is now looking to start a non-profit focused on holding companies like Meta accountable, according to a report from Politico .

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REFERENCE: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/civil-rights-audits-microsoft-and-amazon-join-list-of-companies-reviewing-policies-for-discrimination/
ACCESS: GeekWire
CONNECTION: This article discusses civil rights audits taking place in big-name companies like Microsoft and Amazon. It discusses how in the tech industry, audits will typically focus on bias built into the company's algorithms. It also mentions how a civil rights audit in AirBnB led to changes in the "product" website, including de-emphasizing user photos, increasing instant rentals, and penalizing hosts who claim properties are booked when they are not. This article shows how biases can be magnified and amplified by technology products, and how the process of auditing can make pertinent changes to the algorithm or to the UI so that these biases are minimized.
EMOTION: The articles mentions that Amazon has repeated fought against civil rights audits, which made me angry. Obviously there are problems being hidden in a company when it explicitly fights against being held accountable for racial and gender equity. I also felt hopeful when the article discussed the success of AirBnB-- I think changes to the UI of these technology platforms have huge impacts on how users interact with the website and the role their biases play.

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Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch speaks at a press conference in 2016. (Photo by Eli Alford, DOJ/EOUSA, via Flickr, Creative Commons)

Microsoft and Amazon are joining a growing pool of companies conducting civil rights audits in the wake of the racial reckoning that began in 2020 with a series of police killings of people of color.

Last week, Microsoft announced it will commission and publish findings from a third-party civil rights audit of workplace policies and practices to be completed next year. It comes two months after Amazon reversed its position on civil rights audits and enlisted former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to review policies that affect the company’s hourly workforce.

Civil rights audits are becoming a popular way for tech companies to respond to accusations of bias and descrimination. Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Google, as well as several big banks and other corporations have all commissioned these third-party reviews of their policies.

From a public relations standpoint, audits are a useful tool, especially as shareholders increasingly demand the companies that they invest in take a stronger position on equity. But civil rights audits vary widely in their approach, metrics, and definitions of success. In order for audits to lead to meaningful outcomes for marginalized employees and users, experts say many companies need to go further.

What are civil rights audits?

When a company launches a discrimination audit — often in response to a racially charged incident — it can take a variety of forms. The reviews are voluntary and it is ultimately up to the company to decide what aspects of their business or product go under the microscope. In the tech industry, audits typically focus on bias built into the company’s algorithms. For example, a social media company might analyze what advertisements are targeted to minorities and why.

But audits can focus on a wide range of factors, including diversity among employees, salary and promotion policies, how customers are approved for services, and more.

Organizations can frame information to make themselves look better than they actually are, said Elizabeth Umphress, a professor of management at the University of Washington whose research focuses on diversity, ethics, inclusion and organizational behavior.

“We need to agree on what those metrics are beforehand, ensure that they’re consistent with our values … and then measure according to those standards,” said Umphress. “We need to be really objective about what we’re measuring.”

In most cases, companies hire a third-party expert to review their policies and products. Facebook and Airbnb enlisted Laura Murphy, former head of the ACLU of Washington D.C., to conduct their audits. Former Attorney General Eric Holder has led audits of Starbucks and Uber. Umphress said there is value in bringing in an outside expert to conduct an audit but cautioned that there still could be conflicts of interest.

“The extent to which the organization can be transparent is good for not only external stakeholders but internal stakeholders as well.”

“We’d have to really look at the data carefully in order to ensure that it is something that we can trust,” she said. “Bringing in third parties, while that seems like a good idea, if these third parties are paid then they have a conflict of interest and it sets up a situation where they might be more likely to judge the organization more favorably.”

Large-scale corporate civil rights audits date back to 2016, when Airbnb customers began circulating stories of discrimination by hosts on social media. People of color claimed they had bookings denied and rejected without cause, a phenomenon that researchers and journalists were able to easily replicate on the platform.

Airbnb responded by partnering with Murphy and the nonprofit Color of Change to conduct a review of how its product and policies may lead to racial discrimination. In response to the audit, Airbnb made a series of changes to its product, including de-emphasizing the use of user photos, increasing rentals that allow guests to book instantly without approval from hosts, and penalizing hosts who claim properties are booked when they are not.

“Airbnb has long modeled for its Big Tech peers how to engage with civil rights groups to build inclusive online and offline spaces for Black people and people from marginalized communities,” Color of Change President Rashad Robinson said in a statement following the audit. “Airbnb’s leadership has proven they understand that progress and partnership come from measured action, not unfulfilled promises.”

Airbnb’s equity audit was largely viewed as a success and it inspired companies in the tech industry and beyond to follow suit. The number of companies commissioning civil rights audits has increased in the wake of the racial violence and Black Lives Matter movement that defined much of 2020.

What to expect from Microsoft and Amazon’s audits

The Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo)

Microsoft last week became the latest corporation to commission a civil rights audit in its efforts to improve equity within the company. In a blog post, Microsoft announced plans for an audit that will be completed by a third party in fiscal year 2023 to identify “areas of opportunity for Microsoft to address” in its workplace policies.

Microsoft has come under fire in recent years for failing to address sexual harassment in its workplace. The audit is part of a series of initiatives Microsoft announced last week that also includes the elimination of non-disclosure clauses in settlement and separation agreements with U.S. workers that would prevent them from disclosing allegations of misconduct.

Microsoft also said last week it will curtail its use of non-compete agreements and publish salary data in job listings.

Microsoft executives declined to be interviewed for this story but said the company is considering several third party firms to conduct the audit. The company will release more details about its plans once the auditor has been selected.

When Amazon announced in April it planned to conduct a civil rights audit, it took some followers of the company by surprise. Last year Amazon asked the SEC to block a shareholder proposal calling for a racial equity audit. Amazon has repeatedly recommended shareholders vote down proposals for an audit, though in 2022 the company said that was because it had committed to conducting one already.

Amazon declined to be interviewed for this story but pointed to its 2022 proxy statement in which the company commits to, “respecting and promoting civil and human rights, racial equity and racial justice, diversity and inclusion, and nondiscrimination, both in our operations and with our stakeholders.”

Amazon’s audit will focus on its nearly 1 million hourly employees, excluding subsidiaries like Whole Foods. The company will publicly release the results once the audit is completed.

Why do companies conduct civil rights audits?

While many companies review their policies for bias and discrimination, a formal third-party civil rights audit is typically conducted in response to a high-profile incident of racism or sexism.

Starbucks, for example, commissioned an audit after two Black men were arrested at one of the company’s Philadelphia stores for asking to use the restroom without first making a purchase. As part of the review, Starbucks changed its policy on restrooms, allowing anyone to use them regardless of whether they buy something.

But Starbucks is a case study in the limitations of voluntary civil rights audits. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said last week that the company may reverse the bathroom policy, citing safety concerns for staff.

Best practices

Ultimately, companies have broad discretion in what they choose to measure in these discrimination audits and what they change as a result of them. There isn’t a widely accepted set of metrics or standards for addressing bias in the workplace or the products that companies build. But some researchers and nonprofits are working to change that.

Color of Change is taking a leading role in establishing standards for civil rights audits across tech companies. The nonprofit released a framework with detailed instructions on how tech companies should conduct civil rights audits and what they should measure.

Color of Change recommends ethical technology experts review all products for potential discrimination before they are released, as well as the data that powers online services. The guide also stresses the importance of releasing not just an audit report, but the underlying data and methodology so that it can be evaluated by third party researchers.

“It comes back to transparency,” Umphress said. “The extent to which the organization can be transparent is good for not only external stakeholders but internal stakeholders as well.”

“That’s something that Amazon can do,” she added. “That’s something Microsoft can do.”

Editor’s note: This was story was updated to reflect Amazon’s plan to release its audit results.

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Will civil rights audits make a difference? Microsoft, Amazon, and the nation’s racial reckoning

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Microsoft and Amazon are joining a growing pool of companies conducting civil rights audits in the wake of the racial reckoning that began in 2020 with a series of police… Read More

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REFERENCE: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/women-are-abrasive-asian-men-brilliant-report-reveals-bias-in-workplace-feedback/
ACCESS: Google Search
CONNECTION: This article discusses how an augmented writing AI platform called Textio completed a review of written job performance feedback data, and found that comments were biased based on employees' gender, race, ethnicity, and age. For example, Asian men were 7x more likely to be called "brilliant" or "genius" than Latinx women. Women were 11x more likely to be called abrasive, whereas men were 3x more likely to be called confident. This type of research matters particularly because people with access to actionable feedback grow faster, earn more, and have more leadership opportunities-- and those who are not white males in the workplace received less actionable feedback.
EMOTION: This article made me feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that there is an AI platform that is proving, concretely, the types of workplace biases that we know all too well. I think there's a temptation for corporations to say they've moved past biases through different trainings, but I'm happy to know that there are people and technologies that are calling them out on their bluff and forcing them to confront workplace realities even today.

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Textio CEO Kieran Snyder (Photo via LinkedIn)

Textio, an augmented writing platform, has completed a review of written, job performance feedback from more than 25,000 employees at 250 organizations.

The Seattle company found biased comments that aligned with an employees' gender, race, ethnicity and age. The study reports:

Black men received 68 words of written feedback for every 100 words received by white women.

Asian men were seven times more likely to be called "brilliant" or "genius" than Latinx women.

Women, Black and Latinx workers received more personality-related feedback - both good and bad - than their colleagues, on average.

Women, Black and Latinx workers also receive much less "actionable" feedback than their male, white and Asian counterparts. Actionable feedback can provide important guidance for making improvements in performance.

Textio also surveyed employees online. It asked 500 respondents to recall feedback that they had received at work, asking if they had been described using specific terms, including:

Abrasive: Women were 11 times more likely to have received this description than men.

Overachiever: Black women were four times more likely to be called an overachiever than white men.

Confident: Men were three times more likely to be called confident than women were.

Textio was founded in 2014 by Kieran Snyder, who has a Ph.D. in linguistics and cognitive science. The company uses machine learning and natural language processing to analyze corporate communication and help companies strip biased language out of their operations.

"So what if women are more likely to be called "abrasive" than men? Who cares if white people are called "geniuses" 2.5 times more often than Black people?" Snyder wrote in the forward to the study.

"It matters because people with access to actionable feedback grow faster, earn more, and have more opportunities for leadership," she continued. "We still have a lot of work to do. Let's dive in."

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Women are 'abrasive,' Asian men 'brilliant': Report reveals bias in workplace feedback

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Textio, an augmented writing platform, has completed a review of written, job performance feedback from more than 25,000 employees at 250 organizations. The Seattle company found biased comments that aligned with an employees' gender, race, ethnicity and age. The study reports: Black men received 68 words of written feedback for every 100 words received by white women.

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REFERENCE: https://scitechdaily.com/making-traffic-jams-a-thing-of-the-past-ai-traffic-light-system-could-drastically-reduce-congestion/

ACCESS: Google Search

CONNECTION: This article discusses the use of new technology in improving our traffic light systems. Instead of a manually programmed system, researchers at Aston University are testing new AI technology that autonomously adapts to new traffic situations and conditions through its live feed. The program is trained through simulations that offer positive and negative rewards based on how well the program interprets and responds to spontaneous traffic conditions. I think this article showcases how AI technology can be used to improve existing computerized systems, especially in low-income areas where traffic jams occur more often because of its high population density. Since most, if not all of our courses discuss ways in which students can apply what they learn to their community, I believe this article represents a great example of how computer science can be applied to drastically improve the living conditions of students’ surrounding community.

EMOTION: I felt intrigued and inspired reading this article since it relates artificial intelligence to something that I experience in everyday life. I often sit at traffic lights frustrated by their inability to analyze the situation and adapt to the fact that there are no other cars in the cross traffic, so seeing this issue being addressed using improved computers and technology is very inspiring to me.

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REFERENCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47555588

ACCESS: Google Search

CONNECTION: This article discusses the military’s current experiments in swarm drones that could potentially reduce the cost and quantity of aircrafts. The goal is for the mentioned drones to have a collective mind/goal, but also be able to autonomously function as individual robots that can make its own decisions. The idea for swarm drones is derived from the natural behavior of birds, bees, and ants. It is often easier to make connections between computer science and mathematics as compared to computer science and biology. I believe that this article shows how those connections don’t have to be contrived as there are strong, equity-based connections between the two topics. As someone who only knows the basics of life science, I found this article to be interesting and informative about what behavior we model our technology after.

EMOTION: I felt interested and surprised when reading this article because I had not realized that AI technology behavior is often modeled after the behavior found in animals. I found the connection between biology and computer science to be really cool, and I would love to see the information in this article adapted into a biology and/or computer science lesson.

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Reference: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/your-computer-secretly-stores-all-your-wi-fi-passwords-heres-how-to-find-them/

Access: Google Search --> technology --> CNET

Connection: This article reminded me of the activities we did in this class back in Unit 2 where we dug a little deeper into what networks are, what they do, etc. This also reminded me about how we should be careful with what Wi-Fi networks we connect to because they are definitely not secure. We should also be careful with our own passwords because it is very easy to retrieve them.

Emotion: I guess I kinda like that this article showed you step by step how to retrieve passwords you have used before. I know it is annoying when I go home to visit family and have to re-ask for the password or when I try to log onto an account of mine and can't remember the password so this is helpful. However, I don't like knowing that I can see all passwords I have used before because then this means that anyone who has access to my laptop can easily lookup passwords I have used.

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Everyone has their way of storing Wi-Fi passwords for later use, like a sticky note on your desk or a random note in your phone. And of course there's always the wireless router you can check, which typically has the password on a sticker label. However, there's an easier way to find all your Wi-Fi passwords at once -- just check your computer.

As long as your Windows or Mac computer has connected to the network before, the Wi-Fi password is permanently stored there. It may require a bit of digging in your settings, but all of the passwords are there, saved, and ready to be shared with anyone who wants to connect to Wi-Fi.

Here's how to find the passwords to all of the Wi-Fi networks you've ever connected to on MacOS and Windows. For more of the latest computer news, here's what to know about the latest MacBook Pro and the MacOS Monterey update.

How to find Wi-Fi passwords in MacOS

Every password you've entered and saved on a Mac is stored in Keychain Access, the password management system for MacOS. And that includes Wi-Fi network passwords.

To start, use the search feature to open the Keychain Access app and do the following:

1. Click on System under System Keychains in the sidebar.

2. Next, click on Passwords at the top of the window.

3. Find the Wi-Fi network you want the password for and double-click on it.

4. Finally, check the box next to Show password and enter your password when prompted.

The password field will then show the password you used to log in to that Wi-Fi network. You can double-click in the password field to select the password and copy it to your clipboard, if needed.

How to find Wi-Fi passwords on Windows

Finding the password to the Wi-Fi network you're currently connected to is simple on Windows, but getting your hands on all stored Wi-Fi passwords takes a bit of work, so we'll discuss both methods below.

To find the password to the Wi-Fi network you're currently connected to on Windows:

1. Click the Start button and then go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center (Windows 11) or Settings > Network & Internet > Status > Network and Sharing Center (Windows 10).

2. Next to Connections, click your Wi-Fi network name highlighted in blue.

3. In the Wi-Fi Status page that opens, click Wireless Properties and then on the Security tab.

4. Finally, check the box next to Show characters to display your Wi-Fi network password above it.

However, this isn't the only way to find your Wi-Fi network passwords. The method above only allows you to view the password to whatever Wi-Fi network you're currently connected to, but there is a way to find the passwords to all the Wi-Fi networks you've ever connected to on your Windows computer.

To find all your Wi-Fi network passwords on Windows:

1. Right-click on the Windows icon in the taskbar on your desktop.

2. Click Windows Terminal (Admin).

3. Type in netsh wlan show profile and hit Enter on your keyboard to view every Wi-Fi network you've connected to.

4. Once you find the Wi-Fi network you want the password for, type in netsh wlan show profile "(Wi-Fi network name)" key=clear (for example, netsh wlan show profile "Netgear667" key=clear), and then hit the Enter key.

Settings for profile, connectivity, security and cost will appear. The Wi-Fi network password will appear under Security settings, and next to Key Content. In addition to Windows Terminal, you can also use the Command Prompt application to type in the commands listed above to find your Wi-Fi passwords.

If you want to read more about passwords, whether it's on your computer or your smartphone, check out the best password managers to use and nine rules to follow when creating a password.

Correction, March 25: One of the commands for finding a Wi-Fi password on Windows included a typo. The third step in the alternate method has been fixed.

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Your Computer Secretly Stores All Your Wi-Fi Passwords. Here's How to Find Them

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Everyone has their way of storing Wi-Fi passwords for later use, like a sticky note on your desk or a random note in your phone. And of course there's always the wireless router you can check, which typically has the password on a sticker label.

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Reference: https://www.wired.com/story/lamda-sentient-ai-bias-google-blake-lemoine/

Access: Google Search --> tech news --> wired.com

Connection: This article reminded me of the book we read in one of our courses, Artificial Intelligence. In this book the author talks about how people are fearful of AI, but it is not something people should be focusing on. This is also definitely something that a lot of people bring up when AI is discussed. People's minds automatically go to thinking about robots becoming more like humans or that robots will take over the world when in reality this is something that technology is not capable of.

Emotions: I like that this article brought up how people should not focus on sentient AI especially when there are a lot of other problems and challenges that are stemming from AI. This article also made me feel so uneasy! I am wondering what truly goes on at companies liKe Google. Like what IS actually going on behind the scenes?

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Now head of the nonprofit Distributed AI Research, Gebru hopes that going forward people focus on human welfare, not robot rights. Other AI ethicists have said that they'll no longer discuss conscious or superintelligent AI at all.

"Quite a large gap exists between the current narrative of AI and what it can actually do," says Giada Pistilli, an ethicist at Hugging Face, a startup focused on language models. "This narrative provokes fear, amazement, and excitement simultaneously, but it is mainly based on lies to sell products and take advantage of the hype."

The consequence of speculation about sentient AI, she says, is an increased willingness to make claims based on subjective impression instead of scientific rigor and proof. It distracts from "countless ethical and social justice questions" that AI systems pose. While every researcher has the freedom to research what they want, she says, "I just fear that focusing on this subject makes us forget what is happening while looking at the moon."

What Lemoine experienced is an example of what author and futurist David Brin has called the "robot empathy crisis." At an AI conference in San Francisco in 2017, Brin predicted that in three to five years, people would claim AI systems were sentient and insist that they had rights. Back then, he thought those appeals would come from a virtual agent that took the appearance of a woman or child to maximize human empathic response, not "some guy at Google," he says.

The LaMDA incident is part of a transition period, Brin says, where "we're going to be more and more confused over the boundary between reality and science fiction."

Brin based his 2017 prediction on advances in language models. He expects that the trend will lead to scams. If people were suckers for a chatbot as simple as ELIZA decades ago, he says, how hard will it be to persuade millions that an emulated person deserves protection or money?

"There's a lot of snake oil out there, and mixed in with all the hype are genuine advancements," Brin says. "Parsing our way through that stew is one of the challenges that we face."

"I don't want to talk about sentient robots, because at all ends of the spectrum there are humans harming other humans."

Timnit Gebru, Distributed AI Research

And as empathetic as LaMDA seemed, people who are amazed by large language models should consider the case of the cheeseburger stabbing, says Yejin Choi, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. A local news broadcast in the United States involved a teenager in Toledo, Ohio, stabbing his mother in the arm in a dispute over a cheeseburger. But the headline "Cheeseburger Stabbing" is vague. Knowing what occurred requires some common sense. Attempts to get OpenAI's GPT-3 model to generate text using "Breaking news: Cheeseburger stabbing" produces words about a man getting stabbed with a cheeseburger in an altercation over ketchup, and a man being arrested after stabbing a cheeseburger.

Language models sometimes make mistakes because deciphering human language can require multiple forms of common-sense understanding. To document what large language models are capable of doing and where they can fall short, last month more than 400 researchers from 130 institutions contributed to a collection of more than 200 tasks known as BIG-Bench, or Beyond the Imitation Game. BIG-Bench includes some traditional language-model tests like reading comprehension, but also logical reasoning and common sense.

Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI's MOSAIC project, which documents the common-sense reasoning abilities of AI models, contributed a task called Social-IQa. They asked language models-not including LaMDA-to answer questions that require social intelligence, like "Jordan wanted to tell Tracy a secret, so Jordan leaned towards Tracy. Why did Jordan do this?" The team found large language models achieved performance 20 to 30 percent less accurate than people.

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Now head of the nonprofit Distributed AI Research, Gebru hopes that going forward people focus on human welfare, not robot rights. Other AI ethicists have said that they'll no longer discuss conscious or superintelligent AI at all.

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Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/6/23156318/artificial-intelligence-nate-app-ecommerce-go-read-this

Access: Google Search --> tech news

Connection: This article connects back to the discussions we have had surrounding AI, and films we have watched about it such as Coded Bias and The Social Dilemma. This article focused on a startup company that tried creating an app that would make it easier for users to fill in their personal information when completing purchases. However, this process ended up being done by actual humans in the Philippines.

Emotion: This article made me laugh to be honest. I was very confused as to why someone would want to create an app that fills in your personal information when completing transactions when this is something that is already done through autofill on computers or any other device! I also felt bad for those workers in the Philippines! This app was definitely not successful so I am sure these workers were not being paid enough!

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If you can't be bothered to fill out your credit card and address details when shopping for jeans online, the Nate app sounds like a service you might want. The company bills itself as an "artificial intelligence startup" that uses AI to auto-fill customer information for $1 per transaction, saving shoppers a few minutes when completing purchases through the Nate app.

But instead of using high-tech methods to complete purchases, Nate transactions were often handled manually by workers in the Philippines, according to a deep dive by The Information. Speaking to two people with direct access to Nate's internal data, The Information reports that "the share of transactions Nate handled manually rather than automatically ranged between 60 percent and 100 percent" throughout 2021. One person with knowledge of fundraising efforts told the outlet that the company didn't share its manual process with some potential investors while the company was trying to raise money.

People with direct knowledge of the technology used by Nate told The Information that bot blockers on retailer sites were a problem. "Nate's software needed to figure out how to locate specific buttons on the page, such as the one that adds an item to the shopping cart," according to the report, which resulted in a large bulk of transactions going through manual entry by actual humans. Some orders were placed hours after Nate users pressed the "buy" button, The Information reports.

That didn't stop Nate from raising millions in its quest to make something that's already very easy even easier. Venture capital firms Coatue Management and Forerunner Ventures invested $50 million in Nate over the past two years:

One consequence of the pandemic-fueled shopping boom is that venture capitalists -facing fierce competition for deals and paranoid about missing the next Stripe - began practically hurling money at startups that promised to make e-commerce smoother, even ones with questionable business models or technology. Today, amid slowing e-commerce sales and macroeconomic challenges, many startups face a reckoning.

"Across the startup landscape, there is a realization that a lot of companies had a great story, but their reality" wasn't, said Keval Desai, an investor at InterWest Partners who previously backed e-commerce firms such as The RealReal. "People are waking up and saying these valuations cannot be sustained."

At the end of last year, with only around 100 transactions a day, Nate decided to run a promotion to boost its business and presence, buying ads on TikTok, TV, and public transit. Users got $50 to spend on select websites when they downloaded the Nate app and created a profile, and transactions ballooned - up to 10,000 a day.

But users had figured out a way to game the system by creating multiple accounts with the same banking information but using new email addresses and phone numbers. After the company removed duplicate users and ended the promotion, daily transactions went back down to 75 to 100 a day.

A Nate spokesperson told The Information those figures - as well as the 60 percent to 100 percent range - were incorrect, "and the claims questioning [Nate's] proprietary technology are completely baseless." But it wouldn't be the first time a startup claimed that machines were responsible for work done by humans - and casts " the magic " of Nate in a whole new light.

Read The Information report here.

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Go read this report on an AI shopping app that was actually just using humans

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If you can't be bothered to fill out your credit card and address details when shopping for jeans online, the Nate app sounds like a service you might want. The company bills itself as an "artificial intelligence startup" that uses AI to auto-fill customer information for $1 per transaction, saving shoppers a few minutes when completing purchases through the Nate app.

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REFERENCE: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/2/23151517/canada-privacy-commission-tim-hortons-app-data-location-tracking-investigation-results

Access: Google Search --> technology news

Connection:  This article reminded me of the discussions we have had surrounding AI, our readings about AI and films we have watched about it such as Coded Bias and The Social Dilemma. This situation was just another example of how people's privacy is not being respected and how technology continues to be used to gather information on people in order to use it for the benefit of the organizations or companies collecting this data. This also connects back to the task we did in this unit where we were asked to think about how data brokers get our personal information and what they do with this information.

Emotion: This article made me feel nervous and scared because I always use technology blindly without thinking about the consequences. However, I was also not surprised to hear about this happening in Canada because many apps and companies already do things like this (track our location, keep our data, etc.), but it is just not known by users.

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Tim Hortons used its mobile app to collect "vast amounts of location data" from users, including tracking when they visited competing coffee shops, says Canada's privacy watchdog. Yesterday, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released the results of a 2020 investigation into the coffee and donut chain, demanding it delete any remaining location data and limit future collection. Tim Hortons, the commission says, has agreed to implement the regulations.

The full report outlines a sweeping, invasive attempt to deduce Tim Hortons customers' behavior in order to target advertising at them - although the company apparently never actually used the data for that purpose. It notes that in May 2019, Tim Hortons updated its mobile app to collect granular, frequent location updates from users' phones. American geofencing platform Radar analyzed patterns in the data to infer where users lived, when they worked, and when they were traveling. The app's near-constant collection clashed with statements that it only gathered location information when the app was open, and Tim Hortons only updated its disclosures when the Financial Post published an article exposing its detailed data collection - sparking the commission's investigation.

The app guessed users' home locations and flagged when they went to sporting events

According to records reviewed by the commission, Tim Hortons sought the data to support trend reports saying customers were switching to its competitors - and as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, to track shifts away from downtown locations and toward closer-to-home suburban ones. Its Radar-enabled analysis generated an "event" whenever users visited one of nine Tim Hortons competitors, including McDonald's, Starbucks, and Second Cup Café. It also checked when people were visiting major sports venues, and it flagged when people left and returned to their place of business. The commission found that Radar generated an average of around 10 events per day for each user.

Tim Hortons apparently considered using the data to run tailored promotional offers based on where users were located, but it ended up refocusing its efforts and used it only for broad trend-based analysis. The commission notes that, even if the data wasn't used, it was still stored by default for a year - and although it was supposed to be anonymized, numerous studies show it's not hard to identify individuals based on supposedly anonymous data. Tim Hortons discontinued the program in 2020, a few days after the investigation was announced.

Many smartphone apps track users' movements, including some that give third parties broad access to that data. Some restaurants have even openly promoted their tracking programs. In 2018, Burger King encouraged people to download the app and order discounted Whoppers when in the vicinity of a McDonald's. A Skift Table report from the same year found that many restaurants' apps tracked users without clearly disclosing the practice. But Tim Hortons is apparently no longer one of them. It says its app now only uses location data to identify nearby locations for placing mobile orders, and the commission "uncovered no evidence to the contrary."

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Canadian government slams Tim Hortons for using its app to spy on customers

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Tim Hortons used its mobile app to collect "vast amounts of location data" from users, including tracking when they visited competing coffee shops, says Canada's privacy watchdog. Yesterday, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released the results of a 2020 investigation into the coffee and donut chain, demanding it delete any remaining location data and limit future collection.

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Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/1/23149952/drought-california-hydroelectricity-energy-costs-emissions

Access: Google Search

Connection: This article connects to the energy unit I taught in my Physics class. We spent some time talking about renewable energy sources and why we should/should not mitigate towards these alternative energy sources. One of the renewable sources students brought up was using hydroelectric power. This would be a great article to bring up in class so students can make connections to climate change.
Emotion: This article made me think about how I need to continue having hope and pass this hope on to my students. When discussing topics like this it can be discouraging, disappointing and many people think about how "we are doomed." However, we cannot end these discussions this way because it will do our students no good.

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Drought is forecast to slash California's supply of hydroelectricity in half this summer. That's bad news for residents' air quality and utility bills, the US Energy and Information Administration (EIA) said in its forecast. The state will likely lean on more expensive, polluting natural gas to make up for the shortfall in hydropower.

Nearly 60 percent of California is currently coping with "extreme" drought or worse, according to the national drought monitor map. California's current water woes stem from low levels of snowpack, which quenches the state's reservoirs when it melts. In early April, when snowpack usually peaks, the water content of the state's snowpack was 40 percent lower than the normal levels over the past 30 years.

Two of California's most important water reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, were already "critically low" by early May. We haven't even reached the summer, when the weather could become even more punishingly dry and hot and demand for air conditioning places extra stress on the power grid.

Hydroelectricity is a significant source of energy in the US. It typically makes up about 15 percent of California's electricity generation during "normal water conditions," according to the EIA. But that's expected to drop to just 8 percent this summer, the EIA says.

Sometimes California can buy hydropower from other states in the Pacific Northwest. But Washington State and Oregon are also dealing with drought, so gas may have to fill in the gaps. As a result, the EIA says electricity prices in the Western US will likely be 5 percent higher over the next few months. In California, the drought will result in 6 percent higher carbon dioxide emissions in the energy sector.

California is no stranger to drought, but things have gotten historically bad this year. The first few months of 2022 were the driest in over 100 years. Governor Gavin Newsom has asked Californians to voluntarily change their habits - including taking five-minute showers instead of baths and sweeping rather than hosing down outdoor areas when cleaning - in an effort to reduce the state's water consumption. In some places, local governments are mandating water cuts. Starting today, many residents in the Los Angeles area will only be allowed to water their lawns once a week.

As climate change shapes a future with worsening droughts, it could become difficult for the US to rely on hydropower as a clean energy source to reach its climate goals. The nation relied on hydropower for nearly a third of its renewable electricity in 2021. The Biden administration has a goal of getting the US power grid to run completely on carbon pollution-free energy by 2035.

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Extreme drought could cost California half its hydroelectric power this summer

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Drought is forecast to slash California's supply of hydroelectricity in half this summer. That's bad news for residents' air quality and utility bills, the US Energy and Information Administration (EIA) said in its forecast. The state will likely lean on more expensive, polluting natural gas to make up for the shortfall in hydropower.

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Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/business/self-driving-car-nhtsa-crash-data.html

Access: Google News

Connection: I think this is usually the first topic that comes to people's minds when you talk about AI or technological advancement since Tesla has been rising in popularity over the past 5 years. Also, self-driving cars, to many people, is the epitome of technological advancement.

Emotions: I think the article does a good job at saying more data is needed to really make conclusions, but I also think they left out data that is already available. For example, they say 392 crashes in the past 10 months were from these types of cars, but out of how many total crashes is that? Also, I think the concept of self-driving cars is just interesting in general because I'm not sure how I feel about it. While I think it's "cool" I think there are many things that still need to be worked out. There are so many split second decisions you make driving, that I am unsure whether technology can make that kind of contextual decision like a human can. Also, driving in a city versus a small town is much different, so will they sell different versions of the same car or will all cars be able to drive anywhere? I think self-driving cars have the potential to change our lives and the car industry forever, but at what cost?

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data on 10 months of crashes involving systems like Tesla's Autopilot. A handful of accidents turned deadly.

Tesla Autopilot is among the advanced driver-assistance systems being scrutinized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Credit... Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg

Over the course of 10 months, nearly 400 car crashes in the United States involved advanced driver-assistance technologies, the federal government's top auto-safety regulator disclosed Wednesday, in its first-ever release of large-scale data about these burgeoning systems.

In 392 incidents cataloged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from July 1 of last year through May 15, six people died and five were seriously injured. Teslas operating with Autopilot, the more ambitious Full Self Driving mode or any of their associated component features were in 273 crashes.

The disclosures are part of a sweeping effort by the federal agency to determine the safety of advanced driving systems as they become increasingly commonplace. Beyond the futuristic allure of self-driving cars, scores of car manufacturers have rolled out automated components in recent years, including features that allow you to take your hands off the steering wheel under certain conditions and that help you parallel park.

In Wednesday's release, NHTSA disclosed that Honda vehicles were involved in 90 incidents and Subarus in 10. Ford Motor, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai and Porsche each reported five or fewer.

"These technologies hold great promise to improve safety, but we need to understand how these vehicles are performing in real-world situations," said Steven Cliff, the agency's administrator. "This will help our investigators quickly identify potential defect trends that emerge."

Speaking with reporters ahead of Wednesday's release, Dr. Cliff also cautioned against drawing conclusions from the data collected so far, noting that it does not take into account factors like the number of cars from each manufacturer that are on the road and equipped with these types of technologies.

"The data may raise more questions than they answer," he said.

About 830,000 Tesla cars in the United States are equipped with Autopilot or the company's other driver-assistance technologies - offering one explanation why Tesla vehicles accounted for nearly 70 percent of the reported crashes.

Ford, GM, BMW and others have similar advanced systems that allow hands-free driving under certain conditions on highways, but far fewer of those models have been sold. These companies, however, have sold millions of cars over the last two decades that are equipped with individual components of driver-assist systems. The components include so-called lane keeping, which helps drivers stay in their lanes, and adaptive cruise control, which maintains a car's speed and brakes automatically when traffic ahead slows.

Dr. Cliff said NHTSA would continue to collect data on crashes involving these types of features and technologies, noting that the agency would use it as a guide in making any rules or requirements for how they should be designed and used.

The data was collected under an order NHTSA issued a year ago that required automakers to report crashes involving cars equipped with advanced driver-assist systems, also known as ADAS or Level-2 automated driving systems.

The order was prompted partly by crashes and fatalities over the last six years that involved Teslas operating in Autopilot. Last week NHTSA widened an investigation into whether Autopilot has technological and design flaws that pose safety risks. The agency has been looking into 35 crashes that occurred while Autopilot was activated, including nine that resulted in the deaths of 14 people since 2014. It had also opened a preliminary investigation into 16 incidents in which Teslas under Autopilot control crashed into emergency vehicles that had stopped and had their lights flashing.

Under the order issued last year, NHTSA also collected data on crashes or incidents involving fully automated vehicles that are still in development for the most part but are being tested on public roads. The manufacturers of these vehicles include G.M., Ford and other traditional automakers as well as tech companies such as Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company.

These types of vehicles were involved in 130 incidents, NHTSA found. One resulted in a serious injury, 15 in minor or moderate injuries, and 108 didn't result in injuries. Many of the crashes involving automated vehicles led to fender benders or bumper taps because they are operated mainly at low speeds and in city driving.

Waymo, which is running a fleet of driverless taxis in Arizona, was part of 62 incidents. G.M.'s Cruise division, which has just started offering driverless taxi rides in San Francisco, was involved in 23. One minor crash involving an automated test vehicle made by Pony.ai, a start-up, resulted in a recall of three of the company's test vehicles to correct software.

NHTSA's order was an unusually bold step for the regulator, which has come under fire in recent years for not being more assertive with automakers.

The Issues With Tesla's Autopilot System

"The agency is gathering information in order to determine whether, in the field, these systems constitute an unreasonable risk to safety," said J. Christian Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering and a director of Stanford University's Center for Automotive Research.

An advanced driver-assistance system can steer, brake and accelerate vehicles on its own, though drivers must stay alert and ready to take control of the vehicle at any time.

Safety experts are concerned because these systems allow drivers to relinquish active control of the car and could lull them into thinking their cars are driving themselves. When the technology malfunctions or cannot handle a particular situation, drivers may be unprepared to take control quickly.

NHTSA's order required companies to provide data on crashes when advanced driver-assistance systems and automated technologies were in use within 30 seconds of impact. Though this data provides a broader picture of the behavior of these systems than ever before, it is still difficult to determine whether they reduce crashes or otherwise improve safety.

The agency has not collected data that would allow researchers to easily determine whether using these systems is safer than turning them off in the same situations.

"The question: What is the baseline against which we are comparing this data?" said Dr. Gerdes, the Stanford professor, who from 2016 to 2017 was the first chief innovation officer for the Department of Transportation, of which NHTSA is part.

But some experts say that comparing these systems with human driving should not be the goal.

"When a Boeing 737 falls out of the sky, we don't ask, 'Is it falling out of the sky more or less than other planes?'" said Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor in the University of South Carolina's law and engineering schools who specializes in emerging transportation technologies.

"Crashes on our roads are equivalent to several plane crashes every week," he added. "Comparison is not necessarily what we want. If there are crashes these driving systems are contributing to - crashes that otherwise would not have happened - that is a potentially fixable problem that we need to know about."

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Self-Driving and Driver-Assist Technology Linked to Hundreds of Crashes, U.S. Data Shows

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data on 10 months of crashes involving systems like Tesla's Autopilot. A handful of accidents turned deadly.

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Reference: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/15/internet-explorer-is-dead/

Access: saw on twitter --> googled it

Connection: We are constantly talking about how rapidly technology and what we use changes and this is an example that our generation can really identify with. We need to keep in mind that our students will likely interact with and produce technology/software that we have no experience with -- so how can we teach them about something that doesn't exist yet?

Emotion: I distinctly remember the social death of internet explorer like ten years ago, so I'm surprised it took them this long to actually end it. I grew up using internet explorer until middle school when google chrome took over. Now, I would never even consider using internet explorer because like the article said it's "reliably unreliable". It makes me interested to see what will come after google since that is one of the biggest names for us right now.

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Microsoft is officially pulling the plug on Internet Explorer next June.
Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images

After long years of palliative care, Internet Explorer has reached the end its life, Microsoft says.

The much-reviled 26-year-old web browser once dominated the internet, but never shook its reputation as the slow, buggy net-surfing option.

Explorer, preceded in death by similarly reviled Microsoft icons Hotmail and Clippy, is survived by Microsoft Edge, the next-generation browser Microsoft first put out in 2015.

Microsoft announced Internet Explorer's nearing death in June 2021, saying that Microsoft Edge was faster, more secure and compatible with early-internet websites - qualities its predecessor was maligned for lacking.

At the time on social media, people familiar with Explorer paid tribute to the flawed browser. "Internet Explorer being reliably unreliable, what a legacy," wrote Twitter user Adriana Figueroa.

Other members of the family, including Microsoft 365, the company's subscription-based app bundle, and the video-conferencing platform Microsoft Teams, have already said their goodbyes to Internet Explorer.

The ghost of Internet Explorer will live on for those who choose to believe: Edge offers a built-in Internet Explorer mode.

Though it might seem strange to young people whose internet experiences never revolved around the blue "e" icon, Explorer once was seen as an unavoidable cornerstone of a big tech monopoly.

When Windows introduced Explorer in August 1995, the browser's success killed off the once-leading Netscape Navigator. At its height in the early 2000s, Explorer controlled 95% of the browser market.

But Microsoft failed to keep pace with competitors, and Internet Explorer began to lose respect among users for its poor security, bungled renderings of web pages and sluggishness.

Still, Explorer refused to retire, and Microsoft tried to revitalize its image by acknowledging the browser's bad rap. In 2012, it launched a playful ad campaign rebranding Explorer as "the browser you loved to hate."

Indeed, its lousy image has served as meme fodder: a browser too slow to load the news of its demise, or the best browser to use to download a superior one.

In a 2014 "Ask Me Anything" discussion on Reddit, Microsoft engineers who worked on the browser said the company had debated renaming Explorer, to "separate ourselves from negative perceptions that no longer reflect our product today."

But it was too late - the damage to Internet Explorer's reputation was done. Frustrated users had already had flocked to Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome. When Edge came online in 2015, AdWeek's Kristina Monllos told NPR that an departure date for the embattled Explorer was overdue.

Google Chrome is now the leading browser, holding a share of nearly 65% of the global market, according to browser tracker StatCounter, while Edge sits at under 4%.
NPR's Christopher Dean Hopkins contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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technology | business | home page top stories | news | internet

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Internet Explorer, the love-to-hate-it web browser, has died at 26

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After long years of palliative care, Internet Explorer has reached the end its life, Microsoft says. The much-reviled 26-year-old web browser once dominated the internet, but never shook its reputation as the slow, buggy net-surfing option. Explorer, preceded in death by similarly reviled Microsoft icons Hotmail and Clippy, is survived by Microsoft Edge, the next-generation browser Microsoft first put out in 2015.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220603153335.htm
Access: Google Search
Connection: This article reminds me of the CT skills that are constantly emphasized in the CS courses because a successful model was developed to predict a volcanic eruption. However, the creation of this model was not possible without analyzing patterns, communicating about data with another research group, and evaluating previous eruptions to make predictions. My students are going to be creating a lot of models in the future, so I want to emphasize the CT skills that they will be engaging in so that they can think critically and metacognitively throughout the process.
Emotion: I worked with a lot of data in my IDS class and it is incredibly rewarding to create a visual that summarizes all of the data. I can’t imagine how these researchers must feel to develop a successful model that can save the lives of so many people using an artifact that they created.

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Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220527085230.htm
Access: Google Search
Connection: Although I don’t teach science, I was intrigued by the title of this article and believe it is so important for students to know about the importance of climate change. With the use of AI, advancements have been made in tracking the health of coral reefs to ensure that they can be conserved. This also reminded me of our CS class because the AI uses patterns to make predictions which is a critical CT skill that we have been practicing and one that students should be able to apply in their classes.
Emotion: It is relieving that there are benefits to developing AI because most of the news I see are ethical concerns about its use in the world. However, this AI's purpose is to monitor coral reefs' health and protect the environment. I want to educate myself and my students more about current events regarding climate change and even connect it to math using graphs and other visuals.

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Reference: https://ahmedmansoor.medium.com/why-cloud-computing-matters-to-small-businesses-46fd9db90522

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: This article connects to the CT principle “communicating with and about data” because to me, the whole point of a cloud database is to encourage and enhance collaboration around computing. A cloud would make collaboration much more straightforward and less time consuming than it would be without a cloud system.

Emotion: Reading this article, I wonder what the author’s job is and whether they potentially work for a company with a cloud database. The article only focuses on potential benefits of cloud computing, such as lower costs for a business and increased security without beginning to address any sort of risks and why these benefits outweigh potential risks. I’m a little skeptical of what the article says because I feel like the way it’s written shows that the author has a bias toward using these cloud computing services.

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Reference: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/quantum-computing-more-asian-countries-are-getting-in-on-the-trend.html

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: Once again, this reminded me a lot of some things that my partner teacher and I have discussed as far as including technology in our classes goes. Not every lesson or every unit will benefit from having technology, and in fact some are restricted by trying to force technology in them. This article made the same point about quantum computing, focusing on the two sectors where it would make an impact while also stating that it won’t make an impact everywhere.

Emotion: This was an article that finally made it clear to me how quantum computing could be relevant to my life and where it can appear without me directly using it. Realistically, as a teacher, I won’t be on the cutting edge of the technological world, but understanding where this quicker processing and ability to run multiple simulations at once can be helpful for me to understand the greater landscape of the technology world. I’m pacified for now that I can understand the general idea of quantum computing without needing to know every detail since I realistically won’t be directly using the technology.

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Reference: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/13/1053650/marseille-fight-surveillance-state/

Access: Google News

Connection: This article definitely reminded me about Coded Bias because they focus a lot on surveillance cameras in the UK using facial recognition technology. New types of activists must come out as new technologies are implemented in ways that some would argue violate human rights.

Emotions: I find it interesting that these surveillance cameras are popping up in European countries because they are also the countries with more restrictions on what data companies can store from their users and the right to be forgotten capabilities. Also, I hate that more surveillance/policing is being used to sell "more safety" to communities because I don't agree that that is the solution. Prison and other consequences haven't been proven to be good deterrents of crime, so I don't see how more punitive actions would be any different. Having people live in fear of being watched will just raise mental health rates and create more creative criminals. Instead, buffing up social welfare programs that help people meet their basic needs, like housing and food access, can actually help reduce crime.

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Skip to Content

The boisterous, rebellious port city is trying to fight the growing ubiquity of policing cameras.

Heading toward Marseille's central train station, Eda Nano points out what looks like a streetlamp on the Rue des Abeilles. Its long stand curves upward to a white dome shading a dark bulb. But this sleek piece of urban furniture is not a lamp. It's a video camera, with a 360-degree view of the narrow street.

Nano, a 39-year-old developer, wants to make residents of Marseille more aware that they are being watched. She is part of a group called Technopolice that has been organizing efforts to map the rise of video surveillance. With some 1,600 cameras in the city, there is plenty to find. Mixed in among them, Nano says, are 50 smart cameras designed to detect and flag up suspicious behavior, though she is unsure where they are or how they are being used.

Across the world, video cameras have become an accepted feature of urban life. Many cities in China now have dense networks of them. London and New Delhi aren't far behind.

Now France is playing catch-up. Since 2015, the year of the Bataclan terrorist attacks, the number of cameras in Paris has increased fourfold. The police have used such cameras to enforce pandemic lockdown measures and monitor protests like those of the Gilets Jaunes. And a new nationwide security law, adopted last year, allows for video surveillance by police drones during events like protests and marches.

For Nano the creep of increased surveillance has personal resonance. She grew up in Albania as it lurched between different political regimes in the 1990s. Her father, a politician, opposed the party that was in power for part of that time. "It was a very difficult period for us, because we were all being watched," she says. Her family suspected that the authorities had installed bugs in the walls of their home. But even in France, freedoms are fragile. "These past five years France has lived for much of the time in a state of emergency," she says. "I've seen more and more constraints put on our liberty."

Concerns have been raised throughout the country. But the surveillance rollout has met special resistance in Marseille, France's second-biggest city. The boisterous, rebellious Mediterranean town sits on some of the fault lines that run through modern France. Known for hip bars, artist studios, and startup hubs, it is also notorious for drugs, poverty, and criminal activity. It has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in Europe but is stranded in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, a region that leans far right. The city pushes back. Its attitude could be summed up by graffiti you might pass as you drive in on the A7 motorway: " La vie est (re)belle."

That all makes Marseille a curious testing ground for surveillance tech. When President Emmanuel Macron visited the city in September 2021, he announced that 500 more security cameras would be given to the city council. They would be placed in an area of the city that is home to high numbers of immigrants and has become synonymous with violence and gang activity. He struck a law-and-order tone: "If we can't succeed in Marseille, we can't make a success out of France."

The announcement was just the latest in a string of developments in Marseille that show an increased reliance on cameras in public spaces.

Activists are fighting back, highlighting the existing surveillance system's overreach and underperformance. Their message seems to resonate. In 2020, the city elected a new administration, one that had pledged a moratorium on video surveillance devices. But have the residents of Marseille succeeded, or are they simply fighting a rising tide?

Technopolice, a campaign and activist network launched by the digital rights advocacy group La Quadrature du Net in collaboration with other groups, got its start in 2019. Félix Tréguer, an associate researcher at the CNRS Center for Internet and Society, was one of those behind the campaign. He had been seeing increasing numbers of articles in the French media about new surveillance projects and was shocked at how uncritical they were. "[One] simply rehashed the press release from the Marseille council," he says.

What spurred him into action was an article in Le Monde in 2017 announcing the Big Data of Public Tranquillity Project, funded by a €1.5 million investment from the European Union, the city of Marseille, and the Bouches-du-Rhône region. It would crunch data from local police, firefighters, hospitals, and video cameras, using artificial intelligence in an attempt to better understand and predict security risks.

There was little focus in the Le Monde article on privacy protection, the possibility of data breaches, or the risk of bias-a special concern given Marseille's considerable North African population. Tréguer wrote to the newspaper, and the article was subsequently amended. But he became convinced that what was happening in Marseille was symptomatic of a wider phenomenon. "Many of these projects were starting to be implemented on a local level," he says. "No one in civil society really realized-even those belonging to activist circles and those who defended the right to privacy."

In February 2019, La Quadrature du Net and the League of Human Rights successfully fought a plan to roll out facial recognition to monitor entries and exits in two high schools, one in Marseille and another in Nice. Technopolice launched the same year, with the aim of documenting and resisting the spread across France of "safe city" projects, a bit of (often corporate) branding that is used to describe efforts to use data, AI, and surveillance to reduce crime.

In Marseille, Technopolice built a live map on which volunteers can mark the locations of cameras. The group also began tracking surveillance projects in various cities that use artificial intelligence. There is now a Technopolice group in Montpellier and one in Belgium, and there will soon be one in Paris. Volunteers find and scrutinize records of surveillance initiatives in press releases, newspaper reports, and trade publications. The aim is to form "a record of these projects, which are very opaque," says Tréguer. "There is really a problem of democratic transparency."

The group thinks its activism has helped increase awareness of the issue. In 2019, it publicized and campaigned with a local group against plans in Sainte-Étienne, a town near Lyon, for AI-assisted microphones that would detect suspicious sounds in the town center. These plans were eventually abandoned. And winning candidates in the 2020 local elections in Marseille ran on a platform that included putting a moratorium on video surveillance and establishing "citizens councils" to evaluate policing practices. But the team has had little luck getting to the bottom of the Big Data of Public Tranquillity Project despite numerous freedom of information requests. The description of the project on the council's website remains in the future tense-almost as if it had never been launched. Meanwhile, the number of surveillance cameras in the city has increased to the current 1,600-plus from just under 900 in 2016. As for the smart cameras, they are still scattered around Marseille even though, according to local councilor Christophe Hugon, they were used only in tests and have now been disabled. Despite repeated efforts, the Marseille council did not answer questions posed via telephone and email.

Jean-Jaurès Square in Marseille is a new model of ubiquitous surveillance. The once grotty square reopened last year after more than two years of redevelopment work. It now has seating areas and a playground. Trees have been geometrically arranged. And more than 20 cameras preside over the open-plan design.

"They can see into almost all the areas of the square, because visibility is part of the design," says Myrtille Picaud, a researcher on cities and surveillance at Sciences-Po, who is based in Marseille.

The cameras, however discreet, are troubling to some. "It is infantilizing," says one longtime resident, likening the system to watch towers around a prison. But the inmates of this panopticon don't necessarily play along. When night falls, it can get so rowdy some cafés close their outdoor spaces. Anticapitalist, feminist, antiracist, or simply funny graffiti covers the pavement. During the wild Festival de la Plaine, which was held illegally in spite of covid restrictions this year, spray paint cans were mounted on poles and used to coat camera lenses.

No official statistics have been made public about the impact that Marseille's cameras have had on crime. But there is reason to suspect it is not as much as officials might like. When the sociologist Laurent Mucchielli looked at the effect of video surveillance on an anonymous port city that bears telling similarities to Marseille, he found that in 2015 cameras were useful in the investigation of 2.2% of crimes where image searches had been requested. Other studies seem to back these kinds of figures; in 2020, a study by the research body attached to the French college of policing also estimated that just 1% of crimes were solved with the help of video images.

It's often suggested these cameras work to deter crime. Studies are inconclusive on this point. There does seem to be an effect on closed public spaces like parking garages and subways, but in some cases crime seems to be merely displaced, increasing in areas with fewer cameras.

In general, city surveillance prioritizes the capture of a certain class of criminal, says Picaud-those that commit crimes in public, even if their infractions are often minor. "One can see the overinvestment in these devices which target public space rather than other technologies which could target other crimes instead-like, for example, anything to do with tax evasion," she says.

Not long after the 2020 elections, the new mayor of Marseille called for an audit of video surveillance in the city. The council is still sitting on the study, which was delivered in October, but preliminary findings were published in the local newspaper The Provence. There are 42 dedicated agents; at any given time, fewer than five are on duty, and each is responsible for 35 screens. The system is not cheap; the newspaper highlighted the cost of installing each camera (over €20,000 per device), renting the optical fiber (€6.5 million a year), and maintaining the cameras, including cleaning and replacing bulbs (€2.8 million a year). Many of the images are not of good enough quality to use. And 272 cameras-over 15% of the total-are rarely consulted.

"It's techno-solutionism. There's a political problem, and they promise to find a technology-an app-to bring it under control," says Tréguer. "It is very expensive, and it uses a chunk of taxpayers' money to implement solutions that are dangerous for freedoms, increase control, and are in part ineffective."

The situation in Marseille doesn't seem to be unusual. In February, for example, the Cour de Comptes, an administrative body that audits public finances, highlighted similar issues, in a report on the video surveillance network in Paris. The auditors called its financing "unsuitable and expensive" and charged that no one had evaluated the cameras' impact on crime.

Marseille's government does seem to have cooled on the idea of video surveillance. The Big Data of Public Tranquillity Project, whose test period ran from 2018 to 2020, had been the pet scheme of the previous, right-wing mayor. The coalition of socialists, ecologists, and activists that rose to power in the 2020 city elections promised to pause video surveillance. This has been more difficult than initially anticipated, says Hugon, because of the difficulty of terminating contracts early.

At the same time, city officials have expressed some interest in making the system more efficient. Artificial intelligence is perhaps the only way of doing this on a large scale without adding significantly more personnel. Tréguer does not look forward to this possibility as technology becomes more advanced: "We are re-creating in some way a tentacular, bureaucratic police state without having to recruit dozens or hundreds of people."

The available technology is advancing quickly. The French startup Two-i, for example, offers an investigation function, which allows a surveillance team to use AI to search images for specific objects, like a man wearing a backpack or even sport shoes.

"A certain shouty part of the press is waging a battle, and they write false things to frighten people." Guillaume Cazenave

Press articles have alleged that the company has deployed face recognition in the city of Metz and was trialing it to read people's expressions on Nice's trams. Two-i cofounder Guillaume Cazenave says such reports are inaccurate. "In France, a certain shouty part of the press is waging a battle, and they write false things to frighten people," he says.

But there are signs that lawmakers and public bodies in France are looking at ways to facilitate the use of artificial intelligence in the surveillance of public spaces. A parliamentary paper in 2019 advocated establishing a framework for testing facial recognition, which is currently illegal. In the Paris Metro system in 2020, security cameras were AI-enabled to monitor whether passengers were wearing face masks (the technology is not meant to identity those not wearing masks but simply to provide anonymous statistics). The European Union is working on a set of laws called the AI Act that could limit the application of AI surveillance technology. But Technopolice suspects it could create loopholes if it does not ban the use of facial recognition outright.

It is CNIL, France's data protection agency, that is tasked with ensuring that surveillance technology complies with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. In 2017, for example, the town of Valenciennes accepted 240 cameras equipped with facial recognition technology from the Chinese company Huawei. The town insisted that the technology was not being used. Nevertheless, CNIL gave the local authorities a warning in 2021, and the project was quietly disbanded. But earlier this year CNIL launched a public consultation on the use of smart cameras in public places in order to clarify the legal framework for their use. Members of Technopolice see this move as a tacit acceptance of the need for such cameras.

The fight still continues for Technopolice. In the summer, they are planning to set up a series of meetings in the northern towns of Roubaix and Calais; the latter's council is considering devoting an extra half-million euros to video surveillance. La Quadrature du Net is working on a class action lawsuit against the government for the use of smart cameras in contravention of European law. In Marseille, the group continues working to drum up support; this summer there will be a conference and documentary screenings. There will also be more freedom of information requests to the Marseille council. Five of them, made in the last 12 months, are still pending. Meanwhile, the cameras roll on.

Fleur Macdonald is a writer based near Avignon, France.

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Marseille's battle against the surveillance state

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Skip to Content The boisterous, rebellious port city is trying to fight the growing ubiquity of policing cameras. Heading toward Marseille's central train station, Eda Nano points out what looks like a streetlamp on the Rue des Abeilles. Its long stand curves upward to a white dome shading a dark bulb.

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Week Two

REFERENCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg&ab_channel=LastWeekTonight

ACCESS: I watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver regularly so I saw this story on HBOMax, then found the story on YouTube to share

CONNECTION: How does this relate to one or more of the courses that you're teaching/ taking or one or more of the objectives of this course?

This reminded me of Coded Bias, Algorithms of Oppression, and the importance of being critical and aware of technology. He goes through the power that tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google have over how we use the web. Google especially keeps you on its sites instead of showing the most relevant or popular pages. This connects to the ideas in class about who controls information and who isn’t benefitting.

EMOTION: How did this article make you feel? Does it appear that this publisher/author/hosting site had intentions to influence the reader in any particular way?

This is an HBO comedy/news show and John Oliver is never shy about sharing his opinion. He adds a comedic effect to the story but does still provide important information. He always ends the show with an action item - in this episode he is supporting bills to break up big tech companies and stop the monopolies Google and Amazon hold.

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Reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/06/13/why-technology-with-a-human-touch-is-crucial-for-businesses-in-2022/?sh=35d770c23558

Access: Google News

Connection: This article reminded me of this short movie we all just watched called "Please Hold". The movie shows a young Latino man dealing with incarceration in a near-future highly reliant on technology society. Throughout the movie, different situations arise that would have been better handled with human interaction rather than AI.

Emotions: The author is definitely trying to persuade businesses that as our reliance on technology continues to increase, the "human touch" cannot be completely eradicated. Not only are there many mistakes technology can make, but also our overall wellbeing is better when we have direct human interaction. Additionally, I agree that a lot of communication is lost over text/email because facial expressions and tone go a long way in getting an idea across. Businesses should ask themselves what is really necessary/better/more efficient when deciding whether to implement new technologies or not.

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CEO at and COO at the Peninsula Group, responsible for the global rollout of HR tech supporting over 44,000 organizations.
The last two-plus years have highlighted just how much we rely on technology. After all, where would we have been without Zoom calls or online shopping throughout lockdown? Thanks to recent strides in digital technology, we've all been able to live our lives with relative ease without leaving the comfort of our homes.

The world stopped for a long time, but technology kept things going as best it could. From online learning to 3-D printing, we were still able to access the goods and services we've become reliant on-and we got used to it. Now the technologies we thought we would only rely on in the short term are a part of our everyday lives. If companies wish to stay relevant, they need to adapt their ways of working.

Technology isn't going anywhere, and as it continues down the unending path of innovation, it's only going to become a bigger part of our daily lives.

Chief among the many benefits of technology is the ability to save precious time on repetitive tasks, boost productivity, track employee performance, and allow for swifter and easier communication. The downsides have also been well-documented, particularly the risk of making us feel more isolated, putting cybersecurity and privacy at greater risk and throwing the work-life balance slightly off-kilter.

Technology has eliminated much of the need for face-to-face human interaction, both between employees as well as between businesses and customers. In some ways, this has made things more efficient, but it's also left many of us feeling lonely. Striking up friendships between co-workers has become harder due to the lack of face-to-face interaction. If employees get too used to working alone and feel isolated, it can have an obvious impact on their mental health and could potentially lead to them leaving the company.

The rise of instant messaging tools like Teams and WhatsApp can also strain relationships between co-workers. It's easy to misinterpret someone's intentions and meaning when you can't see their face. Plus, it can make life pretty isolating especially if you're working at home, doing a job that doesn't require much human communication.

Because many of us have work phones, there's a sense that we take the office home with us and never fully "switch off." And because many of us still work from home at least part of the time, the lines between work and home can often become blurred. It is easy to feel guilty for not responding immediately to work texts and emails, even out of hours. Because of this, many people report feeling that they constantly need to be on it as they still receive work-related emails and notifications well into the evening and night.

Never has the human touch been so important. HR leaders need to find a way to use technology to enhance their employees' work lives and make things easier while facilitating growth, social interaction and collaboration. It might take time to get this balance right, so you need flexibility and patience.

The key to understanding where the balance lies is in finding out which tasks and activities employees prefer to be digitized and which ones they would rather do in person. Statistics suggest that 40-45% of employees prefer meeting face-to-face for certain tasks like "performance reviews, getting help with difficult problems and asking questions of their Human Resources (HR) team." However, the same percentage of employees indicated that they would prefer these tasks to be partially or fully digitized. We should be grateful that automation has taken over some of these more mundane tasks, freeing up time to spend on tasks that require creativity and innovation.

Many companies are striking a technology-human balance by arranging group social events and more face-to-face meetings. This is certainly a good start. Not only does it help maintain morale and stop everyone from feeling atomized like islands, but it can also normalize socializing more often with colleagues. This is where technology is your friend. Platforms such as Teams that have team schedules, polls and calendars make it easy to find out who wants to do what and when people are available.

Implementing technology with a human touch is vital for your internal staff. When employees (and clients for that matter) engage with your company (leadership, co-workers, etc.) they want the respect and empathy they can only get from another human being. They want employers who can respond to their concerns in real time and demonstrate emotional intelligence. They see a human voice as more trustworthy, which could lead to an overall more positive experience. This shows that your company sees employees as individuals.

Every manager knows the benefits of technology when it comes to handling metrics and data to measure employee performance, social media reach and revenue. But managers still require people skills. There is no substitute for sitting down with an employee who may be underperforming and asking if everything is OK.

Technology has improved our lives in more ways than we ever could have imagined, but HR leaders should never neglect the human touch.

Through generous use of in-person meetings and social events and understanding the limitations of technology, you can keep a healthy people-first culture that builds strong relationships, both within the company and beyond. Not only can this help the company in the long run, but it could make everyone in it much happier.

Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?

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Council Post: Why Technology With A Human Touch Is Crucial For Businesses In 2022

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CEO at and COO at the Peninsula Group, responsible for the global rollout of HR tech supporting over 44,000 organizations. The last two-plus years have highlighted just how much we rely on technology. After all, where would we have been without Zoom calls or online shopping throughout lockdown?

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Reference: https://www.altius.com/blog/1031/quantum-computing-the-next-major-technological-revolution-is-knocking-at-the-door

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: This article again made me think of CML because this went into a lot more of the legal ramifications of new quantum computing technology, which makes sense because the website has the word “lawyers” in its name, so of course they would focus on the legal side of new technology. Finding that lens from the start can help to frame a lot of what the article will talk about just by looking at those core concepts, so that was helpful for me to understand this article’s angle.

Emotion: I’m a little disappointed with this article, and maybe it’s because I’m not really looking hard enough, but this is the third article I’ve seen about quantum computing and it’s not really clear how viable this technology is and whether it’s something that could even become viable for individuals. I also think because there isn’t much known about how a lot of the technology is developed, especially something more cutting edge like quantum computing, it leaves people without a technological background potentially vulnerable to being taken advantage of because we have no choice but to accept new technology as it comes.

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Reference: https://www.edweek.org/technology/what-the-massive-shift-to-1-to-1-computing-means-for-schools-in-charts/2022/05

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: I thought that the charts reminded me of what we were able to do with some of the data visualizations in RStudio, but I don’t think that a lot of the data that was collected went anywhere. Whereas we were taking our data to create data stories and communicate about data, this article just placed the data in different data visualizations and left the reader to their own conclusions.

Emotion: I was initially excited for this article because 1 to 1 technology is a pretty recent idea in K-12 schools, at least from what I know, so I was disappointed that the article felt incomplete. There was a lot of data there, but no real conclusions were made. It felt like the author thought that their work was done just presenting the graphs and charts whereas for me, I was expecting them to say what their conclusions and analysis were from the charts.

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Reference: https://atom-computing.com/the-truth-about-scaling-quantum-computing/

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: I think this article definitely connects most to our CML course because we want to look at who this is meant for. In my opinion, this article was meant for people who are already in the tech industry because of the technical language involved in the piece rather than for someone like me who isn’t familiar with the inner workings of computers at all. Had I actually been using this as research for something, I would not have been able to access the point that this article is making because I don’t have the background to comprehend it, and I want students to be able to know for whom an article is written because it can help them do their research and find pieces that are accessible to their existing knowledge.

Emotion: I find this article to be a little bit hypocritical honestly because it called for “honesty and transparency,” but so much of the technical language involved meant that it was realistically inaccessible to me. I had an idea of what quantum computing was because one of my unit 2 articles was about quantum computing, but this article assumed that the reader knew what it was, which does make sense, but it seems to be less transparent than it could be because there’s such a high barrier to entry.

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Reference: https://gizmodo.com/how-people-from-1955-imagined-technology-of-the-future-1848828377

Access: Google News

Connection: This reminded me of one of the books we read earlier in the year, I think Algorithms of Oppression, where the author talks about how when she was a kid she thought they would have flying cars by the time she was an adult. Her argument throughout the book is that we could have these futuristic inventions already if there had been more diversity at the creation table in the first place.

Emotions: I think I agree with the author of AOO because with a more mixed group of STEM designers, there are likely to be different experiences and expertise that could have developed innovative products much faster. The article was interesting because most of the inventions had to do with transportation, which I think is appropriate for the 1950s timeframe. I think it would be interesting to ask the same people who made those predictions what they think about the technological advancements we have had as compared to what they expected. Some of the tech we use today, like iPhones, probably were unimaginable to them. It is fascinating (but also concerning in my opinion) how much our daily lives have changed in just a few generations because of technology.

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How People From 1955 Imagined Technology of the Future

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In 1955, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put together a slide show film titled "People, Products and Progress: 1975" to show off what American industry had in store for the technologies of the future. What did the companies of 1955 imagine they'd be able to deliver twenty years into the future?

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Week One

REFERENCE: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/technology/google-chatbot-ai-blake-lemoine.html

ACCESS: I saw people talking about this on Twitter, so I googled “lamda ai” and clicked on the link from the New York Times

CONNECTION: How does this relate to one or more of the courses that you're teaching/ taking or one or more of the objectives of this course?

This article connects to the book Artificial Unintelligence. In the book, the author talks about how movies and fiction make us scared of sentient AI but that is so far from what the technology is actually capable of. I am also reminded of the little AI activity we did in the CML class where we trained an AI to recognize different photos. The LaMDA AI obviously has access to a huge amount of data sets and uses that information to create conversations like a human, but it is still a program.

EMOTION: How did this article make you feel? Does it appear that this publisher/author/hosting site had intentions to influence the reader in any particular way?

I think this article did a good job of presenting the facts of the situation and explaining why AI cannot gain sentience and why experts in the field think that. It was interesting that the article brought up other researchers who were fired for publicly disagreeing with colleagues. I’m interested in learning more about that situation. There is definitely shady stuff happening within Google and the applications of their technology, but sentience is not the issue.

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Reference: https://www.newsweek.com/how-computing-impacting-space-exploration-1703032

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: This article was all about debugging and using data to help us make decisions which I feel like is one of the biggest reasons to use technology and we’re trying to teach our students to use technology when necessary but also to recognize when the technology may not help them. It also showed how we can use technology to really push boundaries and make innovations.

Emotion: This article frustrated me as well similarly to the military article I read during unit 1. While space exploration is cool and I do like how the technology and computing is being used to make space exploration easier, especially in the aspects of speed, looking at some of the potential issues we have in our environment and our planet, why are these resources being poured into space exploration when we could definitely use those resources to help us preserve our planet here? It just makes me wonder what are the priorities of the institutions that allocate the money, so that frustrates me a little bit.

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Reference: https://hbr.org/2022/04/making-quantum-computing-a-reality

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: I think sometimes looking at computers can be a little rigid because they can only do what people tell them to do, so sometimes it doesn’t make sense to use the computer while we’re still waiting on information. If we want to make decisions before, we have to use our own reasoning and computational thinking skills before deciding what to run. With quantum computing, the computer can do those probability analyses for us and can adjust its thinking as it receives more results and more information.

Emotion: I was somewhat excited by the idea of quantum computing because I do think it addresses more of the realities of our world in that we won’t have all the information immediately available. However, like I’ve mentioned before in some of my journals, the idea of machine learning still is something that makes me apprehensive because I still think there are places that whoever is coding the machine learning can still have some of their biases in it, so while the idea of quantum computing is cool, I think there are still potential issues with the technology.

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Reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2022/04/11/read-this-engaging-story-of-how-the-computer-has-been-eating-the-world-for-75-years/?sh=5112cbe14de9

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: For me, this article seemed to chronicle how the evolution of computing really was a series of “debugging and evaluating” the current technology to improve it, and eventually that technology reached the point where companies were able to do more complex analysis with that technology and gave birth to the rise of some of the other computational thinking practices such as communicating with and about data and using abstraction.

Emotion: To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how I should feel. This article to me felt somewhat dry since it seemed to be mostly summarizing another story that different people wrote, but I was comforted in a sense with the idea that really there was no breakthrough that wasn’t preceded by something. No one was really creating anything new but just adjusting what already came before. That actually helped to take some of the mystery out of how some of the breakthroughs that I perceived to be out of left field really came into play.

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Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/important-tech-laws-explained/

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: I thought this the final point of this article related a lot to the CML class and the core principles involved. While we aren’t necessarily talking about hacking in there, I think when looking at a smart device we should look at who is making the technology and why. Whether that’s in terms of what parts of their technology they protect from hackers or whether they provide other additional security measures for their technology, I think that’s something we can connect to CML.

Emotion: While some of these internet laws are things to be cautious about, reading this article was oddly comforting in a way. A lot of times, I’ve thought of the internet as somewhat of the “Wild West,” so in finding trends and ways that the internet works and seeing those patterns makes is less of a scary place in a way. Systems are always easier to navigate when you know how they work, and although I don’t think the article shows the complete workings of the internet, I thought this was a good beginning in how to think of the internet’s structure.

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Reference: https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/cognitive-computing

Access: Found with a Google Search for “Technology and computing”

Connection: This connects to me because it seems like this technology of “cognitive computing” seems very similar to computational thinking. This time, rather than having a human do it, we want to teach a computer how to solve these problems like a human, so it’s almost the flip side since I perceive computational thinking as a way for humans to solve a problem like a computer.

Emotion: This makes me a little bit wary. I think overall, having a computer simulate human emotions sounds like a good idea to find more equitable solutions versus a more impersonal AI, but in adding the sentiment analysis, I can’t help but wonder how the computer will react and based on whose emotional intelligence and responses it will mirror. Will the responses be able to respond to a person’s culture or will it still serve to keep those in power in power and doesn’t help those who are already marginalized based on who makes the program. I think this seems like a good idea, but I still see an issue in how the new technology can still marginalize a community

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REFERENCE: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/why-its-time-data-centric-artificial-intelligence

ACCESS: Google Search -> News -> MIT Management: Sloan School

CONNECTION: This connects to Computational Thinking, Computer Science, and the courses we take in STEMC3 that highlight these ideas.

EMOTION: This article specifically talks about the future of artificial intelligence, and how the data needs to be centered in these algorithms. A direct quote from the article states that “These different sorts of data need different custom AI systems”. Although this does make sense in terms of decentering big data and centering smaller data systems that are applicable to the task, the article seemed to dance around the idea of equity-centered data sets. The article seemed to be leaning towards that idea by saying that big data sets do not always reflect what is needed for a specific task and location, but it never explicitly stated that the inequitable algorithms that are used then push those data sets to be inaccurate and inequitable. For this reason the article made me semi-hopeful, because it does seem like there are people other than those we learned about in class that are pushing for more equity-centered artificial intelligence and unbiased algorithms. However it was a bit interesting that they did not outright say that in the article. The author is definitely trying to convince the reader to create more data-centric AI that can become more efficient and be better equipped for the tasks at hand.

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REFERENCE: https://bellmar.medium.com/computer-science-is-a-liberal-arts-degree-b182fd1c0ef1

ACCESS: Google Search -> News -> Medium

CONNECTION: This connects to Computer Science, Computational Thinking, equity, PIP, COP, and all of the courses we take for those in STEMC3. Despite these connections to our program, it is a new way to think about computer science that centers the same ideas we hope to center in our program.

EMOTION: I found this article actually really engaging and interesting! I thought it was really nice to hear about computer science from a different standpoint because it has always been daunting and still seems that way to me. I have only heard computer science from the viewpoint of STEM professionals and people with STEM backgrounds, so this was a fresh perspective. Seeing computer science as a liberal arts subject does center the same ideologies we hope to center in STEMC3 but we just haven’t seen it that way before. “People associate the phrase “liberal arts” with college degrees that do not map to specific trades or clear career paths (and are therefore “worthless”), but liberal arts is about critical thinking, logic, picking apart complex problems, and ethics.” The author is persuading the audience to try and see computer science from a libteral arts standpoint, to allow for a more holistic view of the field.

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Reference: https://news.mit.edu/2022/machine-learning-bias-0601

Access: Google News

Connection: Many people try to say that AI/tech/algorithms themselves are at fault for perpetuating bias. However, what really needs to be investigated is who is making the technology because it's their bias that is coming out. We learned a lot about this reading Algorithms of Oppression.

Emotions: I'm glad that these biases are starting to be evaluated and corrected because there are real-life implications for peoples' lives. This is especially so when you think about models that are used for housing, job applications, and college applications and how much discrimination can be perpetuated in these spaces. Technology can definitely be an asset to make our lives easier, but evaluating it for human bias is essential.

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MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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When the stakes are high, machine-learning models are sometimes used to aid human decision-makers. For instance, a model could predict which law school applicants are most likely to pass the bar exam to help an admissions officer determine which students should be accepted.

These models often have millions of parameters, so how they make predictions is nearly impossible for researchers to fully understand, let alone an admissions officer with no machine-learning experience. Researchers sometimes employ explanation methods that mimic a larger model by creating simple approximations of its predictions. These approximations, which are far easier to understand, help users determine whether to trust the model's predictions.

But are these explanation methods fair? If an explanation method provides better approximations for men than for women, or for white people than for Black people, it may encourage users to trust the model's predictions for some people but not for others.

MIT researchers took a hard look at the fairness of some widely used explanation methods. They found that the approximation quality of these explanations can vary dramatically between subgroups and that the quality is often significantly lower for minoritized subgroups.

In practice, this means that if the approximation quality is lower for female applicants, there is a mismatch between the explanations and the model's predictions that could lead the admissions officer to wrongly reject more women than men.

Once the MIT researchers saw how pervasive these fairness gaps are, they tried several techniques to level the playing field. They were able to shrink some gaps, but couldn't eradicate them.

"What this means in the real-world is that people might incorrectly trust predictions more for some subgroups than for others. So, improving explanation models is important, but communicating the details of these models to end users is equally important. These gaps exist, so users may want to adjust their expectations as to what they are getting when they use these explanations," says lead author Aparna Balagopalan, a graduate student in the Healthy ML group of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Balagopalan wrote the paper with CSAIL graduate students Haoran Zhang and Kimia Hamidieh; CSAIL postdoc Thomas Hartvigsen; Frank Rudzicz, associate professor of computer science at the University of Toronto; and senior author Marzyeh Ghassemi, an assistant professor and head of the Healthy ML Group. The research will be presented at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.
High fidelity
Simplified explanation models can approximate predictions of a more complex machine-learning model in a way that humans can grasp. An effective explanation model maximizes a property known as fidelity, which measures how well it matches the larger model's predictions.

Rather than focusing on average fidelity for the overall explanation model, the MIT researchers studied fidelity for subgroups of people in the model's dataset. In a dataset with men and women, the fidelity should be very similar for each group, and both groups should have fidelity close to that of the overall explanation model.

"When you are just looking at the average fidelity across all instances, you might be missing out on artifacts that could exist in the explanation model," Balagopalan says.

They developed two metrics to measure fidelity gaps, or disparities in fidelity between subgroups. One is the difference between the average fidelity across the entire explanation model and the fidelity for the worst-performing subgroup. The second calculates the absolute difference in fidelity between all possible pairs of subgroups and then computes the average.

With these metrics, they searched for fidelity gaps using two types of explanation models that were trained on four real-world datasets for high-stakes situations, such as predicting whether a patient dies in the ICU, whether a defendant reoffends, or whether a law school applicant will pass the bar exam. Each dataset contained protected attributes, like the sex and race of individual people. Protected attributes are features that may not be used for decisions, often due to laws or organizational policies. The definition for these can vary based on the task specific to each decision setting.

The researchers found clear fidelity gaps for all datasets and explanation models. The fidelity for disadvantaged groups was often much lower, up to 21 percent in some instances. The law school dataset had a fidelity gap of 7 percent between race subgroups, meaning the approximations for some subgroups were wrong 7 percent more often on average. If there are 10,000 applicants from these subgroups in the dataset, for example, a significant portion could be wrongly rejected, Balagopalan explains.

"I was surprised by how pervasive these fidelity gaps are in all the datasets we evaluated. It is hard to overemphasize how commonly explanations are used as a 'fix' for black-box machine-learning models. In this paper, we are showing that the explanation methods themselves are imperfect approximations that may be worse for some subgroups," says Ghassemi.
Narrowing the gaps
After identifying fidelity gaps, the researchers tried some machine-learning approaches to fix them. They trained the explanation models to identify regions of a dataset that could be prone to low fidelity and then focus more on those samples. They also tried using balanced datasets with an equal number of samples from all subgroups.

These robust training strategies did reduce some fidelity gaps, but they didn't eliminate them.

The researchers then modified the explanation models to explore why fidelity gaps occur in the first place. Their analysis revealed that an explanation model might indirectly use protected group information, like sex or race, that it could learn from the dataset, even if group labels are hidden.

They want to explore this conundrum more in future work. They also plan to further study the implications of fidelity gaps in the context of real-world decision making.

Balagopalan is excited to see that concurrent work on explanation fairness from an independent lab has arrived at similar conclusions, highlighting the importance of understanding this problem well.

As she looks to the next phase in this research, she has some words of warning for machine-learning users.

"Choose the explanation model carefully. But even more importantly, think carefully about the goals of using an explanation model and who it eventually affects," she says.

"I think this paper is a very valuable addition to the discourse about fairness in ML," says Krzysztof Gajos, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who was not involved with this work. "What I found particularly interesting and impactful was the initial evidence that the disparities in the explanation fidelity can have measurable impacts on the quality of the decisions made by people assisted by machine learning models. While the estimated difference in the decision quality may seem small (around 1 percentage point), we know that the cumulative effects of such seemingly small differences can be life changing."

This work was funded, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the Quanta Research Institute, a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research AI Chair, and Microsoft Research.

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When the stakes are high, machine-learning models are sometimes used to aid human decision-makers. For instance, a model could predict which law school applicants are most likely to pass the bar exam to help an admissions officer determine which students should be accepted.

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Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/09/biden-internet-discount-program-low-income

Access: Google News

Connection: Students are basically expected to have internet access at home in order to be able to do schoolwork. During COVID, we saw many school districts have to provide WIFI support for families who couldn't otherwise afford it.

Emotions: While I think this is a necessary move for Biden's administration, I worry about how well it will actually work and be rolled out. Government aid programs are notoriously bad and inefficient, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was any different. However, I think improving national access to the Internet is vital if we want more people to be a part of the conversation of what needs to be changed/bettered.

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The Biden administration announced on Monday that 20 internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to people with low incomes, a program that could effectively make tens of millions of households eligible for free service through an already existing federal subsidy.

The $1tn infrastructure package passed by Congress last year included $14.2bn in funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides $30 monthly subsidies ($75 in tribal areas) on internet service for millions of lower-income households.

With the new commitment from the internet providers, about 48m households will be eligible for $30 monthly plans for 100 megabits per second, or higher speed, service - making internet service fully paid for with the government subsidy if they sign up with one of the providers participating in the program.

Biden, during his White House run and the push for the infrastructure bill, made expanding high-speed internet access in rural and low-income areas a priority. He has repeatedly spoken out about low-income families have struggled to find reliable wifi, so their children could take part in remote schooling and complete homework assignments early in the coronavirus pandemic.

"If we didn't know it before, we know now: high-speed internet is essential," the Democratic president said during a White House event last month honoring the National Teacher of the Year.

The 20 internet companies that have agreed to lower their rates for eligible consumers provide service in areas where 80% of the US population, including 50% of the rural population, live, according to the White House. Participating companies that offer service on tribal lands are providing $75 rates in those areas, the equivalent of the federal government subsidy in those areas.

Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris on Monday were set to meet with telecom executives, members of Congress and others to spotlight the effort to improve access to high-speed internet for low-income households.

The providers are Allo Communications, AltaFiber (and Hawaiian Telecom), Altice USA (Optimum and Suddenlink), Astound, AT&T, Breezeline, Comcast, Comporium, Frontier, IdeaTek, Cox Communications, Jackson Energy Authority, MediaCom, MLGC, Spectrum (Charter Communications), Starry, Verizon (Fios only), Vermont Telephone Co, Vexus Fiber and Wow! Internet, Cable and TV.

American households are eligible for subsidies through the Affordable Connectivity Program if their income is at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, or if a member of their family participates in one of several programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), Federal Public Housing Assistance (FPHA) and Veterans Pension and Survivors Benefit.

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White House announces internet program for low-income Americans

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The Biden administration announced on Monday that 20 internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to people with low incomes, a program that could effectively make tens of millions of households eligible for free service through an already existing federal subsidy.

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Reference: https://apnews.com/article/technology-politics-artificial-intelligence-shootings-c0aec08034ed89e8f6c935c189106f65

Access: Google News

Connection: Who creates technology and for what/whom is an important question we have been considering in this program. Also, since we are teachers this kind of technology could potentially directly impact us, our classrooms, and our students.

Emotions: I was pleased to see that much of the article discussed why this type of drone wouldn't work and isn't a good idea. The police can't even be trusted to do what they are "supposed" to with the tools they already have, so I don't think new technology will be the fix-all. The issues with school shootings and police response require a look at deep-rooted systems and not technological band-aid coverups.

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Taser developer Axon said this week it is working to build drones armed with the electric stunning weapons that could fly in schools and "help prevent the next Uvalde, Sandy Hook, or Columbine." But its own technology advisers quickly panned the idea as a dangerous fantasy.

The publicly traded company, which sells Tasers and police body cameras, floated the idea of a new police drone product last year to its artificial intelligence ethics board, a group of well-respected experts in technology, policing and privacy.

Some of them expressed reservations about weaponizing drones in over-policed communities of color. But they were not expecting Axon's Thursday announcement that it wants to send those Taser-equipped drones into classrooms to prevent mass shootings by immobilizing an intruding gunman.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith said he felt compelled to make the idea public after the mass shooting at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school, saying he was "catastrophically disappointed" in the response by police who didn't move in to kill the suspect for more than an hour.

But he stressed Friday that no product had been launched and any potential launch would be down the road. The idea, he felt, needed to be shared now because of the public conversation about effective ways for police to safely confront attackers and how schools can increase safety.

"This is an idea that should get into the public's consciousness while our minds are open to it and I felt if I wait another six months, the world is going to change and people are going to forget this pain and we're going to see a shift in sentiments where people are going to focus a lot more on what could go wrong, rather than the pain of this problem we need to solve," he said.

Axon's stock price rose with the news. But the announcement angered members of the ethics board, some of whom are now likely to quit in protest.

"This particular idea is crackpot," said Barry Friedman, a New York University law professor who sits on the Axon AI Ethics Board. "Drones can't fly through closed doors. The physical properties of the universe still hold. So unless you have a drone in every single classroom in America, which seems insane, the idea just isn't going to work."

Friedman said it was a "dangerous and fantastical idea" that went far beyond the proposal for a Taser-equipped police drone that board members - some of them former or current police officials - had been debating in recent months.

"We begged the company not to do it," Friedman said of the company's announcement. "It was unnecessary and shameful."

The product idea had been kicked around at Axon since at least 2019 and the company has been working to try to figure out whether a drone with a Taser was even a feasible idea. Over the last year, the company created computer-generated art renderings to mock up a product design and conducted an internal test to see if Taser darts - which transmit an immobilizing electric jolt - could be fired from a flying drone, Smith said. He added that he had discussed the possibility of developing such a product with the ethics board.

Board members who spoke with The Associated Press said they were taken aback by the school drone proposal - which they got notice of only earlier this week - and cobbled together a unanimous statement of concern that described Axon's decision as "deeply regrettable." The company tweeted out the board's dissent shortly after its own statement Thursday announcement.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there were resignations," said another ethics board member, Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. "I think everyone on the board has to make a choice about whether they want to stay involved."

Friedman and Calo both described this week's process as a sharp turnaround from the respectful relationship that Axon executives have had with the board in recent years on controversial topics such as face recognition - which Axon decided against using in its body cameras - and automated license plate readers.

"Sometimes the company takes our advice and sometimes it doesn't," Friedman said. "What's important is that happens after thoughtful discussion and coordination. That was thrown out the window here."

Smith said the company is still in the very early phases of product development and would continue to consult the ethics board, along with law enforcement officials, community leaders and school officials. He acknowledged that the company might later determine that the idea isn't feasible and abandon it.

But he took issue with the idea that he had ignored the concerns from the ethics board, which is meant to provide guidance and share feedback. Ultimately, the decision still falls to Smith as the company's chief executive.

"I have not ignored what they have said. People can have debates and disagree," Smith said. "I think there is one thing the world can see: our board is not a whitewash."

"I hope they don't resign," he added. "I hope that they are somewhat proud maybe after this that we're having this public debate."

On Friday in an "Ask Me Anything" chat on the online forum Reddit. Smith acknowledged that "drones in schools can sound nuts" but went on to answer detailed questions about them. They could travel through school vents, he said, and perch on doors and walls near ceilings. It could be a "good thing" if a gunman tried to shoot one down because it would distract from trying to kill people.

"We're doing this because we care," Smith said. "We're a business so ultimately we have to find a financial model that works, but at the end of the day we've been successful because our mission drives our business and we solve problems we care about," he added.

Smith told a Reddit user that Axon was "absolutely not" trying to capitalize on recent tragedies to attract investors. He noted the advisory board's disagreements but said the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas - and what he described as misguided proposals to arm teachers with guns - compelled him to go public with the drone idea to field a "far broader array of voices."

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Firm proposes Taser-armed drones to stop school shootings

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Taser developer Axon said this week it is working to build drones armed with the electric stunning weapons that could fly in schools and "help prevent the next Uvalde, Sandy Hook, or Columbine." But its own technology advisers quickly panned the idea as a dangerous fantasy.

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Reference: https://www.wionews.com/technology/apple-starts-connecting-the-dots-for-its-next-big-thing-485157

Access: Google News

Connection: We have been looking at how internet and technology use has changed rapidly in the past two decades. This article directly points out that only 15 years ago, Apple released the first iPhones that changed society forever, and now they continue to forefront innovation.

Emotion: While I think Apple's technology an incredible human feat, it worries me how much change we have experienced (and will continue to experience) as a species with regards to technology advancement. 15 years is not enough time for us to evolve healthily to now having global access to so much information and being aware of so many other people who can also now perceive us. Though we have certainly adapted to using tech in our everyday lives, inventions like this one that blurs the line between real life and virtual life concern me. We have already seen the severe psychological effects of the internet on people, and I worry that it will just continue to worsen if major ethical considerations don't start taking place in tech.

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Nearly 15 years after the iPhone sparked the smartphone revolution, Apple is assembling the pieces for what it hopes will become its next business-altering device: a headset that blends the digital world with the real one.

The company has enlisted Hollywood directors such as Jon Favreau to develop video content for a headset that it is expected to ship next year, according to three people familiar with that work. Favreau, an executive producer of "Prehistoric Planet" on Apple TV+, is working to bring that show's dinosaurs to life on the headset, which looks like a pair of ski goggles and aims to offer virtual- and augmented-reality experiences, these people said.

Separately, at its annual conference for developers this Monday, Apple plans to unveil software tools that would allow apps to add new camera and voice functionality, laying the groundwork for a hands-free interface that customers will eventually be able to navigate on the headset, according to two people familiar with the project and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

An Apple spokesperson, Trudy Muller, declined to comment on future projects. A spokesperson for Favreau could not comment.

The planned headset will thrust Apple into an emerging competition to define the future of mixed reality. Microsoft, Google and Facebook's parent company, Meta, are in various stages of developing software and hardware to create environments where 3D digital images and the physical world coexist.

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped Facebook as his company's name and committed it to building a concept known as the metaverse, where the online, virtual and real worlds coalesce in a new universe. He and others believe it could become the next wave of computing, succeeding the smartphone age dominated by Apple's iOS and Google's Android software, much as those platforms followed the decades of Windows and Macintosh.

"This is the next frontier," said Carolina Milanesi, a technology analyst with Creative Strategies, a technology research firm. "For Apple, this is about a new computing experience and opportunity to engage consumers with a device and new experiences that build on what they've done with content."

The mixed-reality work is expected to be overshadowed during the keynote of Apple's conference Monday, which will largely be devoted to the company's existing software systems. Apple may also announce a redesigned MacBook Air with slimmer borders around its display than current models and updated processors, analysts said.

Apple's development of virtual-reality content and software tools is central to creating experiences that give its future headset purpose. Its last major new product, the Apple Watch, was launched with about 3,000 apps but struggled to take off because tech reviewers said few of those apps were useful. Similar shortcomings have dogged Meta's Quest virtual-reality headset, which surpassed 10 million sales last year, because many view it as a gaming device.

From its original Macintosh to its iPad, Apple has pursued products that attract a broad swath of potential customers and have an array of uses. It sold an estimated 240 million iPhones last year, accounting for about half of its $366 billion in total sales. To make the headset worthwhile, analysts said, it will need to have utilities that transcend the niche world of video games.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been talking about the potential of augmented reality for years. In 2016, he told investors that the company was investing heavily in it and considered it a "great commercial opportunity." Around that time, many employees on Apple's campus were reading "Ready Player One," a futuristic novel about virtual reality, and talking about the possibilities of creating Apple's own mixed-reality world.

Apple hired an engineer from Dolby Technologies, Mike Rockwell, and tasked him with leading the effort. His early efforts to create an augmented-reality product were hobbled by weak computing power, two people familiar with the project said. Continuing challenges with its battery power have forced Apple to postpone its release until next year, those people said.

The augmented-reality initiative has been divisive inside Apple. At least two members of its industrial design team said they had left the company, in part, because they had some concerns about developing a product that might change the way people interact with one another. Such sensitivities have increased inside the company amid rising public concern about children's screen time.

With Rockwell at the helm, the product would be one of the first to come out of Apple led by its engineering team rather than its co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, and its former design chief, Jony Ive, who left the company in 2019. The Apple Watch project was led by Ive and his designers, who defined how it looked, operated and was marketed.

Favreau's programming shows how Apple is trying to differentiate its product from Meta's. It also illustrates how the company is tapping into the relationships it has cultivated in Hollywood since starting Apple TV+ in 2019.

"An amazing headset could give you a better experience than 80-inch TV," said Matt Miesnieks, CEO of LivingCities.xyz, a startup working on metaverse technology.

The software tools from Apple extend a multiyear push to encourage developers to build augmented-reality apps. The company kicked off that effort in 2017 with ARKit, which allowed developers to use the iPhone's camera and motion sensors to place digital objects in the real world and let people interact with them.

However, about 70% of Apple's developers said they did not use that tool, according to a survey of more than 500 developers by Creative Strategies.

A toolkit that Apple is expected to introduce at the conference offers software developers new abilities to trigger shortcuts inside their apps using Siri and QR codes, interactions that will be leveraged in future headsets, a person familiar with the project said.

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Apple starts connecting the dots for its next big thing

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Nearly 15 years after the iPhone sparked the smartphone revolution, Apple is assembling the pieces for what it hopes will become its next business-altering device: a headset that blends the digital world with the real one.

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Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/technology/sheryl-sandberg-women-in-tech.html

Access: Google News --> NY Times

Connection: Many of our classes have talked about the lack of diverse identities in tech outside of white and Asian cis heterosexual men. Sandberg and her story tend to act as an "example" of what women are capable of contributing to tech, but still she is a white woman, which isn't one of the groups who are significantly underrepresented.

Emotion: I think the author of this article was trying to point out that even though Sandberg reflects on the growth in the industry as she leaves it, there is still A LOT of room for improvement for tech companies in regards to hiring a diverse staff from all the way to the top down to the very bottom. I remember when her "Lean In" thing was really huge, and I still don't like it. To me, her strategy was just to act more like a man to get what she wants instead of demanding that the industry changes to fit different identities. I honestly think her messaging is actually negative for feminism in tech because it promotes assimilation.

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What Sheryl Sandberg’s Exit Reveals About Women’s Progress in Tech (Published 2022)

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Silicon Valley is losing one of its most visible, outspoken and powerful women. Any gains have been incremental at best.

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REFERENCE - https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2022-05-04/internet-providers-end-challenge-to-california-net-neutrality-law

ACCESS - Google News

CONNECTION -  This article is about internet providers ending challenges to California net neutrality law. Last month, the U.S circuit court of appeals refused to reconsider ruling upholding the 2018 state law, which bars internet service providers from blocking/throttling traffic. Internet service providers, including AT&T, abandoned the effort to block enforcement of California’s Net Neutrality Law.

EMOTION - By abandoning to be a part of this law, the message I am receiving is that internet service providers are refusing to provide an equal internet for everyone. I can see this becoming a severe equity issue in the future, as the internet is used for school and work. I think we should all have the use of an equal internet, and not have to worry about paying more fees for additional uses.

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REFERENCE - https://www.analyticsinsight.net/how-failing-to-prioritize-cyber-security-can-hurt-your-company/

ACCESS - Google News

CONNECTION -  In our most recent unit, we learned about cybersecurity. This article was about how failing to prioritize cyber security can hurt your company. There are third-party risks and one study in particular found that 51 percent of businesses suffered a data breach caused by a third party. Further, 74 percent of companies admitted that these breaches resulted from giving too much “privileged access” to third parties. Third parties can consist of vendors, suppliers, contractors, consultants, etc. As for businesses, a failure to secure this access, monitor it regularly, and maintain appropriate access control can increase the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches, resulting in the exposure of sensitive information, legal battles, financial losses, and reputational damage.

EMOTION - When reading this article, I first thought of small businesses. Typically, small businesses don’t have the ability to maintain an extra security system, and it is more likely that others can hack the system. These business owners would suffer a greater financial loss, when compared to corporate companies that can easily replace their losses.

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REFERENCE - https://www.news-medical.net/health/Recent-Developments-in-Health-Technology.aspx

ACCESS - Google News

CONNECTION - This article touches on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology being used in the diagnosis of diseases, as well as to offer customized solutions. Robotic systems are being developed using AI and machine learning to replace humans in the performance of routine unskilled tasks. In this class, we have previously learned about AI and its ability to control technology to do tasks that are usually done by humans. Although this is convenient, there is a dark side to relying solely on AI. The protection of such systems from AI-driven malware and personalized attacks would perhaps cost more than can be saved by the application of such systems.

EMOTION - After doing several journal entries and reading articles about AI, I can see how advanced it is getting week after week. It is mind blowing how much technology is taking over our daily tasks. I am very curious to see what this will look like in the future.

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Reference: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/ios-15-5-has-a-bunch-of-privacy-features-not-enough-people-know-about/
Access: Google News
Connection: This article connects to our class because it talks about ios updates meant to protect user privacy. It talks about how apple is working to help keep users safe by better protecting their data and increasing transparency concerning who user data is shared with by app.We've talked about how this is a huge issue in our class, and about how users usually do not understand that their data is being collected, shared, used, and stored with a variety of other companies.
Emotion: While I am not and expert, and agree that these updates are probably a step in the right direction, I have some problems with this article. I think it promotes the idea that tech companies will regulate themselves and always best serve consumers. The entire article is essentially promoting apple as a company that is pro privacy and pro security. It does not mention that the root of this issue is a lack of laws that regulate data, and instead focuses on how a tech company is working to protect users from other tech companies. I think it's important for people to understand that this isn't a good solution because there are still no actual laws that are really protecting users at the level they need. This article sort of indirectly makes the claim that laws like this aren't needed because companies like apple will take care of the problem. In a capitalist system, companies have a primary interest in interest in making money, and aren't usually too concerned with their impact on people. I think promoting apple in a way that frames them as a protector (like government should be) and not a profit oriented, incredibly powerful business is a dangerous way to frame them and their role in society. It gives them far too much additional power (and they already have A LOT).

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Many people want a better grip on data privacy and security, and with iOS 15, Apple took several significant steps to bolster privacy for the iPhone. iOS 15 arrived in September, and Apple has since rolled out a handful of updates. The latest version is . (Here's how to check if your iPhone can run iOS 15 and how to download it.)

In a matter of weeks, Apple holds WWDC, its annual software developers conference, where iOS 16 is expected to be revealed. The follow-up to iOS 15 will likely be in beta until the fall, which means now is the time to tweak and adjust your privacy settings in iOS 15.5.

Once you download the most current version of the OS, you'll have access to Apple's new FaceTime features that, for the first time, let Android and PC users participate. You'll also get iMessage improvements that make it easier to keep track of links and photos your friends have sent. And there's access to plenty of new privacy and security features. If you're one of the billion-plus people who use an iPhone, it's worth learning about the privacy updates available in iOS 15.5 as well as changing your settings right away.

Read more: iOS 16 Wish List: iPhone Features We Hope Apple Will Debut at WWDC

In a nutshell, the privacy changes in iOS 15.5 give you better control of the data you share with third parties and reveal how apps use data from your iPhone. In some cases, these privacy tools can limit collection of your personal data. Though these privacy updates don't drastically change your day-to-day experience using your iPhone, except maybe in the case of Siri, they alter how your Apple device interacts with the internet and third parties on the hunt for your personal information.

Keep in mind, Apple has long used privacy as a selling point to stand out from rivals like Google and Facebook. Even though the Cupertino, California-based company has been harping about protecting consumer data from digital advertisers and internet service providers, it has also reportedly bolstered its own search ad business, and hired (and then fired) a former ad executive from Facebook.

Read more: This iPhone Setting Can Stop Ads From Following You Across the Web

There's also a catch: Most new privacy features are available for free, but not all. To take advantage of certain features, you'll either have to own a newer iPhone or pony up some cash to buy a new current iPhone.

These privacy changes have digital advertisers and even journalists behind popular newsletters up in arms, but they're good for you, regardless of what Apple's motives might be.

Read more: Why You Need to Stop Texting People Your iPhone Photos. Hint: It's About Your Privacy

Does Siri share my voice data to the cloud in iOS 15?

With iOS 15.5, one of the biggest privacy concerns for voice assistants will be stamped out, according to Apple. Unlike Amazon Alexa and virtually all other competitors, Siri will no longer ship your audio to servers for processing. Instead it'll process the sound of your voice directly on your iPhone, thanks to on-device speech recognition.

Apple said iPhones and iPads will take advantage of processing power on Apple devices to analyze speech, meaning Siri will no longer need an active internet connection to function.

Read more: The Best iPhone Models in 2022

For you that means, Siri will respond to basic commands such as setting an alarm, setting a reminder or launching an app while offline. This update doesn't include asking Siri to search the web for something.

Beyond amped-up privacy, Apple says that Siri's response time is faster for some requests, since the audio processing can now happen offline.

There is a catch. Only iPhone and iPads with an A12 Bionic chip or newer can take advantage of Siri's in-device audio processing.

How do I know which apps access my data and phone sensors?

If you were a fan of Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature, then you'll probably love the App Privacy report too. Taking a page from Safari's playbook, the report is a new section accessible in Settings that gives you an overview of how apps handle your privacy. You can see when individual apps request to access the camera or microphone, and also see where or with whom your data might be shared within the last seven days. All this brings an added layer of transparency to iOS 15.5.

What is Mail Privacy Protection and how does it stop tracking?

Apple's Mail Privacy protection feature is built into the default Mail app on your iPhone. It limits the amount of data senders collect when you open their promotional emails or even newsletters. In particular, the feature gives you the option to hide your IP address, so it can't be linked to other online activity or used to determine your location.This feature blocks spammy email marketers from learning more about your email or internet activity.

Read more: Here Are 2 Easy Steps to Double-Check Your iPhone's Privacy Settings

Here's how Apple described it:

In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email, and masks their IP address so it can't be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.

Apple also said Safari obfuscates your IP address.

Is iCloud Plus Private Relay similar to a VPN?

Paid subscribers to iCloud Plus get a couple of new privacy features. One of them is Safari's Private Relay tool, which hides your web browsing behavior from advertisers and internet service providers. It does this by encrypting the traffic leaving your iPhone, so that it cannot be intercepted by third parties or Apple, thus preventing them from reading what you're searching for.

Read more: 10 iOS 15 Hidden Features You Might Have Missed

The second feature is called Hide My Email. If you're an iCloud Plus subscriber, your iPhone can generate a random email address for when you sign up for memberships or retail accounts. Hide My Email forwards whatever is sent to the "fake address" to your actual email address. Essentially, Hide My Email launders your messages from a retailer so that they don't know your actual email address. The idea is that fewer companies will have access to people's direct email addresses.

Now that you have your iPhone's privacy all in order, read Beyond Basic iPhone: Tweak Your iOS 15 Settings Like a Power User.

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iOS 15.5 Has a Bunch of Privacy Features Not Enough People Know About

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Many people want a better grip on data privacy and security, and with iOS 15, Apple took several significant steps to bolster privacy for the iPhone. iOS 15 arrived in September, and Apple has since rolled out a handful of updates. The latest version is .

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Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61550776
Access: BBC News
Connection: This article connects to our CS courses because it discusses how a tech company still felt entitled to use personal data of UK citizens for their product, even when it was a breach of UK data protection laws. The company runs a database that allows someone to upload a picture of a person, and will identify them. Despite the company breaching 4 different aspects of the laws, the company still said in their statement that they were "disheartened" that the government misunderstood their intentions. However, the company was taking photos from social media without consent, and adding it to their database. This is an example of people's own very personal data (data that can be used to identify them) being treated as a public resource. Even though the UK has laws stating this should not be the case, this tech company still does not seem to understand the issues with this concept.
Emotion: I feel disheartened that most companies are using people's personal data without consent, and are using it to create products that are not in their best interest. It's interesting to see that even in countries that have laws, tech companies still feel entitled to data in this manner, and will not admit wrongdoing even when they clearly break laws. I think in order for society to move forward in an equitable and humanizing way, people in powerful positions need to start understanding that personal data should not be so accessible and freely used.

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By Shiona McCallum
Technology reporter

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK's privacy watchdog and told to delete the data of UK residents.

The company gathers images from the internet to create a global facial recognition database.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says that breaches UK data protection laws.

It has ordered the firm to stop obtaining and using the personal data of UK residents.

Clearview AI chief executive Hoan Ton-That said: "I am deeply disappointed that the UK Information Commissioner has misinterpreted my technology and intentions.

"We collect only public data from the open internet and comply with all standards of privacy and law.

"I am disheartened by the misinterpretation of Clearview AI's technology to society."

'Unacceptable' data use

The ICO says that, globally, the company has stored more than 20 billion facial images.

Clearview AI takes publicly posted pictures from Facebook, Instagram and other sources, usually without the knowledge of the platform or any permission.

John Edwards, UK information commissioner, said: "The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable."

Mr Edwards continued: "People expect that their personal information will be respected, regardless of where in the world their data is being used."

The ICO said Clearview AI Inc no longer offered its services to UK organisations but, because the company had customers in other countries, it was still using personal data of UK residents.

In November 2021, the ICO said the company was facing a fine of up to £17m - almost £10m more than it has now ordered it to pay.

The UK has become the fourth country to take enforcement action against the firm, following France, Italy and Australia.

Lawyer from American firm Jenner and Block, Lee Wolosky said: "While we appreciate the ICO's desire to reduce their monetary penalty on Clearview AI, we nevertheless stand by our position that the decision to impose any fine is incorrect as a matter of law.

"Clearview AI is not subject to the ICO's jurisdiction, and Clearview AI does no business in the UK at this time."

'Search engine for faces'

The company's system allows a user to upload a photo of a face and find matches in a database of billions of images it has collected.

It then provides links to where matching images appear online.

The ICO found that Clearview AI Inc breached UK data protection laws by failing to:

use the information of people in the UK in a way that is fair and transparent

have a lawful reason for collecting people's information

have a process in place to stop the data being retained indefinitely

meet the higher data protection standards required for biometric data

It also found the firm had requested additional personal information, including photos, when asked by members of the public if they are on their database.

The ICO's action comes after a joint investigation with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Mr Edwards said: "This international co-operation is essential to protect people's privacy rights in 2022.

"That means working with regulators in other countries, as we did in this case with our Australian colleagues."

Clearview AI has long been a controversial company.

Its founder Hoan Ton-That insists that the firm's mission is to "help communities and their people to live better, safer lives" and that all the data it has collected is freely available on the internet. He says Clearview's enormous database of faces has successfully helped law enforcement to fight "heinous" crimes.

Clearview no longer does business in the UK, but its previous clients include the Metropolitan Police, the Ministry of Defence, and the National Crime Agency. However, its entire database of 20 billion images, which inevitably includes UK residents, will still be available to those it works with in other countries.

Will we ever know who was actually on it? Probably not - but if there are photos of you on the internet, then you may well be. And you are very unlikely to have been asked if that's OK.

When Italy fined the firm €20m (£16.9m) earlier this year, Clearview hit back, saying it did not operate in any way that laid it under the jurisdiction of the EU privacy law the GDPR. Could it argue the same in the UK, where it also has no operations, customers or headquarters?

It can now challenge the ICO's decision - and perhaps it will.

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Clearview AI fined in UK for illegally storing facial images

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By Shiona McCallum Technology reporter Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK's privacy watchdog and told to delete the data of UK residents. The company gathers images from the internet to create a global facial recognition database. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says that breaches UK data protection laws.

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Reference: https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/
Access: How To Save A Planet (podcast)
Connection: This map connects to our CS course by creating a data representation that is accessible and digestable to the public. This map displays EPA data about where toxic facilities are located and where people are more likely to get cancer, but in an intuitive interactive map. Analysis was done to determine where hotspots for toxic areas are. The EPA has collected this data for quite some time, but never shown it in a way that is meaningful to the general public. Propublica realized something like this was needed in order to inform communities about the unsafe facilities around them, and help communities mobilize.
Emotion: I really like how this map is dont because people deserve to know if they live in an area that has a toxic environment. This is the first step to activism and pushing back against unsafe and inequitable effects of cancer causing waste (through air, water, soil, etc). I don't think it's right that the EPA feels the need to monitor things like this, but not to disseminate the information in a helpful way or hold industrial facilities accountable for their actions. It is also saddening that no level of government is taking on this issue. When activists demand a safer place to live, the EPA, local government, state government, etc all pass the puck to someone else, and nothing gets done. So while this map is a good first start and I'm happy to see it, we have a very long way to go.

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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

It’s not a secret that industrial facilities emit hazardous air pollution.

A new ProPublica analysis shows for the first time just how much toxic air pollution they emit — and how much the chemicals they unleash could be elevating cancer risk in their communities.

ProPublica’s analysis of five years of modeled EPA data identified more than 1,000 toxic hot spots across the country and found that an estimated 250,000 people living in them may be exposed to levels of excess cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable.

The agency has long collected the information on which our analysis is based. Thousands of facilities nationwide that are considered large sources of toxic air pollution submit a report to the government each year on their chemical emissions.

But the agency has never released this data in a way that allows the public to understand the risks of breathing the air where they live. Using the reports submitted between 2014 and 2018, we calculated the estimated excess cancer risk from industrial sources across the entire country and mapped it all.

The EPA’s threshold for an acceptable level of cancer risk is 1 in 10,000, meaning that of 10,000 people living in an area, there would likely be one additional case of cancer over a lifetime of exposure. But the agency has also said that ideally, Americans’ added level of cancer risk from air pollution should be far lower, 1 in a million. Our map highlights areas where the additional cancer risk is greater than 1 in 100,000 — 10 times lower than the EPA’s threshold, but still high enough to be of concern, experts say.

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The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S.

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Using the EPA's data, we mapped the spread of cancer-causing industrial air emissions down to the neighborhood level. Look up your home to see if you and your loved ones are living in a hot spot.

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REFERENCE: https://criticalmediaproject.org/media-literacies/

ACCESS: Google Search

CONNECTION: This website connects with what we have been learning in our Critical Media Literacy (CML) class as it expands on what critical media literacy is, why it is important, and how it can be incorporated into a classroom setting. I especially appreciate the DIY activities tab on the website as it exemplifies actual sample work of activities that teachers can incorporate into their own lesson plans in order to invite students to practice CML. Another feature of the website is their “playlist” tab which shows possible podcasts and videos that individuals can watch to learn more about the impacts of CML on the digital age of our society. If there are specific cultures, backgrounds, or identities that students or teachers wish to explore, the website also differentiates between such identities and it provides lesson plans, worksheets, and more information about how each identity is affected by digital media. Overall, this website is an informative and excellent resource to use to learn more about the effects of CML on certain identities as well as how this can be reiterated to students in a meaningful and impactful way.

EMOTION: I really enjoyed looking through this website because it depicts the passion and importance in which the creator of the website has for CML. I was happy and excited knowing that I could introduce CML to my students without worrying about having to face teacher burnout through creating my own lesson plans and activities. This is definitely a website that I will return to in the future for inspiration in how CML would be incorporated into my classroom.

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Reference: https://www.kwtx.com/2022/05/26/horrifying-conspiracy-theories-swirl-around-texas-shooting/
Access: KWTX News
Connection: This article connects to our CS course on disinformation on social media.  There are unfounded claims about the gunman, claiming he was an illegal immigrant, or transgender.  There are also conspiracy theories suggesting the entire tragedy was staged.  According to disinformation expert, the claims reflect broader problems with racisms and intolerance toward transgender people, and to blame the shooting on minority groups.
Emotion: This article made me extremely sad and angry. America is the only country that have mass shootings again and again because of our gun laws, and our politicians are not willing to change the gun laws because of the financial gains of the pro-gun lobbyists as well as afraid to lose their Republican followers. 90% of American wants tougher background checks on purchasing firearms, yet the politicians and conspiracy spreaders are blaming racism and transgender people. This has to change!

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — By now it’s as predictable as the calls for thoughts and prayers: A mass shooting leaves many dead, and wild conspiracy theories and misinformation about the carnage soon follow.

It happened after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after the Orlando nightclub shooting and after the deadly rampage earlier this month at a Buffalo grocery store. Within hours of Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, another rash began as internet users spread baseless claims about the man named as the gunman and his possible motives.

Unfounded claims that the gunman was an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, or transgender, quickly emerged on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. They were accompanied by familiar conspiracy theories suggesting the entire shooting was somehow staged.

The claims reflect broader problems with racism and intolerance toward transgender people, and are an effort to blame the shooting on minority groups who already endure higher rates of online harassment and hate crimes, according to disinformation expert Jaime Longoria.

“It’s a tactic that serves two purposes: It avoids real conversations about the issue (of gun violence), and it gives people who don’t want to face reality a patsy, it gives them someone to blame,” said Longoria, director of research at the Disinfo Defense League, a non-profit that works to fight racist misinformation.

In the hours after the shooting, posts falsely claiming the gunman was living in the country illegally went viral, with some users adding embellishments, including that he was “on the run from Border Patrol.”

“He was an illegal alien wanted for murder from El Salvador,” read one tweet liked and retweeted hundreds of times. “This is blood on Biden’s hands and should have never happened.”

The man who authorities say carried out the shooting, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, is a U.S. citizen, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Other social media users seized on images of innocent internet users to falsely identify them as the gunman and claim he was transgender. On the online message board 4Chan, users liberally shared the photos and discussed a plan to label the gunman as transgender, without any evidence to back it up.

One post on Twitter, which has since been deleted, featured a photo of a trans woman holding a green bottle to her mouth, looking into the camera, headphones hanging from one ear.

“BREAKING NEWS: THE IDENTITY OF THE SHOOTER HAS BEEN REVEALED,” claimed the user, saying the shooter was a “FEMBOY” with a channel on YouTube.

None of that was true. The photo actually depicted a 22-year-old trans woman named Sabrina who lives in New York City. Sabrina, who requested her last name not be published due to privacy concerns, confirmed to The Associated Press that the photo was hers and also said she was not affiliated with the purported YouTube account.

Sabrina said she received harassing responses on social media, particularly messages claiming that she was the shooter. She responded to a number of posts spreading the image with the misidentification, asking for the posts to be deleted.

“This whole ordeal is just horrifying,” Sabrina told the AP.

Another photo that circulated widely showed a transgender woman with a Coca-Cola sweatshirt and a black skirt. A second photo showed the same woman wearing a black NASA shirt with a red skirt. These photos didn’t show the gunman either — they were of a Reddit user named Sam, who confirmed her identity to the AP on Wednesday. The AP is not using Sam’s last name to protect her privacy.

“It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas,” Sam wrote in a Reddit post.

Authorities have released no information on the gunman’s sexuality or gender identification.

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar fit both unfounded claims about Ramos in a single now-deleted tweet that also misspelled his name. “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos,” Gosar tweeted Tuesday night.

Gosar’s office did not return a message seeking comment.

In some cases, misinformation about mass shootings or other events are spread by well-intentioned social media users trying to be helpful. In other cases, it can be the work of grifters looking to start fake fundraisers or draw attention to their website or organization.

Then there are the trolls who seemingly do it for fun.

Fringe online communities, including on 4chan, often use mass shootings and other tragedies as opportunities to sow chaos, troll the public and push harmful narratives, according to Ben Decker, founder and CEO of the digital investigations consultancy Memetica.

“It is very intentional and deliberate for them in celebrating these types of incidents to also influence what the mainstream conversations actually are,” Decker said. “There’s a nihilistic desire to prove oneself in these types of communities by successfully trolling the public. So if you are able to spearhead a campaign that leads to an outcome like this, you’re gaining increased sort of in-group credibility.”

For the communities bearing the brunt of such vicious online attacks, though, the false blame stirs fears of further discrimination and violence.

Something as seemingly innocuous as a transphobic comment on social media can spark an act of violence against a transgender person, said Jaden Janak, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas and a junior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.

“These children and adults who were murdered yesterday were just living their lives,” Janak said Wednesday. “They didn’t know that yesterday was going to be their last day. And similarly, as trans people, that’s a fear that we have all the time.”

___

Swenson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Angelo Fichera and Karena Phan contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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‘Horrifying’ conspiracy theories swirl around Texas shooting

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Within hours of Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, another rash began as internet users spread baseless claims about the man named as the gunman and his possible motives.

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Reference:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61574207
Access: BBC News
Connection: This article connects to our CS course on Social Media sharing users' data as well as cybersecurity from Meta.  The changes would give users more control over who can see their posts and how their information is processed.
Emotion:  I do not have strong feelings about this article because I personally do not have social media so it did not affect me. However I do like to see that Meta is trying to be more open to let their users have more control and doing more to handle and safeguard user data. Several years ago Mark Zuckerberg was linked to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that allowed Cambridge Analytica to gather personal data of US voters without their knowledge in an attempt to help Trump's election campaign. I believe what Meta is doing now is trying to show they are willing to correct their wrongful conduct.

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The changes, which come into effect on 26 July, are, Meta says, an attempt to reconcile a desire to reduce the complexity of policies, while facing "more demand from regulators and in privacy legislation to be more comprehensive".

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Facebook owner Meta updates its privacy policy

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The changes, which come into effect on 26 July, are, Meta says, an attempt to reconcile a desire to reduce the complexity of policies, while facing "more demand from regulators and in privacy legislation to be more comprehensive".

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Journal Entry #11 (Week 11)

Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61505102
Access: Google Search
Connection: This connects to the Critical Media Literacy class about advancements in science using technology. By using gene drive technology, inserting a lab-tweaked gene into an organism, Liz O’Neill hopes to drive out malaria-carrying mosquitos. We discussed independent science and technocratic science in which the intentions behind the implementation of scientific technology differ greatly. It appears that this organization aims to eliminate this invasive species and reduce the number of people who die from malaria.
Emotion: It’s incredible to see that technology is so advanced now that we are releasing genetically-modified organisms into the wild with the intent of prohibiting diseases from spreading. However, there are many risks with introducing a human-made organism and ethical concerns about how it could affect the food chain.

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Journal Entry #10 (Week 10)

Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61550776
Access: Google Search
Connection: This connects to what we have been learning in this class about the ethics behind using technology. Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, has invaded the privacy of UK citizens by collecting data about them unknowingly. Their personal data that is made public online through social media accounts, such as Facebook and  Instagram, allowed this company to take these images and upload them to a database.
Emotion: This makes me more cautious about what I post online because some of my photos can be used without my consent on websites that I have never even heard about. This also makes me think about the fine print that I often see when agreeing to “Terms and Conditions” that may explicitly say this. However, I typically scroll through without reading and press “agree” so I’m not sure what potential dangers can lie in using certain websites or apps.

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Reference: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/tech/cher-scarlett-facial-recognition-trauma/index.html
Access: Google Search
Connection: This article relates to this course about Data Flow in the Digital Age because of the unexpected implications that face-scanning technology can have in uncovering a past that Scarlett did not want to remember. Photos and videos permanently stay online once uploaded even if they cannot be found immediately. With this advanced technology, Scarlett’s digital footprint revealed information that she didn’t want to remember or anyone to know about. This also connects to the article about the EU’s Right to be Forgotten which allows citizens to request Google to remove links about them from the past.
Emotion: It must have been terrifying for Scarlett to see all of this media available publicly online without her knowledge. The face-scanning technology can be beneficial but there are many hidden dangers that come with AI. The social and economic implications of privacy are complex because individuals may not be aware of the digital media that is available to them.

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REFERENCE - https://phys.org/news/2022-05-ocean-twilight-zone-technology-revealing.html

ACCESS - Google News

CONNECTION -  This article was about how new technology is revealing the secrets of an under-researched undersea world. The diverse and ecologically important communities found in temperate mesophotic ecosystems need greater recognition and protection of a unique biodiversity we're only now coming to properly understand. In my chemistry class, I like to talk about the environment whenever possible, specifically on the ocean. I can see myself bringing up this interesting discovery and figuring out a way to connect it to content.

EMOTION - I thought it was really interesting how new technology is allowing us to discover these parts of the ocean that need our attention. However, I am concerned that perhaps humans will start to get too involved and end up causing more harm than good.

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REFERENCE - https://www.azfamily.com/2022/05/25/authorities-solve-13-year-old-cold-case-using-new-dna-technology-sparking-privacy-concerns/

ACCESS - Google News

CONNECTION -  In our critical media literacy class, we touched on the risks of technology and how it is not as safe as we think for our privacy. In this article, authorities solved a 13-year-old cold case using new DNA technology, which sparked privacy concerns. New technology helped police in Wisconsin solve a 13-year-old mystery involving an infant that was found lifeless in a bag on farmland. However, these new methods of locating suspects via genetic testing are raising concerns over privacy.

EMOTION - Although I can see the benefit of using new technology, such as in this case, I can’t help but feel worried about how technology will start to invade our privacy even more as it continues to develop.