• Risks Digest 31.61 (2/2)

    From RISKS List Owner@21:1/5 to All on Sun Mar 15 22:20:34 2020
    [continued from previous message]

    Locate X, and the Secret Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs
    Enforcement also use the location-tracking technology, according to a
    former Babel Street employee. Numerous other government agencies have
    active contracts with Reston-based Babel Street, records show, but publicly available contract information does not specify whether other agencies
    besides CBP bought Locate X or other products and services offered by the company.

    None of the federal agencies, including CBP, would confirm whether they used the location-tracking software when contacted by Protocol. Babel Street's
    other products include an analytics tool it has widely marketed that sifts through streams of social media to `chart sentiment' about topics and
    brands.

    A former government official familiar with Locate X provided an example of
    how it could be used, referring to the aftermath of a car bombing or kidnapping. Investigators could draw what is known as a geo-fence around
    the site, identify mobile devices that were in the vicinity in the days
    before the attack, and see where else those devices had traveled in the
    days, weeks or months leading up to the attack, or where they traveled afterward.

    ``If you see a device that a month ago was in Saudi Arabia, then you know
    maybe Saudis were involved. It's a lead generator. You get a data point,
    and from there you use your other resources to figure out if it's valid.''

    A former Babel Street employee said the technology was deployed in a
    crackdown on credit card skimming <https://www.secretservice.gov/data/press/releases/2018/18-NOV/CMR_67-18_U.S._Secret_Service_Serves_up_Cold_Dish_of_Justice_to_Gas_Pump_Skimmers.pdf>,
    in which thieves install illegal card readers on gas station pumps,
    capturing customers' card data to use or sell online. The Secret Service was the lead agency in those investigations, which, according to published
    reports, led to arrests and the seizure of devices.

    A spokesperson for the Secret Service declined to comment on its work with Babel Street, saying the agency does not reveal methods used to carry out missions.

    While federal records show that CBP purchased Locate X and last year
    upgraded, paying for *premium* licenses, the records neither describe what Locate X does nor define the difference between a basic and premium
    license. A CBP spokesperson would not comment in detail about the use of
    the tool, but said the agency follows the law when deploying *open-source information*.

    Told of Protocol's reporting on Babel Street, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat
    from Oregon who has pushed for tougher privacy legislation, questioned
    whether uses of the technology might violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.

    The Supreme Court, in the landmark case Carpenter v. United States <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf>, ruled in June 2018 that the government must obtain a search warrant to access cell-tower location data for individual phone accounts. Wyden: The court ``recognized that the government needs a warrant to get someone's location data. Now the government is using its checkbook to try to get around Carpenter. Americans won't stand for that kind of loophole when it comes to our Fourth Amendment rights.''

    A spokesperson for Babel Street, Lacy Talton, declined to answer specific questions about the company's government sales or its Locate X technology,
    but said the firm handles data carefully to comply with both the law and Internet terms of service. There is no indication Babel Street is doing anything illegal. [...]

    https://www.protocol.com/government-buying-location-data

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2020 09:55:20 -1000
    From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
    Subject: A hybrid AI model lets it reason about the world's physics
    like a child (MIT Tech Review)

    A new data set reveals just how bad AI is at reasoning -- and suggests that
    a new hybrid approach might be the best way forward.

    *Questions, questions:* Known as CLEVRER, the data set <http://clevrer.csail.mit.edu/#Dataset> consists of 20,000 short synthetic video clips and more than 300,000 question and answer pairings that reason about the events in the videos. Each video shows a simple world of toy
    objects that collide with one another following simulated physics. In one,
    a red rubber ball hits a blue rubber cylinder, which continues on to hit a metal cylinder.

    The questions fall into four categories: descriptive (e.g., What shape is
    the object that collides with the cyan cylinder?), explanatory (What is responsible for the gray cylinder's collision with the cube?), predictive (Which event will happen next?), and counterfactual (Without the gray
    object, which event will not happen?). The questions mirror many of the concepts that children learn early on as they explore their surroundings.
    But the latter three categories, which specifically require causal reasoning
    to answer, often stump deep-learning systems.

    *Fail:* The data set, created by researchers at Harvard, DeepMind, and
    MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab is meant to help evaluate how well AI systems can
    reason. When the researchers tested
    <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.01442.pdf> several
    state-of-the-art computer vision and natural language models with the data
    set, they found that all of them did well on the descriptive questions but poorly on the others.

    *Mixing the old and the new:* The team then tried a new AI system that
    combines both deep learning
    <https://www.technologyreview.com/g/deep-learning/> and symbolic logic. Symbolic systems used to be all the rage before they were eclipsed
    <http://u/> by machine learning in the late 1980s. But both approaches have their strengths: deep learning excels at scalability and pattern
    recognition; symbolic systems are better at abstraction and reasoning.

    The composite system, known as a neuro-symbolic model, leverages both: it
    uses a neural network to recognize the colors, shapes, and materials of the objects and a symbolic system to understand the physics of their movements
    and the causal relationships between them. It outperformed existing models across all categories of questions. <https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613270/two-rival-ai-approaches-combine-to-let-machines-learn-about-the-world-like-a-child/>

    *Why it matters:* As children, we learn to observe the world around us,
    infer why things happened and make predictions about what will happen next. These predictions help us make better decisions, navigate our environments,
    and stay safe. Replicating that kind of causal understanding in machines
    will similarly equip them to interact with the world in a more intelligent
    way.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615326/ai-neuro-symbolic-system-reasons-like-child-deepmind-ibm-mit/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2020 13:37:05 -1000
    From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
    Subject: This Satellite Startup Raised $110 Million To Make Your
    Cellphone Work Everywhere (Forbes)

    EXCERPT:

    Anyone who's been on a long hiking trip or had a car break down on a road
    trip knows that the phone connectivity you take for granted in your daily
    life can quickly disappear. Despite advances in technology, how far a voice
    or data signal can travel is still limited to how far away you are from a cellphone tower.

    The Midland, Texas-based AST & Science aims to use satellites to overcome
    those limitations. It's just raised $110 million in a series B round led by U.K.-based mobile provider Vodafone and Japanese e-tailer Rakuten to launch
    a mobile broadband network, called SpaceMobile, powered by satellites.
    These can connect to phones anywhere on the planet, when you're flying on an airplane, in a remote location, at sea -- 94anywhere, says the company's founder and CEO Abel Avellan.

    The company successfully tested its technology last year when it launched a prototype satellite called BlueWalker 1 in April. The satellite was able to successfully deliver signals to phones and demonstrate the company's
    abilities. With the new round of capital, which brings its total fundraising
    to $128 million, it will be able to ramp up production of the hundreds of satellites it plans to put in orbit, using a modular manufacturing approach
    to keep costs down.

    AST is one of several companies that's aiming to put satellites in low Earth orbit to provide data. SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon and others are building large mega-constellations to provide broadband Internet directly to
    customers. Their target market is premium customers, taking advantage of the lower lag times provided by satellites to entice users away from broadband Internet providers such as Comcast or AT&T.

    By contrast, AST is targeting a different market. Rather than try to provide broadband Internet services, which requires building out bigger, higher-cost satellites and expensive ground infrastructure, it's instead partnering with mobile phone providers. For these providers, AST gives their customers the ability to use their existing devices in places that are hard to connect otherwise, such as in the mountains or on a cruise ship. It's a similar
    model to existing satellite phone providers like Iridium, except it
    doesn't require any proprietary hardware -- customers can use the phones
    they already own. [...]

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2020/03/03/this-satellite-startup-raised-110-million-to-make-your-cell-phone-work-everywhere/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2020 09:37:13 -1000
    From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
    Subject: Your smartphone is dirtier than a toilet seat. Here's how to
    disinfect it. (Mashable)

    Yep, you read that right: There are 10 times more germs on our smartphones
    than on a toilet seat. So unless you're regularly cleaning your lil'
    portable germ box, you're not really doing *that *good a job of protecting yourself from getting sick. In fact, we should *all *be making a habit out
    of cleaning that damn thing, with or without the new coronavirus outbreak as motivation. <https://time.com/4908654/cell-phone-bacteria/> <https://mashable.com/article/uv-light-phone-sanitization-coronavirus-protection/>

    Apple offers a very detailed cleaning guideline <https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207123> for iPhones, as does Google <https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7533987?hlen> for Pixels. Samsung, though, doesn't offer much for its Galaxy phones. But, it's safe to assume that they all can be cleaned in the same way because their surfaces share similar features: glass screens and/or casings with oil-repellent (oleophobic) coating, and some degree of water resistance.

    That means two things: It's okay to clean your phone with a damp cloth and
    you should stick with mild cleaning solutions to avoid damaging the glass coating. So, unless you have a fancy UV light <https://mashable.com/article/uv-light-phone-sanitization-coronavirus-protection/>
    to sanitize your phone, here's how you can get it done the old-fashioned
    way. What you need...

    [...]
    https://mashable.com/article/how-to-clean-smartphone-iphone-galaxy-pixel/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2020 09:53:23 -1000
    From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
    Subject: PCI Fireside Chat: Vint Cerf and Ian Bremmer (The Unstable Globe)

    *American political scientist, Ian Bremmer <https://www.eurasiagroup.net/people/ibremmer>, joined Internet pioneer and
    PCI co-founder, Vint Cerf <https://peoplecentered.net/people/vint-cerf/> for
    an inaugural virtual fireside chat=9D to discussed today's evolving geopolitical and technological landscape.*

    The two explored how our increasingly interconnected world is changing
    dynamics among countries, challenging international institutions, and (at
    least temporarily) benefitting authoritarian regimes. The globe faces challenges -- including shifts in the influence of superpowers, polarization resulting from social media, and pandemics -- that require a new
    technological, political, social and institutional coherence that has yet to manifest.

    Some highlights, insights and soundbites from the conversation: https://medium.com/peoplecentered/the-unstable-globe-91ef6a18da1e

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:11:11 -0800
    From: RISKS-request@csl.sri.com
    Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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    End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 31.61
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