Snippings

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The rehabilitation of free will depends on us re-appropriating our data. Today we are digital serfs, giving up the data we produce in exchange for free services, of questionable value, provided by our new overlords. We post a billion photos a day on Facebook. Yes, a billion. Once processed by algorithms (that increasingly include facial recognition), this treasure trove of data generates quarterly profits in the order of billions of dollars for Facebook.

What percentage goes to the original producer? Zero. Not only can we not negotiate with our lord the use of our data, but like the peasants of yore, we are prohibited from selling it on the market, too.

From Open Future – A cry for freedom in the algorithmic age | Open Future | The Economist:

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His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.

Federal and state law enforcement officers said that while they had only limited knowledge of how Clearview works and who is behind it, they had used its app to help solve shoplifting, identity theft, credit card fraud, murder and child sexual exploitation cases.

From The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It – The New York Times:

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A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

From The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It – The New York Times:

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The Canberra Times reports that in Milton on the south coast of New South Wales, residents and holiday makers were forced to queue outside the local supermarket to buy food and water following a power cut. Customers were let in one by one and were only allowed six items during the outage. Customers paid in cash only and staff calculated totals using calculators.

From Bushfires remind Australians of the Importance of Cash – Cash Essentials:

How strange. None of the staff had mobile phones? Why not just take a picture of the customers’ card and the key them in manually later. Or use Android mobile phones and a “PIN on glass” POS to take payments since all Aussie cards are contactless. Or have people pay with PayPal or any other mobile wallet service. Making people go to ATMs to get cash in these difficult circumstances is ridiculous.

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The CEO of AVSecure, Stuart Lawley, a British tech entrepreneur who made his fortune in the dotcom boom, said he had personally “lost millions” creating the technology.

He said the company, which is behind other parental control apps such as Ageblock, had been preparing for up to 10 million people signing up for the service on day one.

From Tech companies launch legal action to force Government to bring in under 18s porn ban:

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Four age verification companies lodged a judicial review at the High Court Thursday challenging the Culture Secretary’s decision to shelve the scheme to impose age checks on all porn sites viewed in the UK.

The Telegraph understands the companies are arguing the decision was an “abuse of power” as the move had been approved by parliament. They are also claiming damages, understood to be in the region of £3 million, for losses sustained developing age verification technology.

The age verification scheme was initially passed as part of the Digital Economy Act in December 2018 and mandated that all adult sites had to have age checks proving UK users were over 18. However, its implementation was repeatedly delayed throughout 2019.

In October, Culture Secretary Baroness Nicky Morgan announced she was suspending the age check scheme and would look to incorporate it into proposed online harms legislation that aims to create a new online regulator. The Government has said it aims to publish draft legislation this year, but it could take two to three years before the regulator is up and running.

From Tech companies launch legal action to force Government to bring in under 18s porn ban:

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Lawmakers and activists are proposing a digital payment platform and currency to help millions of New Yorkers without bank accounts.

From New York Is Proposing the Creation of a ‘Public Venmo’ – VICE:

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“it’s clear that both Amazon and Apple have embarked on similar missions to extend their control of their customers’ connectivity in and around the home. Amazon’s Sidewalk, which operates on the 900MHz band typically used for amateur radio and emergency services, and Apple’s close-range, ultra-wideband positioning with the U1 are designed to get Amazon out of the home and Apple inside it.”

From “Amazon and Apple are quietly building rival networks that know where everything is | WIRED UK”.

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I was very happy to see that noted entrepreneur Elon Musk agrees with my prescription has reportedly told Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter that “I think it would be helpful to differentiate’ between real and fake users… Is this a real person or is this a bot net or a sort of troll army or something like that?”.

Speaking at the cryptocurrency conference running at the World Economic Forum (WEF) shindig in Davos, I notice that Mable Jiang from Multicoin Capital in Beijing says that “It’s a kind of Cold War, but not just for crypto… Currency is the leverage”. That’s an interesting turn of phrase. Oh, which reminds me… I have a new book that will be coming out in June. It’s provisionally called “Currency Cold Wars—Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony” and you can read the preface online at my web site.