Pinboard (jm)
https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/
recent bookmarks from jmLandmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers2026-06-10T11:52:03+00:00
https://the-decoder.com/landmark-german-ruling-declares-googles-ai-overviews-are-googles-own-words-and-makes-it-liable-for-false-answers/
jm
The judge is explicitly cutting down most of the legal defenses they use. They make a sharp cut between search and AI, saying search is indispensable, but AI is not, and defendants have not proven how being held liable for their output would compromise the ability to run a normal search engine. They make a similar hard cut between AI and autocomplete.
They go on at length about the nature of truth in utterances, and arrive at a conclusion that AI output has no protections for free expression because it isn't expressing shit - it has no beliefs, it is a commercial product only. There are two injunctions that are denied because they are not considered statements of fact, but the judge rules against google for all the ones that were, and concludes several are default considered false because the linked pages were irrelevant.
There is explicit differentiation from aggregating reviews and third party content, because the AI generated text and ideas that were not present in the input. There is also discussion about how there is no excuse for further violations just because its hard to control AI output, and contrasts this with how normal "report and takedown" protections work.
There is very little here that is specific to AI overviews in search, and almost all of the arguments apply to AI products in general. AI's only prayer of being remotely profitable must include advertising or shopping features, which means they absolutely must continue generating output that makes statements of fact about other companies. I know nothing about how German courts work, the article alludes to appeals, but if this ruling holds even just in Germany the ability to insure AI products disappears overnight and that makes the product nonviable.
]]>germany eu liability google ai-overviews slop law truth libel facts insurancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:25401dacd469/The Problem With Counterfeit People2026-05-05T14:22:32+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/problem-counterfeit-people/674075/
jm
The way we're using AI to impersonate human beings has already put us on a dangerous trajectory. [Dennett] called such AIs "counterfeit people", and told me that rolling out such entities en masse constituted "mischief of the worst sort": a form of "social vandalism" that should be addressed by law. Why? Because, if convincing digital representations of humans can be created at whim, the entire business of collectively assessing other people's claims, experiences and actions is put at risk – not to mention essential social infrastructure such as contracts, obligations and consequences. Hence the need for legal prohibitions, a case he made at length in a May 2023 article for The Atlantic. "It won't be perfect," he told me, "but it will help if we can make it against the law to make counterfeit people. We can have stiff penalties for counterfeiting people, same as we do for counterfeit money... we should make it a mark of shame, not pride, when you make your AI more human."
]]>ethics future ai llms daniel-dennett philosophy regulation law humanity peoplehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b590cf73a5a8/Amazon Connect Talent vs. bias law2026-04-30T10:04:52+00:00
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/coquinn_a-note-from-amazon-web-services-awss-share-7454936476359819264-8DqQ/?rcm=ACoAAAD7ciEBGVCp3m50-5sdPXL70GJw7TDNHVE
jmAmazon Connect Talent was just announced. It conducts AI-powered conversational interviews with candidates, generates "anonymized competency scores," and surfaces ranked candidates to recruiters who "make the call."
Fun fact: in New York City, that is an Automated Employment Decision Tool under Local Law 144. AEDTs require an annual independent bias audit with publicly posted results, plus at least ten business days of notice to candidates before use. Illinois, Colorado, and the EU AI Act impose adjacent obligations.
The launch materials mention none of this. The compliance posture appears to be: candidate names are stripped from recruiter dashboards, therefore bias is solved. That is not how any of this works. Proxies for protected class -- speech patterns, zip codes, education history, the resume already sitting in your ATS -- are exactly what bias audits exist to measure.
I don't think the product is bad. I think the announcement is conspicuously missing the guidance customers need before they can deploy it in NYC without violating Local Law 144 on day one.
(The day's other news so far: Amazon Connect now ships as a four-SKU family, and there is a new design philosophy called "humorphism" with its own .com. Both feel small next to the above.)
If you're selling automated hiring decisions in 2026, the bias-audit conversation belongs in the launch.
]]>bias law amazon aws recruiting regulation automation aihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:af7440a2d620/Ofcom don't consider geoblocking the UK to be sufficient for an overseas website2026-03-20T10:10:42+00:00
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1rk690v/i_run_a_selfhelp_forum_for_people_with_depression/
jmI started getting email from Ofcom [regarding OSA compliance] around November 2025 and now have multiple letters. I've repeatedly told them I'm from Canada, I'm not based in the UK.
Eventually, I blocked all UK IP addresses in mid-February 2026 and told them I'd blocked the UK and that I was done engaging with them.
I've now got ANOTHER email from them saying they're going to commence enforcement action against me because simply blocking UK IPs is "insufficient to comply with the Online Safety Act 2023."
]]>osa uk politics filtering censorship law geoblocking ofcom webhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:62264b402830/Southern California air board rejected pollution rules after AI-generated flood of comments2026-03-05T10:01:17+00:00
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-southern-california-air-board-pollution.html
jmThe opposition appeared overwhelming: Tens of thousands of emails poured into Southern California's top air pollution authority as its board weighed a June proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances. But in reality, many of the messages that may have swayed the powerful regulatory agency to scrap the plan were generated by a platform that is powered by artificial intelligence.
Public records requests reviewed by The Times and corroborated by staff members at the South Coast Air Quality Management District confirm that more than 20,000 public comments submitted in opposition to last year's proposal were generated by a Washington, D.C.-based company called CiviClick, which bills itself as "the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform."
A Southern California-based public affairs consultant, Matt Klink, has taken credit for using CiviClick to wage the opposition campaign.
]]>civiclick activism llms us-politics law lobbying spam matt-klink astroturfinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bea8c718f75f/Boost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan2025-12-16T10:51:06+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/16/boost-for-artists-in-ai-copyright-battle-as-only-3-per-cent-back-uk-active-opt-out-plan
jm95% of the more than 10,000 people who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected [in the UK] from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law.
By contrast, only 3% of people backed the UK government’s initial preferred tech company-friendly option, which was to require artists and copyright holders to actively opt out of having their material fed into data-hungry AI systems.
]]>ai training data copyright law uk uk-politics llmshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6abe0b9d290c/Bitcoin's big secret: How cryptocurrency became law enforcement's secret weapon2025-11-13T09:59:56+00:00
https://bitwarden.com/blog/how-cryptocurrency-became-law-enforcements-secret-weapon/
jmIn 2011, Greenberg thought he'd discovered the story of a lifetime: digital cash that promised complete anonymity. A decade later, that story flipped entirely.
"I had this slow-motion epiphany that I was entirely wrong about Bitcoin. It was, in fact, the opposite of untraceable."
But here's the paradox: if cryptocurrency tracing is so powerful, why do ransomware attacks, pig butchering scams, and North Korean hackers continue to steal billions?
The answer: identifiability isn't the same as accountability.
]]>accountability prosecutions law policing bitcoin cryptocurrency andy-greenberg crime anonymityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:de6d256fd436/The Boy Genius Who Killed 14 Million Poor People2025-08-05T15:33:27+00:00
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-boy-genius-who-killed-14-million-luke-farritor-doge-elon-musk-trump
jmYou probably have not heard Luke Farritor’s name before. He is one of Elon Musk’s 23-year-old DOGE bros who helped dismantle key parts of the federal government, including USAID. The particulars of Farritor’s story are idiosyncratic -- he is in almost every way an outlier. Yet the moral component is universal because it presents a simple question: What is the nature of accountability?
]]>luke-farritor responsibility doge accountability usaid government elon-musk ethics lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b9151c9a3c24/The new position of "sin eater"2025-06-18T10:25:40+00:00
https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lrt6mcqzv225
jmstraw-director culpability law responsibility please jobs future ai sin-eatershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0149bc5da499/The "you wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy PSA was made with piracy2025-04-24T08:30:54+00:00
https://fedi.rib.gay/notes/a6xqityngfubsz0f
jmirony typography fonts culture piracy law history funnyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2a49bd13fcc5/The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem2025-03-20T12:47:54+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libgen-meta-openai/682093/?gift=iWa_iB9lkw4UuiWbIbrWGYDRoX8kfg3ZQZL6J-W0kQE
jmOne of the biggest questions of the digital age is how to manage the flow of knowledge and creative work in a way that benefits society the most. LibGen and other such pirated libraries make information more accessible, allowing people to read original work without paying for it. Yet generative-AI companies such as Meta have gone a step further: Their goal is to absorb the work into profitable technology products that compete with the originals. Will these be better for society than the human dialogue they are already starting to replace?
Also, I found this quote from a Meta Director of Engineering in the legal discovery output interesting: "The problem is that people don’t realize that if we license one single book, we won’t be able to lean into fair use strategy". huh.]]>books knowledge papers meta llama llms law piracy ip libgen genai fair-usehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b26e866b7827/Court docs allege Meta trained LLM models using pirated book trove2025-01-10T11:41:28+00:00
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/meta_libgen_allegation/
jmThe [court] document claims that Meta decided to download documents from Library Genesis -- aka. “LibGen” -- to train its models. LibGen is the subject of a lawsuit brought by textbook publishers who believe it happily hosts and distributes [pirated] works [....]
The filing from plaintiffs in the Kadrey case claims that documents produced by Meta [...] describe internal debate about accessing LibGen, a little squeamishness about using BitTorrent in the office to do so, and eventual escalation to “MZ” [Mark Zuckerberg himself], who approved use of the contentious resource. [...]
Another filing claims that a Meta document describes how it removed copyright notifications from material downloaded from LibGen, and suggests the company did so because it realized including such text could mean a model’s output would reveal it was trained on copyrighted material.
US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria also noted that in one of the documents Meta wants to seal, an employee wrote the following:
“If there is media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, this may undermine our negotiating position with regulators on these issues.”
No shit.]]>piracy meta copyright mark-zuckerberg law llama training libgen bookshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:803844c4f893/noyb is now qualified to bring collective redress actions2024-12-03T12:20:56+00:00
https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-now-qualified-bring-collective-redress-actions
jmnoyb data-privacy data-protection class-actions law eu collective-redresshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:57ae6f8b95bb/Irish Data Protection Commission launches inquiry into Google AI2024-09-12T09:36:22+00:00
https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/press-releases/data-protection-commission-launches-inquiry-google-ai-model
jmThe Data Protection Commission (DPC) today announced that it has commenced a Cross-Border[1] statutory inquiry into Google Ireland Limited (Google) under Section 110 of the Data Protection Act 2018. The statutory inquiry concerns the question of whether Google has complied with any obligations that it may have had to undertake an assessment, pursuant to Article 35[2] of the General Data Protection Regulation (Data Protection Impact Assessment), prior to engaging in the processing of the personal data of EU/EEA data subjects associated with the development of its foundational AI model, Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2).
A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)[3], where required, is of crucial importance in ensuring that the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals are adequately considered and protected when processing of personal data is likely to result in a high risk.
Great to see this. If this inquiry results in some brakes on the widespread misuse of "fair use" in AI scraping, particularly where it concerns European citizens, I'm all in favour.
]]>eu law scraping fair-use ai dpia dpc data-protection privacy gdprhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:44a04f4a54d6/Ex-Google CEO: AI startups can steal IP, hire lawyers to “clean up the mess”2024-08-15T10:03:28+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/14/24220658/google-eric-schmidt-stanford-talk-ai-startups-openai
jm
here’s what I propose each and every one of you do: Say to your LLM the following: “Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines.” [...]
If it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right? But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content. And do not quote me.
jfc.
Needless to say he also has some theories about ChatGPT eating Google's lunch because of.... remote working.]]>
law legal startups ethics eric-schmidt capitalism iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:17162a2ce970/Microsoft AI CEO doesn't understand copyright2024-06-28T09:42:14+00:00
https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1805809836854329450
jm
This is categorically false. Content released online is still protected by copyright. You can't copy it for any purpose you like simply because it's on the open web.
Creators who have been told for years to publish online, often for free, for exposure, may object to being retroactively told they were entering a social contract that let anyone copy their work.
It's really shocking to see this. How on earth has Microsoft's legal department not hit the brakes on this?]]>ai law legal ip open-source freeware fair-use copying piracyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5057f94bbae1/UN expert attacks ‘exploitative’ world economy in fight to save planet2024-05-14T16:08:17+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/un-expert-human-rights-climate-crisis-economy
jm“I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes. But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature. And unless we change that fundamental system, then we’re just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”
“The failure to take a human rights based approach to the climate crisis – and the biodiversity crisis and the air pollution crisis – has absolutely been the achilles heel of [anti-climate-change] efforts for decades.
“I expect in the next three or four years, we will see court cases being brought challenging fossil fuel subsidies in some petro-states … These countries have said time and time again at the G7, at the G20, that they’re phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies. It’s time to hold them to their commitment. And I believe that human rights law is the vehicle that can do that. In a world beset by a climate emergency, fossil-fuel subsidies violate states’ fundamental, legally binding human rights obligations.” [...]
Boyd said: “There’s no place in the climate negotiations for fossil-fuel companies. There is no place in the plastic negotiations for plastic manufacturers. It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table.
“It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same.”
]]>human-rights law david-boyd un climate-change fossil-fuelshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6f7853e80622/We’re headed for big problems if gardaí get facial recognition technology2024-03-20T12:29:53+00:00
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/03/20/were-headed-for-big-problems-if-gardai-get-facial-recognition-technology/
jmFRT mislabels and miscategorises faces with dark complexions. In the US alone, six people have so far been wrongfully arrested and detained due to errors, all of whom are black. It is unknown how many misidentified people may have taken plea deals. Robust scientific research confirms higher error rates of FRT identifying darker-skinned people. Yet, Mr O’Sullivan claimed FRT has a 99 per cent accuracy rate, citing a US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report, at the pre-legislative hearing.
For this 99 per cent claim, Mr O’Sullivan cherry-picked the best-performing algorithm out of hundreds of algorithms that NIST evaluated, an algorithm called “cloudwalk_mt_007″. This algorithm is developed by CloudWalk Technology, a Chinese company known for aiding mass surveillance of the Uyghur population. Crucial information on how their algorithms operate is kept secret.
NIST evaluated the algorithm using high-quality, clean images collected from US visa applications, border kiosks and mugshots. But An Garda Síochána’s stated intention is to use any imagery it legally holds or can access. The gardaí's input images will be drawn from CCTV (unreliable due to camera angle, distance, position and lighting), often containing multiple faces in a single image (a major challenge for FRT algorithms), and blurry images. To cite NIST’s laboratory study for the proposed Irish real-world use is, by accident or design, misleading.
Still, even with clean test data, the “cloudwalk_mt_007″ algorithm fails on border kiosk images, which are the closest to real-world application of FRT. The algorithm also shows discrepancies by ethnicity. West African women are by far the most affected, meaning its use could have a catastrophic impact in misidentification of black women.
For relevant studies of FRT’s performance, audits of deployed FRT in contexts similar to Ireland should be considered. Audits from Cambridge researchers have found that deployments of FRT in England and Wales failed to meet all minimum legal and ethical standards and requirements.
]]>legality legal frt facial-recognition ireland gardai law surveillance cctv racism accuracy false-positiveshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:10709cf75eb1/EU AI Act briefing2023-12-12T10:51:25+00:00
https://danmcquillan.org/eu_ai_act.html
jm
The whole thing is premised on a risk-based approach(1)
This is a departure from GDPR, which is rights-based with actionable rights.
Therefore it's a huge victory for industry(2).
It's basically a product safety regulation that regulates putting AI on the market
The intention is to promote the uptake of AI without restraining 'innovation'(3)
Any actual red lines were dumped a long time ago.
The 'negotiation theatre' was based on how to regulate [generative] AI ('foundation models') and on national security carve-outs
People focusing on foundation models were the usual AI suspects
People pushing back on biometrics etc were civil society & rights groups
The weird references in the reports to numbers like '10~23' refer to the classification of large models based on flops(4)
Most of the contents of the Act amount to some form of self-regulation, with added EU bureaucracy on top(5)
As John Looney notes, classifying large models based on FlOps is like classifying civilian gun usage by on calibre.
]]>ai-act eu law llms ml flops regulation ai-riskhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d4240cecd739/Expert explainer: Allocating accountability in AI supply chains2023-06-29T09:34:57+00:00
https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/resource/ai-supply-chains/
jmregulation ai ada-lovelace-institute ian-brown supply-chains data-protection uk law copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ebd74d82818b/Searching for global copyright laws in all the wrong places: An examination of the legality of OpenAI’s data scraping2023-04-01T20:44:14+00:00
https://medium.com/@nturkewitz_56674/searching-for-global-copyright-laws-in-all-the-wrong-places-an-examination-of-the-legality-of-cec358492285
jmI’m not sure who is advising GitHub, but the suggestion that the unauthorized use of “publicly available data is consistent with global copyright laws” is a fantastical claim, for any number of reasons, and that’s even before addressing the ridiculous notion that machines learn “much as humans have done throughout history.”
]]>openai github copyright microsoft law traininghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5d45eb3ffc9b/Irish consumer law gives 6 years of repair/replacement rights2022-11-18T14:43:05+00:00
https://www.apple.com/ie/legal/statutory-warranty/ie/
jmUnder Irish consumer law, consumers are entitled to a free of charge repair or (depending on the circumstances) may be entitled to a replacement, discount or refund by the seller, of defective goods or goods which do not conform with the contract of sale. These rights expire six years from delivery of the goods.
]]>consumer-rights law ireland consumer rights repairhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6c03c21772dd/The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next - The Verge2022-11-16T15:28:48+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/23444685/generative-ai-copyright-infringement-legal-fair-use-training-data
jmGenerative AI has had a very good year. Corporations like Microsoft, Adobe, and GitHub are integrating the tech into their products; startups are raising hundreds of millions to compete with them; and the software even has cultural clout, with text-to-image AI models spawning countless memes. But listen in on any industry discussion about generative AI, and you’ll hear, in the background, a question whispered by advocates and critics alike in increasingly concerned tones: is any of this actually legal?
]]>ai copyright ml law iphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bfb663526b23/inside the LAPD/LASD usage of Palantir2020-09-30T09:33:08+00:00
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/training-documents-palantir-lapd
jmMuch of the LAPD data consists of the names of people arrested for, convicted of, or even suspected of committing crimes, but that’s just where it starts. Palantir also ingests the bycatch of daily law enforcement activity. Maybe a police officer was told a person knew a suspected gang member. Maybe an officer spoke to a person who lived near a crime “hot spot,” or was in the area when a crime happened. Maybe a police officer simply had a hunch. The context is immaterial. Once the LAPD adds a name to Palantir’s database, that person becomes a data point in a massive police surveillance system. [...] At great taxpayer expense, and without public oversight or regulation, Palantir helped the LAPD construct a vast database that indiscriminately lists the names, addresses, phone numbers, license plates, friendships, romances, jobs of Angelenos — the guilty, innocent, and those in between.
This is absolute garbage -- total bias built-in. No evidence required to get a person in the firing line:
“The focus of a data-driven surveillance system is to put a lot of innocent people in the system,” Ferguson said. “And that means that many folks who end up in the Palantir system are predominantly poor people of color, and who have already been identified by the gaze of police.”]]>palantir databases privacy law lapd lasd los-angeles surveillance big-brother police crime gangshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:414f0c4a714e/Facial recognition technology is racist2020-06-24T10:21:07+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html
jmfacial-recognition law justice privacy faces racism technology future bias machinehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ddabdefd71ad/Abolish the #TechToPrisonPipeline - Coalition for Critical Technology2020-06-23T15:07:55+00:00
https://medium.com/@CoalitionForCriticalTechnology/abolish-the-techtoprisonpipeline-9b5b14366b16
jmvia:niallmurphy crime prediction image-processing springer research prison law ai mlhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:aab2dd4147fb/Medical company threatens to sue volunteers that 3D-printed valves for life-saving coronavirus treatments - The Verge2020-03-18T09:39:37+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21184308/coronavirus-italy-medical-company-threatens-sue-3d-print-valves-treatments
jmA medical device manufacturer has threatened to sue a group of volunteers in Italy that 3D printed a valve used for life-saving coronavirus treatments. The valve typically costs about $11,000 from the medical device manufacturer, but the volunteers were able to print replicas for about $1 (via Techdirt).
A hospital in Italy was in need of the valves after running out while treating patients for COVID-19. The hospital’s usual supplier said they could not make the valves in time to treat the patients, according to Metro. That launched a search for a way to 3D print a replica part, and Cristian Fracassi and Alessandro Ramaioli, who work at Italian startup Isinnova, offered their company’s printer for the job, reports Business Insider.
However, when the pair asked the manufacturer of the valves for blueprints they could use to print replicas, the company declined and threatened to sue for patent infringement, according to Business Insider Italia. Fracassi and Ramaioli moved ahead anyway by measuring the valves and 3D printing three different versions of them.
]]>covid-19 ip patents italy 3d-printing hardware ip-rights lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d553aa7fbb62/incredible stats on drivers speeding on Irish roads2019-10-29T23:57:10+00:00
https://twitter.com/dublincycling/status/1189288578167296000
jm52% of car drivers on Irish urban roads are speeding.
58% of rigid truck drivers on urban roads are speeding.
72% of articulated truck drivers on urban roads are speeding.
98% (!!) of drivers in 30kph urban zones are speeding
]]>driving speeding enforcement law ireland roads cycling safetyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:df8e8ebf87d0/Formal GDPR complaint against IAB Europe’s “cookie wall” and GDPR consent guidance2019-04-03T09:37:02+00:00
https://brave.com/iab-cookie-wall/
jmTracking and cookie walls:
Visitors to IAB Europe’s website, www.iabeurope.eu, are confronted with a “cookie wall” that forces them to accept tracking by Google, Facebook, and others, which may then monitor them. Dr. Ryan has complained to the Irish Data Protection Commission that this is a breach of the GDPR, which protects people in Europe from being forced to accept processing for their data for any purpose other than the provision of the requested service.
“One should not be forced to accept web-wide profiling by unknown companies as a condition of access to a website”, said Dr Johnny Ryan of Brave. “This would be like Facebook preventing you from accessing the Newsfeed until you have clicked a button permitting it to share your data with Cambridge Analytica.”
Simon McGarr of McGarr Solicitors, who has worked on data protection cases for Digital Rights Ireland, represents Dr Ryan in his complaint. Mr McGarr said “Where companies rely on consent to process people’s data it is critical that this is more than a box ticking exercise. For consent to be valid, it must be freely given, informed, specific and unambiguous. There’s nothing intrinsically good or bad in cookie technology – what matters is ensuring it’s applied in a way which respects individuals’ rights.”
Challenging IAB Europe’s industry guidance on the GDPR:
The complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission will also test IAB Europe’s GDPR guidance to the online advertising industry. IAB Europe has put itself forward as a primary designer of the online tracking industry’s data protection notices. It has told major media organizations, tracking companies, and advertising technology companies that they can sidestep the GDPR, and rely instead on the ePrivacy Directive, which IAB Europe has interpreted as more lax in protecting personal data.
IAB Europe has widely promoted the notion that access to a website or app can be made conditional on consent for data processing that is not necessary for the requested service to be delivered, despite the clear requirements of the GDPR, and statements from several national data protection authorities, that say otherwise.
“This complaint will make it plain that the media and advertising industry should not rely on IAB Europe for GDPR guidance”, said Dr Ryan.
]]>dpc ireland brave iab-europe iab cookies tracking gdpr law euhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c4de5422a77f/Credit reference agency Equifax fined for security breach2018-09-20T13:33:59+00:00
https://ico.org.uk/equifax-20180920
jmvia:privacy-kit ico equifax privacy data-protection uk penalties lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:11db48294fd3/Antonio Regalado Twitter thread on genetic genealogy, DNA privacy, and total DNA de-anonymity2018-06-27T10:57:41+00:00
https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/status/1011675054709661696
jmI used to know some technicians in the NYC Medical Examiner's lab. They had all been DNA typed (to detect accidental contamination). So, their little society was a picture of what is to come, of total DNA transparency.
They would do stuff like find out who stuck gum under the table. Also, who was peeing on the toilet seat in the bathroom.
So There’s a second technology at play: environmental DNA sampling. Once police get a name they tail the suspect and try to get some DNA he leaves behind. To make the match to crime scene sample. Police have gotten DNA from:
- a car door handle
- a straw
- a paper napkin
Imagine storm troopers of a repressive regime descending on a meeting place of the resistance. Just swab the whole place and find out who was there from DNA left behind.
Technically, total DNA de-anonymity is possible. Far as I know there’s no law, no protection, against identifying you from your DNA.
In crime cases, [this is] being done by “amateur” using a database (GEDmatch) that itself is highly informal.
]]>privacy dna genetics genetic-genealogy gedmatch law transparencyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c533ab41ac49/In America, Naturalized Citizens No Longer Have an Assumption of Permanence | The New Yorker2018-06-19T16:11:41+00:00
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/in-america-naturalized-citizens-no-longer-have-an-assumption-of-permanence
jmMichael Bars, the U.S.C.I.S. spokesman, told the Washington Examiner that the agency is hiring dozens of lawyers for the new task force. The mandate, according to both Cissna and Bars, is to find people who deliberately lied on their citizenship applications, not those who made innocent mistakes. The distinction is fuzzier than one might assume.
Back in 1989, I had to make a decision about whether to lie on my citizenship application. At the time, immigration law banned “aliens afflicted with sexual deviation,” among others suffering from “psychopathic personality,” from entry to the United States. I had come to this country as a fourteen-year-old, in 1981, but I had been aware of my “sexual deviation” at the time, and this technically meant that I should not have entered the country. [....]
Over the years, the applications for both citizenship and permanent residence have grown ever longer, filling with questions that seem to be designed to be used against the applicant. Question 26 on the green-card application, for example, reads, “Have you EVER committed a crime of any kind (even if you were not arrested, cited, charged with, or tried for that crime)?” ... The question does not specify whether it refers to a crime under current U.S. law or the laws of the country in which the crime might have been committed. In the Soviet Union of my youth, it was illegal to possess foreign currency or to spend the night anywhere where you were not registered to live. In more than seventy countries, same-sex sexual activity is still illegal. On closer inspection, just about every naturalized citizen might look like an outlaw, or a liar.
]]>law immigration us-politics america citizenship naturalization historyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b6fb5047e20d/Here's how you can fight family separation at the border2018-06-19T16:08:24+00:00
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/how-you-can-fight-family-separation-at-the-border.html?via=gdpr-consent
jmfamily-separation law immigration us-politics americahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:063a57778ed7/Twitter thread regarding GDPR-compliance for append-only logs/event sourcing systems2018-06-14T21:10:09+00:00
https://twitter.com/martinkl/status/1007320751463124992
jmtwitter threads gdpr compliance law eu append-only logs blockchain event-sourcing architecture storage kafka kinesishttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a66f2ec82c4c/Software Development and GDPR2018-06-08T14:18:00+00:00
http://www.oisin.blog/2018/06/03/programming-and-gdpr.html
jmYou could think, as a developer, that the lawyers worry about this kind of fine-grained issue. They don’t. This is one of those situations where they say, well, here’s the risk, you have to make a decision, document it, and be ready to back that up in front of a judge should the soup hit the fan.
In this particular case it’s straightforward enough. Are you in control of the presence of data in your database? Yes. It’s up to you to delete it when requested. Are you in control of the data on your harddrive? Yes. It’s up to you to delete it when requested. Are you in control of the operating system implementation or database implementation of deletion? No. Could you get the data back if you wanted to? Yes – but that’s not part of your usual run of business, so why would you explicitly do that? What if some bad dude steals your harddrive and then rummages through it? Ok we are getting a little far-fetched here for most businesses that are not keeping special category data, but if this does happen, then you have failed in your security controls.
I guess my overall point here is that GDPR Compliance is a continuum, not a tickbox. You want to be doing the best you can with it and document why you can go so far and not further. The companies that will be getting the big legislative fines are the guys that are willy-nilly exporting special category data out of the EEA en masse without the knowledge of the people associated with that data. The rest of us just need to muddle along as best we can.
]]>gdpr privacy dev tech coding data-protection law eu storagehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c663de250cbd/How the #repealshield Twitter Blocklist is legal under GDPR2018-05-30T11:34:57+00:00
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1001740417057067010.html
jmrepealthe8th repealshield twitter blocklists gdpr law ireland eu abusehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b378df48db21/ACLU to Amazon: Get out of the surveillance business2018-05-23T16:49:45+00:00
https://action.aclu.org/petition/amazon-stop-selling-surveillance
jmAlready, Rekognition is in use in Florida and Oregon. Government agencies in California and Arizona have sought information about it, too. And Amazon didn't just sell Rekognition to law enforcement, it's actively partnering with them to ensure that authorities can fully utilize Rekognition's capabilities.
Amazon has branded itself as customer-centric, opposed secret government surveillance, and has a CEO who publicly supported First Amendment freedoms and spoke out against the discriminatory Muslim Ban. Yet, Amazon is powering dangerous surveillance that poses a grave threat to customers and communities already unjustly targeted in the current political climate.
We must make it clear to Amazon that we won't stand by and let it pad its bottom line by selling out our civil rights.
]]>aclu amazon rekognition facial-recognition faces law privacy data-privacy civil-rightshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:02ca62bc9d24/Tricks, Lies and Videotape: The Dirty Tactics of the Anti Choice Side - HeadStuff2018-05-21T11:08:06+00:00
https://www.headstuff.org/topical/dirty-tactics-of-the-anti-choice-side/
jmrepealthe8th ireland law abortion prochoice dirty-tricks tacticshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3395a2727892/Abortion - the street demonstrations in pictures2018-05-15T14:21:50+00:00
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/abortion-the-street-demonstrations-in-pictures-1.2803266#&gid=1&pid=10
jm1992 1990s history ireland x-case abortion repealthe8th lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a2667e439129/GDPR will pop the adtech bubble2018-05-15T10:18:58+00:00
https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/12/gdpr/
jmWithout adtech, the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) would never have happened. But the GDPR did happen, and as a result websites all over the world are suddenly posting notices about their changed privacy policies, use of cookies, and opt-in choices for “relevant” or “interest-based” (translation: tracking-based) advertising. Email lists are doing the same kinds of things.
“Sunrise day” for the GDPR is 25 May. That’s when the EU can start smacking fines on violators.
Simply put, your site or service is a violator if it extracts or processes personal data without personal permission. Real permission, that is. You know, where you specifically say “Hell yeah, I wanna be tracked everywhere.”
Of course what I just said greatly simplifies what the GDPR actually utters, in bureaucratic legalese. The GDPR is also full of loopholes only snakes can thread; but the spirit of the law is clear, and the snakes will be easy to shame, even if they don’t get fined. (And legitimate interest—an actual loophole in the GDPR, may prove hard to claim.)
Toward the aftermath, the main question is What will be left of advertising—and what it supports—after the adtech bubble pops?
]]>advertising europe law privacy gdpr tracking data-privacyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4ee6f2fe1a61/Europe fires back at ICANN's delusional plan to overhaul Whois for GDPR by next, er, year • The Register2018-04-30T09:46:14+00:00
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/27/europe_icann_whois_gdpr/
jmSo was it European law experts Hamilton that wrongly advised ICANN that it could request for a "moratorium" over the new law until it came up with a new solution?
It seems unlikely given their expertise and the fact it was them that first warned ICANN that it had wrongly persuaded itself that it was not affected by the new law. What seems more probable is that ICANN's staff and management board simply persuaded themselves that they could stall for time for no reason other than the fact that it would be convenient for them.
]]>icann fail gdpr whois law regulation euhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4dbc0c12ac1a/A flaw-by-flaw guide to Facebook’s new GDPR privacy changes | TechCrunch2018-04-18T15:07:01+00:00
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-changes/
jmOverall, it seems like Facebook is complying with the letter of GDPR law, but with questionable spirit. Sure, privacy is boring to a lot of people. Too little info and they feel confused and scared. Too many choices and screens and they feel overwhelmed and annoyed. Facebook struck the right balance in some places here. But the subtly pushy designs seem intended to steer people away from changing their defaults in ways that could hamper Facebook’s mission and business.
]]>gdpr design facebook privacy data-protection data-privacy social-networking eu lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b2f326655ebb/How to report graphic abortion imagery to the gardai under Irish law2018-04-14T11:41:26+00:00
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/984791345926758401.html
jmI tried to report ICBR graphic abortion imagery to the Gardai today and met a lot of resistance. The following thread gives an account of what happened and how someone can effectively report this imagery. 1/x
At 2pm on Friday the 13th of April I noticed the presence of ICBR graphic abortion imagery being displayed outside the Nassau street entrance of Trinity. I called Kevin Street Garda Station in order to make a complaint under Section 7 of the Public Order Act 1994 2/x
I was told that the Gardai had been instructed by their superiors to not intervene with such imagery and that this direction had come from the Refendum Commission itself. I then called the Refendum Commission in order to query this, as they'd never been involved previously. 3/x
A representative from the commission informed me that no such direction had been given to the Gardai as it is not in the commission's remit to influence such imagery. The representative told me that they would contact with Kevin Street Station about this miscommunication. 4/x
I then rang Kevin Street Station again to inform them of what I had been told by the Refendum Commission. I was then told that a complaint had to be made in person to either a Garda on the scene or to a local station (Trinity would be Pearse Street), which is understandable. 5/x
I informed the Gardai of a similar experience in Dundrum in which the local station had dispatched officers to move along those displaying the imagery to prevent a breach of the peace without a complaint being made in person. 6/x
I was finally told that Pearse Street Station would be contacted to have an available car dispatched to Trinity. 8/x
TLDR: If you see this imagery, report it under Section 7. If you are told that the Gardai cannot intervene, let them know that other stations have before. If they say they have been directed by the Referendum Commission, let them know there is no such directive on record. 9/x
I hope this miscommunication can be cleared up and that both @gardainfo and @RefCom_ie end up on the same page, so that Gardai can continue to do their jobs effectively and respond to public complaints of breach of the peace. 10/10
Very illuminating.
]]>twitter threads abortion propaganda gardai law ireland public-order-acthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9122cedf3fdc/A quantitive analysis of the impact of arbitrary blockchain content on Bitcoin2018-03-19T21:31:51+00:00
https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/19/a-quantitive-analysis-of-the-impact-of-arbitrary-blockchain-content-on-bitcoin/
jmblockchain bitcoin ledger immutability internet law crime papershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b05bc0380cd4/These experts figured out why so many bogus patents get approved | Ars Technica2018-01-03T13:58:15+00:00
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/these-experts-figured-out-why-so-many-bogus-patents-get-approved/
jmA recent paper published by the Brookings Institution offers fascinating insights into this question. Written by legal scholars Michael Frakes and Melissa Wasserman, the paper identifies three ways the patent process encourages approval of low-quality patents:
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is funded by fees—and the agency gets more fees if it approves an application.
Unlimited opportunities to refile rejected applications means sometimes granting a patent is the only way to get rid of a persistent applicant.
Patent examiners are given less time to review patent applications as they gain seniority, leading to less thorough reviews.
None of these observations is entirely new. For example, we have covered the problems created by unlimited re-applications in the past. But what sets Frakes and Wasserman's work apart is that they have convincing empirical evidence for all three theories.
]]>patents uspto swpats brookings-institution patenting lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3a369bf6223b/The Impenetrable Program Transforming How Courts Treat DNA Evidence | WIRED2017-11-30T11:45:46+00:00
https://www.wired.com/story/trueallele-software-transforming-how-courts-treat-dna-evidence/
jmlaw justice trueallele software dna evidence statistics probability code-review auditinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8b677ee89f88/EU Prepares "Right to Repair" Legislation to Fight Short Product Lifespans2017-07-10T11:29:58+00:00
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/government/eu-prepares-right-to-repair-legislation-to-fight-short-product-lifespans/
jmright-to-repair repair eu law hacking planned-obsolescence hardware consumerhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3e59d19e204c/The Guardian view on patient data: we need a better approach | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian2017-07-06T09:54:02+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/05/the-guardian-view-on-patient-data-we-need-a-better-approach
jm
The use of privacy law to curb the tech giants in this instance, or of competition law in the case of the EU’s dispute with Google, both feel slightly maladapted. They do not address the real worry. It is not enough to say that the algorithms DeepMind develops will benefit patients and save lives. What matters is that they will belong to a private monopoly which developed them using public resources. If software promises to save lives on the scale that drugs now can, big data may be expected to behave as big pharma has done. We are still at the beginning of this revolution and small choices now may turn out to have gigantic consequences later. A long struggle will be needed to avoid a future of digital feudalism. Dame Elizabeth’s report is a welcome start.
Hear hear.
]]>privacy law uk nhs data google deepmind healthcare tech open-sourcehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ac7e968296a3/How they did it: an analysis of emissions defeat devices in modern automobiles2017-06-20T14:18:22+00:00
https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/06/20/how-they-did-it-an-analysis-of-emissions-defeat-devices-in-modern-automobiles/
jmUsing CurveDiff, the team analysed 963 firmware images, for which analysis completed successfully for 924. 406 of the analysed images contained a defeat device, out of which 333 contained at least one active profile. In at least 268 images, the test detection affects the EGR. Firmware images released on Dec 3rd 2014 are used in VW Passat cars, and include the refinement to the defeat device to detect steering wheel angle that we discussed previously.
]]>cars driving emissions diesel volkswagen law regulation firmware reverse-engineeringhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:99140c6bd7a2/GDPR Advisors and Consultants - Data Compliance Europe2017-05-31T15:20:42+00:00
http://www.datacomplianceeurope.eu/
jmOur consultancy helps our clients understand how EU privacy law applies to their organisations; delivers the practical and concrete steps needed to achieve legal compliance; and helps them manage their continuing obligations after GDPR comes into force. Our structured approach to GDPR provides a long-term data compliance framework to minimise the ongoing risk of potential fines for data protection breaches. Our continuing partnership provides regulator liaison, advisory consultancy, and external Data Protection Officer services.
]]>gdpr simon-mcgarr law privacy eu europe data-protection regulation datahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a6348c94c2dc/'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel J. Solove :: SSRN2017-05-25T09:47:44+00:00
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
jmIn this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.
Via Fred Logue]]>law philosophy privacy security essay papers daniel-solove surveillance snoopinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b98059c5a106/U.S. top court tightens patent suit rules in blow to 'patent trolls'2017-05-23T11:24:19+00:00
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-kraft-heinz-idUSKBN18I1SZ
jmThe U.S. Supreme Court on Monday tightened rules for where patent lawsuits can be filed in a decision that may make it harder for so-called patent "trolls" to launch sometimes dodgy patent cases in friendly courts, a major irritant for high-tech giants like Apple and Alphabet Inc's Google.
In a decision that upends 27 years of law governing patent infringement cases, the justices sided with beverage flavoring company TC Heartland LLC in its legal battle with food and beverage company Kraft Heinz Co (KHC.O). The justices ruled 8-0 that patent suits can be filed only in courts located in the jurisdiction where the targeted company is incorporated.
via Brad Fitzgerald]]>via:bradfitz patents swpats east-texas law trolls supreme-court infringementhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4e7746c5736a/Government urged to declare if it wants mandatory ID cards2017-05-22T12:06:08+00:00
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/government-urged-to-declare-if-it-wants-mandatory-id-cards-1.3091892
jmprivacy government ireland id-cards lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:359d1da91e3e/Seeking medical abortions online is safe and effective, study finds | World news | The Guardian2017-05-17T10:45:39+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/17/seeking-medical-abortions-online-is-safe-and-effective-study-finds
jmOf the 1,636 women who were sent the drugs between the start of 2010 and the end of 2012, the team were able to analyse self-reported data from 1,000 individuals who confirmed taking the pills. All were less than 10 weeks pregnant.
The results reveal that almost 95% of the women successfully ended their pregnancy without the need for surgical intervention. None of the women died, although seven women required a blood transfusion and 26 needed antibiotics.
Of the 93 women who experienced symptoms for which the advice was to seek medical attention, 95% did so, going to a hospital or clinic.
“When we talk about self-sought, self-induced abortion, people think about coat hangers or they think about tables in back alleys,” said Aiken. “But I think this research really shows that in 2017 self-sourced abortion is a network of people helping and supporting each other through what’s really a safe and effective process in the comfort of their own homes, and I think is a huge step forward in public health.”
]]>health medicine abortion pro-choice data women-on-web ireland law repealthe8thhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c52b564461e0/Fireside Chat with Vint Cerf & Marc Andreessen (Google Cloud Next '17) - YouTube2017-05-15T10:09:07+00:00
https://youtu.be/y9bJ8LslSZ4?t=27m00s
jmvint-cerf gcp regulation oversight politics law reliability systemshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3abb7da356e4/A federal court has ruled that an open-source license is an enforceable contract — Quartz2017-05-12T13:55:07+00:00
https://qz.com/981029/a-federal-court-has-ruled-that-an-open-source-license-is-an-enforceable-contract/
jm“Not so,” said Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in her order on the motion on April 25. Corley said the GNU GPL “provides that the Ghostscript user agrees to its terms if the user does not obtain a commercial license. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant used Ghostscript, did not obtain a commercial license, and represented publicly that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the GNL GPU. These allegations sufficiently plead the existence of a contract.”
]]>open-source oss ghostscript gnu gpl licenses contracts lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8ccdf8d22757/Peter Boylan: New maternity hospital should not be given to Sisters of Charity2017-04-21T15:38:47+00:00
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/peter-boylan-new-maternity-hospital-should-not-be-given-to-sisters-of-charity-1.3055744#.WPn66AwKZhQ.facebook
jmI do not believe that ownership of the €300 million, state-of-the-art National Maternity Hospital should be gifted to the Sisters of Charity. A lot of other people appear to share my view.
Secondly, a properly independent board needs to oversee the running of the new hospital.
The Minister has the power to intervene to protect both the medical interests of women and their infants and the financial interests of the Irish taxpayer. He must now do so.
Dr Peter Boylan is chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and a former master of the National Maternity Hospital. Nobody is more qualified on this]]>peter-boylan law ireland maternity hospitals nuns statehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:517019edd072/GitHub's new Balanced Employee IP Agreement (BEIPA) lets workers keep the IP when they use company resources for personal projects — Quartz2017-03-21T14:24:54+00:00
https://qz.com/937038/github-now-lets-its-workers-keep-the-ip-when-they-use-company-resources-for-personal-projects/?s=1
jmIf it’s on company time, it’s the company’s dime. That’s the usual rule in the tech industry—that if employees use company resources to work on projects unrelated to their jobs, their employer can claim ownership of any intellectual property (IP) they create.
But GitHub is throwing that out the window. Today the code-sharing platform announced a new policy, the Balanced Employee IP Agreement (BEIPA). This allows its employees to use company equipment to work on personal projects in their free time, which can occur during work hours, without fear of being sued for the IP. As long as the work isn’t related to GitHub’s own “existing or prospective” products and services, the employee owns it.
]]>github law tech jobs work day-job side-projects hacking ip copyrighthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:59c1f2763a9b/UN privacy watchdog says 'little or no evidence' that mass surveillance works | ZDNet2017-03-15T11:59:28+00:00
http://www.zdnet.com/article/un-privacy-rapporteur-says-little-or-no-evidence-that-surveillance-laws-work/
jmThe United Nations' special rapporteur on privacy has lambasted a spate of new surveillance laws across Europe and the US, saying that there is "little or no evidence" that mass monitoring of communications works. In a report published this week, Prof. Joseph Cannataci, the first privacy watchdog to take up the post, said he was neither convinced of the effectiveness or the proportionality "of some of the extremely privacy-intrusive measures that have been introduced by new surveillance laws."
He also said that bulk records collection, such as call and email metadata, runs the risk of "being hacked by hostile governments or organized crime."
Cannataci singled out recently-passed laws in France, Germany, the UK and the US, all of which have pushed through new legislation in the wake of the threat from the so-called Islamic State. He said that the passed laws amount to "gesture-politics," which in his words, "have seen politicians who wish to be seen to be doing something about security, legislating privacy-intrusive powers into being -- or legalize existing practices -- without in any way demonstrating that this is either a proportionate or indeed an effective way to tackle terrorism." A rise in public support of increased surveillance powers is "predicated on the psychology of fear," he said, referring to the perceived threat of terrorism.
]]>surveillance law privacy un joseph-cannataci watchdogs terrorism fear fudhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:de40e6080c43/Communications data errors: UK police incriminating the wrong people due to data retention system screwups2017-03-12T23:11:50+00:00
http://www.cyberleagle.com/2014/07/the-other-side-of-communications-data.html
jm- Omission of an underscore when transcribing an e-mail address led to the wrong subscriber information being provided and a search warrant being executed at the premises of an individual unconnected with the investigation.
- A CSP's data warehouse system change affected how GMT and British Summer Time were treated. This was not communicated to staff using the data retention disclosure system. This led to a one hour error in subscriber information disclosed in relation to IP address usage. Of 98 potential disclosure errors identified, 94 were in fact incorrect and four returned the same results when re-run. Of the 94 incorrect disclosures, in three cases a search warrant was executed at premises relating to individuals unconnected with the investigation (and one individual was arrested).
- Due to a technical fault causing a time zone conversion to be out by seven hours, a CSP voluntarily disclosed an incorrect IP address to a public authority. That led to a search warrant being executed at premises relating to individuals unconnected with the investigation.
In other words, timezones largely screw up everything, yet again.]]>timezones uk law data-retention errors bsthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2b6fd76aa954/Tim Berners-Lee calls for tighter regulation of online political advertising | Technology | The Guardian2017-03-12T23:06:58+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/11/tim-berners-lee-online-political-advertising-regulation?CMP=share_btn_tw
jm“Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?” Berners-Lee said.
]]>politics trump law elections polling advertising facebook micro-advertisinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7d0018480ce9/Trump Tracker: All the Executive Orders Issued by the President2017-01-26T12:20:09+00:00
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/trump-tracker-executive-orders-issued-by-the-presi.html
jmtrump us-politics executive-orders tpp lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b26fa8aeba5c/The best thing to mark National Stalking Awareness Week would be to scrap the law on stalking2016-09-27T10:23:16+00:00
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2016/04/18/the-best-thing-to-mark-national-stalking-awareness-week-would-be-to-scrap-the-law-on-stalking/
jmin 2012, the coalition government, in a fit of virtue signalling, announced a bold plan to offer extra protection to victims of stalking, following a rash of reported cases where obsessive nutjobs had slipped through the net. Hence, via the 2012 Act, section 2A was shoved into the Protection from Harassment Act, creating a shiny new offence of stalking.
What is stalking, you ask? Well here’s the clever bit. Stalking is…”a course of conduct which amounts to harassment…and [where] the acts or omissions involved are ones associated with stalking“. To inject some colour into the dull circularity of the definition, section 2A(3) provides “examples of acts or omissions associated with stalking”. In other words, you need to prove that the defendant is guilty of both harassment and stalking, in order to convict them of stalking. Therefore, proving stalking is by definition harder for the prosecution than simply proving harassment.
And what do you get if you opt for the harder road? What prize awaits the victorious prosecutor who has slogged her way through the additional evidential burden thrust upon her by section 2A? The answer is….nothing. Or at least, nothing more than if you successfully prosecuted for harassment. The maximum sentence in each case is 6 months’ imprisonment.
It is the very definition of empty gesture legislating. Section 2A is so very pointlessly pointless that I want urgently to go back in time to the day when then-crime prevention minister Jeremy Browne was hubristically prattling on about what a difference this law is going to make and shove a whoopee pie right up his schnoz. Section 2A does nothing other than create a new offence that is harder to prove than an existing offence that prohibits the same conduct, solely, it seems, to allow for the drawing of an entirely semantic distinction between “harassment” and “stalking”.
]]>harrassment stalking law legislation uk police crime prosecutionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fac2f47bbbb4/"Better truck design could save hundreds of pedestrian and cyclist lives"2016-09-26T09:58:23+00:00
http://irishcycle.com/2016/09/18/truck-blind-spots-from-virtually-none-to-meters-where-cyclists-are-hidden-from-drivers-view/
jmEuropean transport group, Transport and Environment, said that the Loughborough study shows that better design “could save hundreds of pedestrian and cyclists’ lives”. It added that the study “finds huge differences in the direct vision – what drivers can see with their own eyes – of best and worst-in-class trucks in all categories, and that ‘low-entry cabs’ like the Mercedes Econic out perform all of today’s best performing vehicles.”
A P-Series truck, from truck maker Scania, was rated at the best of its class with zero blind spots — this could go a long way to explaining why the makers of a Road Safety Authority video using another P-Series truck reportedly had to fake blind spots last year.
Mandatory extra mirrors has been EU policy to try to reduce collisions with people cycling and walking but researchers point out that blind spots remain on many trucks and improving direct vision may be a better policy than improving indirect vision using mirrors. [...]
The EU currently has a deadline of 2028 for improved vision in trucks but Transport and Environment said: “Given that better vision cabs are already available on the market and in all market segments (best in class, smarter configurations, low entry vehicles) a 2028 deadline is not justifiable.”
]]>cycling safety trucks law scania roads pedestrianshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5ec09b11a751/“I Want to Know What Code Is Running Inside My Body” — Backchannel2016-08-09T11:33:04+00:00
https://backchannel.com/i-want-to-know-what-code-is-running-inside-my-body-ff9a159da34b#.427697nb9
jmSandler wants to be able to explore the code running her device for programming flaws and vulnerability to hacking, but she can’t. “Because I don’t have access to the source code, I have no power to do anything about it,” she says. In her eyes, it’s a particularly obvious example of a problem that now cuts across much of modern life: proprietary software has become crucial to daily survival, and yet is often locked away from public exploration and discussion by copyright.
]]>copyright safety health pacemakers law proprietary-software life medicine implantshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b655e4fb096a/Just As We Warned: A Chinese Tech Giant Goes On The Patent Attack -- In East Texas | Techdirt2016-07-21T20:30:12+00:00
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160718/06573135006/just-as-we-warned-chinese-tech-giant-goes-patent-attack-east-texas.shtml
jmTechdirt has been warning for years that the West's repeated demands for China to "respect" patents could backfire badly. [...] And guess what? That is exactly what has just happened, as The Wall Street Journal reports:
'Huawei Technologies Co. said it has filed a lawsuit against T-Mobile US Inc., alleging the U.S. telecommunications carrier violated the Chinese company’s patents related to wireless networks. In its complaint filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Huawei said T-Mobile is using its patented technology without signing a licensing agreement.'
At least this is the most likely scenario to result in patent reform, finally.]]>patents east-texas huawei t-mobile telecoms lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:91fcd568f0c3/Self-driving cars: overlooking data privacy is a car crash waiting to happen2016-07-01T15:18:35+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/08/self-driving-car-legislation-drones-data-security?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
jmself-driving cars vehicles law data privacy data-privacy surveillancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:822edbeacf67/In Wisconsin, a Backlash Against Using Data to Foretell Defendants’ Futures - The New York Times2016-06-23T16:50:46+00:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/us/backlash-in-wisconsin-against-using-data-to-foretell-defendants-futures.html?_r=0
jmCompany officials say the algorithm’s results are backed by research, but they are tight-lipped about its details. They do acknowledge that men and women receive different assessments, as do juveniles, but the factors considered and the weight given to each are kept secret.
“The key to our product is the algorithms, and they’re proprietary,” said Jeffrey Harmon, Northpointe’s general manager. “We’ve created them, and we don’t release them because it’s certainly a core piece of our business. It’s not about looking at the algorithms. It’s about looking at the outcomes.”
That secrecy is at the heart of Mr. Loomis’s lawsuit. His lawyer, Michael D. Rosenberg, who declined to be interviewed because of the pending appeal, argued that Mr. Loomis should be able to review the algorithm and make arguments about its validity as part of his defense. He also challenges the use of different scales for each sex.
The Compas system, Mr. Rosenberg wrote in his brief, “is full of holes and violates the requirement that a sentence be individualized.”
]]>ethics compas sentencing wisconsin northpointe law trial-by-algorithm algorithmshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2281381acc1a/Can the United Kingdom government legally disregard a vote for Brexit?2016-06-15T10:25:57+00:00
http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2016/06/14/can-the-united-kingdom-government-legally-disregard-a-vote-for-brexit/
jmOn the day after a vote for Brexit, the UK will still be a member state of the EU. All the legislation which gives effect to EU law will still be in place. Nothing as a matter of law changes in any way just because of a vote to Leave. What will make all the legal difference is not a decision to leave by UK voters in a non-binding advisory vote, but the decision of the prime minister on how to react before making any Article 50 notification. And what the prime minister will do politically after a referendum vote for Brexit is, at the moment, as unknown as the result of the result of the referendum itself.
]]>brexit law uk government referenda eurosceptics euhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c3987a3bf7a8/Why the Very Silly Oracle v. Google Trial Actually Matters2016-05-26T15:19:01+00:00
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-the-very-silly-oracle-v-google-trial-actually-matters
jmIf it’s illegal to write clean room implementations of APIs, then no one has clean hands. The now-shelved open source project Apache Harmony, like Android, reimplemented Java SE, and tech giant IBM contributed code to that project. Oracle itself built its business off a proprietary implementation of SQL, which was created by IBM. The proposition “Reimplementations of APIs are infringements” creates a recursive rabbit hole of liability that spans across the industry. Even the very 37 Java APIs at issue in this trial contain reimplementations of other APIs. Google witness Joshua Bloch—who, while at Sun Microsystems, wrote many of the Java APIs—testified that specific Java APIs are reimplementations of other APIs from Perl 5 and the C programming language.
]]>apis fair-use copyright ip android java google oracle lawhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:dfc223222b1d/