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In May 2018, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office announced it would investigate Police Scotland after Privacy International filed a complaint that offers' use of "cyber kiosks", which when connected to a device can view all its data, violated the Data Protection Act. Trials of the technology in Stirling and Edinburgh helped officers access 375 phones and 262 SIM cards; police went on to spend £370,000 on 41 kiosks, to be distributed throughout Scotland.
https://www.heraldscotland.…
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In June 2018, Uber filed a US patent application for technology intended to help the company identify drunk riders by comparing data from new ride requests to past requests made by the same user. Conclusions drawn from data such as the number of typos or the angle at which the rider is holding the phone would determine which, if any, driver they were matched with. What plans the company may have for the technology is unknown; however, critics expressed concerns that it could deter prospective…
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In April 2018, the Austrian cabinet agreed on legislation that required asylum seekers would be forced to hand over their mobile devices to allow authorities to check their identities and origins. If they have been found to have entered another EU country first, under the Dublin regulation, they can be sent back there. The number of asylum seekers has dropped substantially since 2016, when measures were taken to close the Balkan route. The bill, which must pass Parliament, also allows the…
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In September 2018, researchers discovered that websites accessed via mobile phones could access an array of device sensors, unlike apps, which request permissions for such access. The researchers found that 3,695 of the top 100,000 websites incorporate scripts that tap into one or more sensors, including Wayfair, Priceline, and Kayak. Unlike location sensors, motion, lighting, and proximity sensors have no mechanism for notifying users and requesting permission. Ad blockers were not effective…
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In September 2018, a number of people whose Google Pixel phones, Essential Phone, OnePlus 6, Nokia handsets, and other devices running Android 9 Pie discovered that the devices had, apparently autonomously, activated the software's Battery Saver feature. Google later explained that an internal experiment to test battery-saving features had accidentally - and erroneously - been rolled out to more users than it had intended. The silent and invasive nature of the mistake made it particularly…
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In September 2018, AI Now co-founder Meredith Whittaker sounded the alarm about the potential for abuse of the convergence of neuroscience, human enhancement, and AI in the form of brain-computer interfaces. Part of Whittaker's concern was that the only companies with the computational power necessary to develop these technologies are those already leading in AI: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and equivalent. The result would be that the neural data collected from individuals' thoughts would be…
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In 2014, Britain announced an infrastructure plan requiring all energy suppliers to offer smart meters to all homes and businesses by the end of 2020. With two years to go, at the end of 2018, the problems customers experienced after making the switch led to calls to halt the rollout, which had reached 13 million of Britain's 53 million homes and was already losing momentum. Among other problems, 940,000 of the meters lost their smart functionality when customers switched supplier. Many of the…
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In October 2018, a transparency report from the smart home company Nest, which Google acquired for $3.2 billion in 2014, found that between 2015 and 2018 Nest had been told to hand over data on 300 separate occasions relating to up to 525 Nest account holders. Nest turned over data in fewer than 20% of the cases in the first half of 2018, down from the second half of 2015, when the company complied nearly 60% of the time. Nest is best known for its smart thermostats, but it also makes…
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In September 2018, the 156-year-old US life insurance company John Hancock announced it would stop underwriting traditional life insurance policies, instead selling only interactive policies that track health and fitness through the data collected by wearable devices and smartphones. Interactive life insurance had already become well-established in South Africa and Britain, and was spreading in the US. The company argued that the change would promote both health and profits; however, privacy…
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In October 2018, the app that supports the burglar alarm functions of Yale's "smart" locks and burglar alarms was disabled for 24 hours after an "unforeseen issue while carrying out unplanned network maintenance". Customers complained that they were unable to open or lock doors or disarm alarms, and that the company failed to warn them of the problem. At the time, Yale had just announced a trial with the Waitrose supermarket chain for an in-home delivery service.
https://www.theinquirer.net/…
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Britain's £11 billion plan to offer smart meters to all homes and businesses by the end of 2020 was based in part on claims that the meters would give consumers better information about the energy they were using and offer sophisticated variable rate charging as part of working to combat climate change and pollution. In October 2018, the British Infrastructure Group of Parliamentarians, which is made up of 92 MPs and peers, issued a critical report noting that delays and cost increases were…
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In October 2018 Amazon patented a new version of its Alexa virtual assistant that would analyse speech to identify signs of illness or emotion and offer to sell remedies. The patent also envisions using the technology to target ads. Although the company may never exploit the patent, the NHS had previously announced it intended to make information from its online NHS Choices service available via Alexa.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/09/amazon-patents-new-alexa-feature-knows-…
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In March 2018 the Palo Alto startup Mindstrong Health, founded by three doctors, began clinical tests of an app that uses patients' interactions with their smartphones to monitor their mental state. The app, which is being tested on people with serious illness, measures the way patients swipe, tap, and type into their phones; the encrypted baseline and ongoing data is then analysed using machine learning to find patterns that indicate brain disorders such as a relapse into depression, substance…
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In a 2018 interview, the Stanford professor of organisational behaviour Michal Kosinski discussed his research, which included a controversial and widely debunked 2017 study claiming that his algorithms could distinguish gay and straight faces; a 2013 study of 58,000 people that explored the relationship between Facebook Likes and psychological and demographic characteristics; and the myPersonality project, which collected data on 6 million people via a personality quiz that went viral on…
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In 2018, the British army used paid Facebook messages to target 16-year-olds around the day GCSE results were announced to suggest that an army career might still be open to them if their grades were sub-par. The move was criticised for targeting teenagers at their most vulnerable and stressed moment in order to fill the army roles that require are least popular and hardest to recruit. The answer to a written parliamentary question revealed that the army spent £1.7 million advertising on social…
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In 2018, a Duke University medical doctor who worked with Microsoft researchers to analyse millions of Bing user searches found links between some computer users' physical behaviours - tremors while using a mouse, repeated queries, and average scrolling speed - and Parkinson's disease. The hope was to be able to diagnose conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's earlier and more accurately. Other such studies tracked participants via a weekly online health survey, mouse usage, and, via…
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In 2018, the chair of the London Assembly's police and crime committee called on London's mayor to cut the budget of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which provides oversight, in order to pay for AI systems. The intention was that the efficiencies of adopting AI would free up officers' time by helping spot crime patterns to identify potential suspects, and examine data on seized devices. The time saved could put greater numbers of police on the streets to counter London's rising crime…
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In 2017, the head of China’s security and intelligence systems, Meng Jianzhu, called on security forces to break down barriers to data sharing in order to use AI and cloud computing to find patterns that could predict and prevent terrorist attacks. Meng also called for increased integration of the footage from the country's surveillance cameras and suggested that AI could "improve the predictability, accuracy and efficiency of social management". China is investing heavily in AI, expecting to…
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In 2018, documents obtained by a public records request revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department required its analysts to maintain a minimum of a dozen ongoing surveillance targets identified using Palantir software and a "probable offender" formula based on an LAPD points-based predictive policing formula. The Palantir software, which LADP began using in 2011, analyses data from myriad police sources that LAPD says helps target chronic offenders and lower crime rates. Critics such as…
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In 2017, the Massachusetts attorney general's office reached an agreement under which Boston-based Copley Advertising agreed to eschew sending mobile ads to patients visiting Planned Parenthood and other health clinics. In 2015, Copley's geofencing technique used location information from smartphones and other internet-enabled devices to target "abortion-minded" women and send them ads for alternatives to abortion in a campaign it conducted on behalf of a Christian pregnancy counselling and…
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In 2018, the digital marketing company Tell All Digital began marketing technology to personal injury law firms to enable them to send mobile ads to patients they know are waiting for treatment in an emergency room and for up to a month afterwards. The technology relies on geofencing, a technique for targeting people in a specific location using a phone ID derived from wi-fi, cell data, or GPS apps. Under the US Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, this type of targeting is…
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By 2018, gene studies involving more than 200,000 test takers had found correlations between 500 human genes and academic success. Based on these results, the behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin claimed that parents would be able to use consumer tests to enable "precision education", built around accurate predictions of their children's mental abilities. Even though DNA variations linked to test scores explained less than 10% of the difference in intelligence among the Europe-descended…
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Canada began experiments introducing automated decision-making algorithms into its immigration systems to support evaluation of some of the country's immigrant and visitor applications in 2014. In a 2018 study, Citizen Lab and NewsDeeply found that AI's use was expanding despite concerns about bias, discrimination, and privacy breaches, along with other human rights issues such as due process and procedural fairness. Residents lacking citizenship often have less access to human rights…
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By August 2018, the UK government's "hostile environment" policy, as set out in the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts and other measures, was extending the national border into the heart of services such as banking, education, health, and housing where landlords and staff have been forced to implement immigration checks. Students are a particular focus; it is harder to apply to UK universities and work after graduation, and international students must comply with stricter rules on attendance and…
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In September 2018, the US Department of Homeland Security proposed to add credit scores and histories to the list of information immigrants are required to submit when applying for legal resident status. The stated purpose of the proposed rule is to bar those who might become a "public charge" from acquiring legal residency, extending their stay, or changing their status. While credit reports do reveal information about an individual's debt, payment, and work history, they were never designed…
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In May 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned the development of machine learning software intended to mine Facebook, Twitter, and the open Internet to identify terrorists. The software, announced in the summer of 2017, had been a key element of president Donald Trump's "extreme vetting" programme and expected to flag at least 10,000 people a year for investigation. ICE decided instead to opt for a contractor who could provide training, management, and human personnel to do the…
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Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the New York City Police Department installed thousands of CCTV cameras and by 2008 in partnership with Microsoft had built the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center to consolidate its video surveillance operations into a single command centre that also incorporated other sensors such as licence plate readers and radiation detectors. In 2010 as part of its Domain Awareness System, the NYPD began integrating cutting-edge video analytics software into…
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In 2011, the US Department of Homeland Security funded research into a virtual border agent kiosk called AVATAR, for Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time, and tested it at the US-Mexico border on low-risk travellers who volunteered to participate. In the following years, the system was also tested by Canada's Border Services Agency in 2016 and the EU border agency Frontex in 2014. The research team behind the system, which included the University of Arizona, claimed the…
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In 2018, at least five British local authorities began developing systems intended to use predictive analytics to identify families needing attention from child services on the basis that algorithmic profiling could help them target their scarce resources more efficiently. Data about at least 377,000 people were incorporated into predictive systems managed by a variety of private companies: Xantura (used by Hackney and Thurrock) or by systems they developed internally (Newham and Bristol). IBM…
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In 2018, the EU announced iBorderCtrl, a six-month pilot led by the Hungarian National Police to install an automated lie detection test at four border crossing points in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece. The system uses an animated AI border agent that records travellers' faces while asking questions such as "What's in your suitcase?". The AI then analyses the video, scoring each response for 38 microexpressions. Travellers who pass will be issued QR codes to let them through; those who don't will…