US legislator, David Cicilline, joins international push to interrogate platform power

US legislator David Cicilline will be joining the next meeting of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and ‘Fake News’, it has been announced. The meeting will be held in Dublin on November 7.

Chair of the committee, the Irish Fine Gael politician Hildegarde Naughton, announced Cicilline’s inclusion today.

The congressman — who is chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law Subcommittee — will attend as an “ex officio member” which will allow him to question witnesses, she added.

Exactly who the witnesses in front of the grand committee will be is tbc. But the inclusion of a US legislator in the ranks of a non-US committee that’s been seeking answers about reining in online disinformation will certainly make any invitations that get extended to senior executives at US-based tech giants much harder to ignore.

Naughton points out that the addition of American legislators also means the International Grand Committee represents ~730 million citizens — and “their right to online privacy and security”.

“The Dublin meeting will be really significant in that it will be the first time that US legislators will participate,” she said in a statement. “As all the major social media/tech giants were founded and are headquartered in the United States it is very welcome that Congressman Cicilline has agreed to participate. His own Committee is presently conducting investigations into Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple and so his attendance will greatly enhance our deliberations.”

“Greater regulation of social media and tech giants is fast becoming a priority for many countries throughout the world,” she added. “The International Grand Committee is a gathering of international parliamentarians who have a particular responsibility in this area. We will coordinate actions to tackle online election interference, ‘fake news’, and harmful online communications, amongst other issues while at the same time respecting freedom of speech.”

The international committee met for its first session in London last November — when it was forced to empty-chair Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who had declined to attend in person, sending UK policy VP Richard Allan in his stead.

Lawmakers from nine countries spent several hours taking Allan to task over Facebook’s lack of accountability for problems generated by the content it distributes and amplifies, raising myriad examples of ongoing failure to tackle the democracy-denting, society-damaging disinformation — from election interference to hate speech whipping up genocide.

A second meeting of the grand committee was held earlier this year in Canada — taking place over three days in May.

Again Zuckerberg failed to show. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also gave international legislators zero facetime, with the company opting to send local head of policy, Kevin Chan, and global head of policy, Neil Potts, as stand ins.

Lawmakers were not amused. Canadian MPs voted to serve Zuckerberg and Sandberg with an open summons — meaning they’ll be required to appear before it the next time they step foot in the country.

Parliamentarians in the UK also issued a summons for Zuckerberg last year after repeat snubs to testify to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee’s enquiry into fake news — a decision that essentially gave birth to the international grand committee, as legislators in multiple jurisdictions united around a common cause of trying to find ways to hold social media giants to accounts.

Delighted to hear that @davidcicilline will be joining us for the next International Grand Committee on disinformation in Dublin in November https://t.co/TI07XEVwLm @CommonsCMS

— Damian Collins (@DamianCollins) August 15, 2019

While it’s not clear who the grand committee will invite to the next session, Facebook’s founder seems highly unlikely to have dropped off their list. And this time Zuckerberg and Sandberg may find it harder to turn down an invite to Dublin, given the committee’s ranks will include a homegrown lawmaker.

In a statement on joining the next meeting, Cicilline said: “We are living in a critical moment for privacy rights and competition online, both in the United States and around the world.  As people become increasingly connected by what seem to be free technology platforms, many remain unaware of the costs they are actually paying.

“The Internet has also become concentrated, less open, and growingly hostile to innovation. This is a problem that transcends borders, and it requires multinational cooperation to craft solutions that foster competition and safeguard privacy online. I look forward to joining the International Grand Committee as part of its historic effort to identify problems in digital markets and chart a path forward that leads to a better online experience for everyone.”

Multiple tech giants (including Facebook) have their international headquarters in Ireland — making the committee’s choice of location for their next meeting a strategic one. Should any tech CEOs thus choose to snub an invite to testify to the committee they might find themselves being served with an open summons to testify by Irish parliamentarians — and not being able to set foot in a country where their international HQ is located would be more than a reputational irritant.

Ireland’s privacy regulator is also sitting on a stack of open investigations against tech giants — again with Facebook and Facebook owned companies producing the fattest file (some 11 investigations). But there are plenty of privacy and security concerns to go around, with the DPC’s current case file also touching tech giants including Apple, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Microsoft tweaks privacy policy to admit humans can listen to Skype Translator and Cortana audio

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to amend its privacy policy after media reports revealed it uses human contractors to review audio recordings of Skype and Cortana users.

A section in the policy on how the company uses personal data now reads (emphasis ours):

Our processing of personal data for these purposes includes both automated and manual (human) methods of processing. Our automated methods often are related to and supported by our manual methods. For example, our automated methods include artificial intelligence (AI), which we think of as a set of technologies that enable computers to perceive, learn, reason, and assist in decision-making to solve problems in ways that are similar to what people do. To build, train, and improve the accuracy of our automated methods of processing (including AI), we manually review some of the predictions and inferences produced by the automated methods against the underlying data from which the predictions and inferences were made. For example, we manually review short snippets of a small sampling of voice data we have taken steps to de-identify to improve our speech services, such as recognition and translation.

The tweaks to the privacy policy of Microsoft’s Skype VoIP software and its Cortana voice AI were spotted by Motherboard — which was also first to report that contractors working for Microsoft are listening to personal conversations of Skype users conducted through the app’s translation service, and to audio snippets captured by the Cortana voice assistant.

Asked about the privacy policy changes, Microsoft told Motherboard: “We realized, based on questions raised recently, that we could do a better job specifying that humans sometimes review this content.”

Multiple tech giants’ use of human workers to review users’ audio across a number of products involving AI has grabbed headlines in recent weeks after journalists exposed a practice that had not been clearly conveyed to users in terms and conditions — despite European privacy law requiring clarity about how people’s data is used.

Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all been called out for failing to make it clear that a portion of audio recordings will be accessed by human contractors.

Such workers are typically employed to improve the performance of AI systems by verifying translations and speech in different accents. But, again, this human review component within AI systems has generally been buried rather than transparently disclosed.

Earlier this month a German privacy watchdog told Google it intended to use EU privacy law to order it to halt human reviews of audio captured by its Google Assistant AI in Europe — after press had obtained leaked audio snippets and being able to re-identify some of the people in the recordings.

On learning of the regulator’s planned intervention Google suspended reviews.

Apple also announced it was suspending human reviews of Siri snippets globally, again after a newspaper reported that its contractors could access audio and routinely heard sensitive stuff.

Facebook also said it was pausing human reviews of a speech-to-text AI feature offered in its Messenger app — again after concerns had been raised by journalists.

So far Apple, Google and Facebook have suspended or partially suspended human reviews in response to media disclosures and/or regulatory attention.

While the lead privacy regulator for all three, Ireland’s DPC, has started asking questions.

In response to the rising privacy scrutiny of what tech giants nonetheless claim is a widespread industry practice, Amazon also recently amended the Alexa privacy policy to disclose that it employs humans to review some audio. It also quietly added an option for uses to opt-out of the possibility of someone listening to their Alexa recordings. Amazon’s lead EU privacy regulator is also now seeking answers.

Microsoft told Motherboard it is not suspending human reviews at this stage.

Users of Microsoft’s voice assistant can delete recordings — but such deletions require action from the user and would be required on a rolling basis as long as the product continues being use. So it’s not the same as having a full and blanket opt out.

We’ve asked Microsoft whether it intends to offer Skype or Cortana users an opt out of their recordings being reviewed by humans.

The company told Motherboard it will “continue to examine further steps we might be able to take”.

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Huawei pushes back launch of 5G foldable, the Mate X

If you were desperately ripping days off of your calendar until you could get your hands on Huawei’s $2,600 5G foldable, the Mate X — which was originally slated to launch next month — it sounds like you’re going to have to wait a bit longer, per TechRadar which attended a press event at Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters today. 

It reports being told there is no possibility of a September launch. Instead Huawei is now aiming for November. But the company would only profess itself certain its first smartphone that folds out to a (square) tablet will launch before 2020. So it seems Mate X buyers may need to wait until circa Christmas to fondle this foldable.

It’s not clear exactly why the launch is being delayed. But — speculating wildly — we imagine it’s something to do with the fact that the screen, er, folds.

We’ve reached out to Huawei for official comment on the delay.

Huawei’s Mate X date slippage suggests Samsung will still be first to market with its (previously) delayed Galaxy Fold — which was itself delayed after a bunch of review units broke (because, well, did we tell you the screen folds?).

Last we heard, the Galaxy Fold is slated for a September release — Samsung seemingly confident it’s fixed the problem of how to make a foldable phone survive actual use.

Of course survival in the wild very much remains to be seen with any of these foldable. So expect TC’s in house hardware guru, Brian Heater, to put all of these expensively hinged touchscreens through their paces.

Returning to Huawei’s Mate X, potential buyers may not be entirely reassured to learn the company appeared to dangle rather more information about a planned sequel in front of reporters at the press event.

A sequel which may or may not have even more screens, as Huawei is apparently considering putting glass on the back. Yes, glass. (The gen-one Mate X will have a steel back.) Glass panels which it says could double as touchscreens. On the back. As well as the front. We have no idea if that means the price-tag will double too.

This theoretical quad (?) screen foldable follow-up to the still unreleased Mate X might even be released as soon as next year, according to TechRadar’s reportage. Or — again speculating wildly — it might never be released. Because, frankly, it sounds mental. But that’s the wacky world of foldables for ya.

There may be method in this madness too. Because, since smartphones turned into all-screen devices — making it almost impossible to tell one touch-sensitive slab from another — plucky Android device makers are trying to find a way to put more screen on the slab so you can see more.

If they can pull that off it might be great. However sticking a hinge right through the middle of a smartphone’s primary feature and function without that simultaneously causing problems is certainly a major engineering challenge.

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WebKit’s new anti-tracking policy puts privacy on a par with security

WebKit, the open source engine that underpins Internet browsers including Apple’s Safari browser, has announced a new tracking prevention policy that takes the strictest line yet on the background and cross-site tracking practices and technologies which are used to creep on Internet users as they go about their business online.

Trackers are technologies that are invisible to the average web user, yet which are designed to keep tabs on where they go and what they look at online — typically for ad targeting but web user profiling can have much broader implications than just creepy ads, potentially impacting the services people can access or the prices they see, and so on. Trackers can also be a conduit for hackers to inject actual malware, not just adtech.

This translates to stuff like tracking pixels; browser and device fingerprinting; and navigational tracking to name just a few of the myriad methods that have sprouted like weeds from an unregulated digital adtech industry that’s poured vast resource into ‘innovations’ intended to strip web users of their privacy.

WebKit’s new policy is essentially saying enough: Stop the creeping.

But — and here’s the shift — it’s also saying it’s going to treat attempts to circumvent its policy as akin to malicious hack attacks to be responded to in kind; i.e. with privacy patches and fresh technical measures to prevent tracking.

“WebKit will do its best to prevent all covert tracking, and all cross-site tracking (even when it’s not covert),” the organization writes (emphasis its), adding that these goals will apply to all types of tracking listed in the policy — as well as “tracking techniques currently unknown to us”.

“If we discover additional tracking techniques, we may expand this policy to include the new techniques and we may implement technical measures to prevent those techniques,” it adds.

“We will review WebKit patches in accordance with this policy. We will review new and existing web standards in light of this policy. And we will create new web technologies to re-enable specific non-harmful practices without reintroducing tracking capabilities.”

Spelling out its approach to circumvention, it states in no uncertain terms: “We treat circumvention of shipping anti-tracking measures with the same seriousness as exploitation of security vulnerabilities,” adding: “If a party attempts to circumvent our tracking prevention methods, we may add additional restrictions without prior notice. These restrictions may apply universally; to algorithmically classified targets; or to specific parties engaging in circumvention.”

It also says that if a certain tracking technique cannot be completely prevented without causing knock-on effects with webpage functions the user does intend to interact with, it will “limit the capability” of using the technique” — giving examples such as “limiting the time window for tracking” and “reducing the available bits of entropy” (i.e. limiting how many unique data points are available to be used to identify a user or their behavior).

If even that’s not possible “without undue user harm” it says it will “ask for the user’s informed consent to potential tracking”.

“We consider certain user actions, such as logging in to multiple first party websites or apps using the same account, to be implied consent to identifying the user as having the same identity in these multiple places. However, such logins should require a user action and be noticeable by the user, not be invisible or hidden,” it further warns.

WebKit credits Mozilla’s anti-tracking policy as inspiring and underpinning its new approach.

Commenting on the new policy, Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity advisor and research associate at the Center for Technology and Global Affairs Oxford University, says it marks a milestone in the evolution of how user privacy is treated in the browser — setting it on the same footing as security.

Equating circumvention of anti-tracking with security exploitation is unprecedented. This is exactly what we need to treat privacy as first class citizen. Enough with hand-waving. It's making technology catch up with regulations (not the other way, for once!) #ePrivacy #GDPR https://t.co/G1Dx7F2MXu

— Lukasz Olejnik (@lukOlejnik) August 15, 2019

“Treating privacy protection circumventions on par with security exploitation is a first of its kind and unprecedented move,” he tells TechCrunch. “This sends a clear warning to the potential abusers but also to the users… This is much more valuable than the still typical approach of ‘we treat the privacy of our users very seriously’ that some still think is enough when it comes to user expectation.”

Asked how he sees the policy impacting pervasive tracking, Olejnik does not predict an instant, overnight purge of unethical tracking of users of WebKit-based browsers but argues there will be less room for consent-less data-grabbers to manoeuvre.

“Some level of tracking, including with unethical technologies, will probably remain in use for the time being. But covert tracking is less and less tolerated,” he says. “It’s also interesting if any decisions will follow, such as for example the expansion of bug bounties to reported privacy vulnerabilities.”

“How this policy will be enforced in practice will be carefully observed,” he adds.

As you’d expect, he credits not just regulation but the role played by active privacy researchers in helping to draw attention and change attitudes towards privacy protection — and thus to drive change in the industry.

There’s certainly no doubt that privacy research is a vital ingredient for regulation to function in such a complex area — feeding complaints that trigger scrutiny that can in turn unlock enforcement and force a change of practice.

Although that’s also a process that takes time.

“The quality of cybersecurity and privacy technology policy, including its communication still leave much to desire, at least at most organisations. This will not change fast,” says says Olejnik. “Even if privacy is treated at the ‘C-level’, this then still tends to be about the purely risk of compliance. Fortunately, some important industry players with good understanding of both technology policy and the actual technology, even the emerging ones still under active research, treat it increasingly seriously.

“We owe it to the natural flow of the privacy research output, the talent inflows, and the slowly moving strategic shifts as well to a minor degree to the regulatory pressure and public heat. This process is naturally slow and we are far from the end.”

For its part, WebKit has been taking aim at trackers for several years now, adding features intended to reduce pervasive tracking — such as, back in 2017, Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), which uses machine learning to squeeze cross-site tracking by putting more limits on cookies and other website data.

Apple immediately applied ITP to its desktop Safari browser — drawing predictable fast-fire from the Internet Advertising Bureau whose membership is comprised of every type of tracker deploying entity on the Internet.

But it’s the creepy trackers that are looking increasingly out of step with public opinion. And, indeed, with the direction of travel of the industry.

In Europe, regulation can be credited with actively steering developments too — following last year’s application of a major update to the region’s comprehensive privacy framework (which finally brought the threat of enforcement that actually bites). The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has also increased transparency around security breaches and data practices. And, as always, sunlight disinfects.

Although there remains the issue of abuse of consent for EU regulators to tackle — with research suggesting many regional cookie consent pop-ups currently offer users no meaningful privacy choices despite GDPR requiring consent to be specific, informed and freely given.

It also remains to be seen how the adtech industry will respond to background tracking being squeezed at the browser level. Continued aggressive lobbying to try to water down privacy protections seems inevitable — if ultimately futile. And perhaps, in Europe in the short term, there will be attempts by the adtech industry to funnel more tracking via cookie ‘consent’ notices that nudge or force users to accept.

As the security space underlines, humans are always the weakest link. So privacy-hostile social engineering might be the easiest way for adtech interests to keep overriding user agency and grabbing their data anyway. Stopping that will likely need regulators to step in and intervene.

Another question thrown up by WebKit’s new policy is which way Chromium will jump, aka the browser engine that underpins Google’s hugely popular Chrome browser.

Of course Google is an ad giant, and parent company Alphabet still makes the vast majority of its revenue from digital advertising — so it maintains a massive interest in tracking Internet users to serve targeted ads.

Yet Chromium developers did pay early attention to the problem of unethical tracking. Here, for example, are two discussing potential future work to combat tracking techniques designed to override privacy settings in a blog post from nearly five years ago.

There have also been much more recent signs Google paying attention to Chrome users’ privacy, such as changes to how it handles cookies which it announced earlier this year.

What Chrome’s browser changes mean for your privacy and security

But with WebKit now raising the stakes — by treating privacy as seriously as security — that puts pressure on Google to respond in kind. Or risk being seen as using its grip on browser marketshare to foot-drag on baked in privacy standards, rather than proactively working to prevent Internet users from being creeped on.

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Another day, another reversal in stock fortunes as recession fears grow

U.S. stock markets plummeted today as recession fears continue to grow.

Yesterday’s good news about a reprieve on tariffs for U.S. consumer imports was undone by increasing concerns over economic indicators pointing to a potential global recession coming within the next year.

Phones, laptops and game consoles get tariff reprieve until December

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 800 points on Wednesday — its largest decline of the year — while the S&P 500 fell by 85 points and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 240 points.

The downturn in the markets came a day after the Dow closed up 373 points after the U.S. Trade Representative announced a delay in many of the import taxes imposed by the Trump administration planned to impose on Chinese goods.

In the U.S. it was concerns over the news that the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes had dipped below the yield of two-year notes. It’s an indicator that investors think the short term prospects for a country’s economic outlook are better than the long-term outlook for economic health.

China’s industrial and retail sectors both slowed significantly in July. Industrial production including manufacturing, mining and utilities grew by 4.8 percent in July (a steep decline from 6.3% growth in June).  Meanwhile retail sales in the country slowed to 7.6 percent, down from 9.8 percent in June.

Germany also posted declines over the summer months indicating that its economy had contracted by 0.1% in the three months to June.

Globally, the protracted trade war between the U.S. and China are weighing on economies — as are concerns about what a hard Brexit would mean for the economies in the European Union.

The stocks of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, and Salesforce, were all off by somewhere between 2.5% and 4.5% in today’s trading.

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Artificial intelligence can contribute to a safer world

Procore brings 3D construction models to iOS

Today, Procore, a construction software company, announced Procore BIM (Building Information Modeling), a new tool that takes advantage of Apple hardware advances to bring the 3D construction model to iOS.

Dave McCool, senior product manager at Procore, says that architects and engineers have been working with 3D models of complex buildings for years on desktop computers and laptops, but these models never made it into the hands of the tradespeople actually working on the building. This forced them to make trips to the job site office to see the big picture whenever they ran into issues, a process that was inefficient and costly.

What Procore has done is created a 3D model that corresponds to a virtual version of the 2D floor plan and runs on an iOS device. Touching a space on the floor plan, opens a corresponding spot in the 3D model. What’s more, Procore has created a video game-like experience, so that contractors can use a virtual joystick to move around a 3D representation of the building, or they can use gestures to move around the rendering.

Procore BIM running on an iPhone. Photo: Procore

The app has been designed so that it can run on an iPhone 7, but for optimal performance, Procore recommends using an iPad Pro. The software takes advantage of Apple Metal, which gives developers “near direct” access to the GPU running on these devices. This ability to tap into GPU power, speeds up performance and allows this level of sophisticated rendering quickly on iOS devices.

McCool says that this enables trades people to find the particular area on the drawing where their part of the project needs to go much more easily and intuitively, whether it’s wiring, ductwork or plumbing. As he pointed out, it can get crowded in the space above a ceiling or inside a utility  room, and the various trades teams need to work together to make sure they are putting their parts in the correct spot. Working with this tool helps make that placement crystal clear.

It’s essentially been designed to gamify the experience in order to help tradespeople who aren’t necessarily technically savvy to operate the tool themselves and find their way around a drawing in 3D, while reducing the number of trips to the office to have a discussion with the architects or engineers to resolve issues.

This is the latest tool from a company that has been producing construction software since 2002. As a company spokesperson said, early on the company founder had to wire routers on the site to allow workers to use the earliest versions. Today, it offers a range of construction software to track financials, project, labor and safety management information.

Procore BIM will be available starting next month.

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