Please try the URL privacy information feature enabled by clicking the flashlight icon above. This will reveal two icons after each link the body of the digest. The shield takes you to a breakdown of Terms of Service for the site - however only a small number of sites are covered at the moment. The flashlight take you to an analysis of the various trackers etc. that the linked site delivers. Please let the website maintainer know if you find this useful or not. As a RISKS reader, you will probably not be surprised by what is revealed…
(Submitted as an Op-Ed piece to the San Diego Union-Tribune) Imperfect automation, continually getting better? Or distracted drivers, continually getting worse? Choose. Recently, one of Uber's autonomous automobiles was involved in an accident where a pedestrian was killed. What lesson should we learn from this incident? During the three years that my colleagues and I have been doing research on self-driving cars, this is the first death. Compare this single death with the 120,000 people who have been killed in automobile accidents in the United States in that same period: roughly 100 people each day. Fully autonomous cars have driven around four million miles rather than the nearly nine trillion miles driven by American drivers in that same period. The accident record is impressively low: in four million miles of driving, one death compared to 40 deaths in regular driving. Automobile manufacturers are rushing to add more and more automation to their existing cars, promising to have fully automated vehicles within a few years. They need to slow down. Why should we have fully automated cars? Because they have many benefits: Less deaths, injuries, and accidents with no more drunk or distracted driving; more efficient commuting, and increased mobility for those who cannot or do not wish to drive. However, we need caution. New technology is always problematical. It can take years—decades—to make technology safe and reliable in difficult environmental conditions, unexpected situations, and the ever-unpredictable behavior of pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, and skateboarders (to name a few). At the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego our researchers have observed skateboarders and bicyclists zooming down sidewalks into the streets and people crossing city streets with eyes firmly fixed on phones or tablets. Driving on major highways is easy compared to urban and city streets. Today tests are performed with safety drivers, people inside the vehicle ready to take over if something goes wrong. This is a false hope. Almost 50 years of research shows that people are not good at monitoring for long hours, and then suddenly leap into action when difficulties arise. In the Uber accident, the video from the car's camera of the safety driver shows him looking down for roughly 5 seconds, looking up just before the accident: he only had time to register horror. The car was traveling 40 mph which means that in those five seconds it had traveled almost 300 feet. But even had the driver always kept his eyes on the road, the driver might not have been able to react quickly enough. Studies have shown that it takes up to 20 seconds for safety drivers to respond. Safety drivers do not ensure safety. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) requires the medical industry to behave cautiously in their introduction of new devices and medication: new treatments or devices can sometimes do patients more harm than good, so each must undergo clinical trials before they can be released. We need something similar for self-driving autos: a neutral, trusted agency to certify safety before we let them on the roads. This could be a government agency or a high-quality private company such as UL. Insisting on a safety certificate might put a salutary slow up in today=E2=80=99s mad race. The potential for autonomous vehicles to produce tremendous saving of lives and injuries while increasing our quality of life provides strong support for the eventual introduction of fully automated vehicles. Nonetheless, just as new medicines and medical devices enhance lives, but their introduction is done cautiously, with carefully controlled tests, we must do the same with our autonomous vehicles. I look forward to the day when my self driving car will free me from the tedium and danger of driving. But that day is not yet here. Don Norman Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego dnorman@ucsd.edu designlab.ucsd.edu/ http://www.jnd.org
From what I've read, Arizona has no or few regulations governing autonomous vehicles. Does anyone know if the conditions of this test drive were governed by special rules, i.e., rules other than chapter 3, title 28 of the Arizona Code? That chapter only requires drivers to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians *crossing the roadway within a crosswalk*. Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. =C2=A7 28-792. The following section completes the rule: "A pedestrian crossing a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles on the roadway." Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. 28-793(A). Otherwise, drivers need only "exercise due care." Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. 28-794. I've seen an aerial photograph of the accident scene, and there's not a crosswalk in sight. Without knowing more, it seems at least plausible that Uber's robot had the right-of-way. These rules govern "the driver of a vehicle." As others have asked, who [what?] is that?
[Note: this message was drafted well before the March 19 accident in which a pedestrian was killed by a self-driving car in Arizona. Subsequent edits have not appreciably changed my comments.] Amos Shapir's comments in RISKS 30.53 (Re: The Unstoppable Momentum of Self-Driving Cars) crystallized some thoughts for me, which I submit for your consideration and possible inclusion in the Digest. I claim no special expertise, apart from being both a licensed driver and a RISKs reader for over thirty years. I am very skeptical about a supposed inevitable future utopia of widespread autonomous vehicles and dismayed at its portrayal across the media as a fait accompli, apart from "just a small matter of programming." This future seems to be a technological Rorschach, wherein people envision an outcome that solves their pet transportation gripe while discounting or disregarding problem areas and difficult questions. I have seen little critical examination or reporting of many key issues raised by autonomous vehicles. Apparently in this miraculous future, nothing ever breaks, malfunctions, or is misused, economics don't matter, and there are no bad actors. As a long-time RISKS reader, I see many problems in both technological implementation and policy issues. A summary of my list would still be a long post, and the material could easily be expanded into a book-length treatise. I wait to hear when self-driving cars successfully complete a million miles without human intervention in Boston and its suburbs during winter snowstorms. The most fundamental issue is one raised by Mr. Shapir, and which I would express thus: driving is not only a technical exercise, it is also a social exercise. And not only with other drivers—there is an implied social contract and possible interaction with bicyclists, pedestrians, etc. Notice how many times while driving that one makes a judgment about the intent of other drivers or pedestrians and then acts on that assessment. Consider one example: how does an autonomous vehicle respond to a police officer directing traffic at a broken signal? What if the signal is working normally, but an officer is directing traffic to disregard the signal? What if it's not an officer but a person wearing a Halloween costume and a Crackerjack badge? What if it's a civilian who has taken it upon themselves to direct traffic, as has happened during widespread blackouts or other emergencies? Our current society is so oriented around humans driving that I foresee major changes will be needed to bring about a future of predominately autonomous vehicles. Already there are signs of how this will play out. In response to reports of accidents involving self-driving cars, it is being suggested that people will have to be "educated" to learn how to share the road with them. In other words, it is the humans who will have to adapt to machines; the machines will not have to adapt to human drivers. In closing I would mention briefly the common misperception that self-driving cars will somehow eliminate the possibility of human error in driving. Until autonomous vehicles are designed and built by extraterrestrials, the possibility for human error cannot be eliminated, only moved somewhere else. In my view, what is being proposed is no less than extending the Internet of Things to include millions of 2000-pound autonomous wheeled robots set loose onto public streets. The overwhelming evidence to date is that we are incapable of doing so safely and securely.
https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/03/24/why-big-tech-needs-big-ethics-right-now The Cambridge Analytica user trust debacle currently enveloping Facebook has once again brought into sharp focus a foundational issue that permeates Big Tech—the complex interrelationships between engineering, marketing, and ethics. I've spent many years pounding on this problem, often to be told by my technologist colleagues that "Our job is just to build the stuff—let the politicians figure out the ethics!" That attitude has always chilled me to the bone—let the *politicians* handle the ethics relating to complicated technologies? (Or anything else for that matter?) Excuse me, are we living on the same planet? On the same timeline? Hello??? So I almost choked on my coffee when I saw articles saying that Facebook was now suggesting the need for government regulation of their operations - aka - "Stop us before we screw our users yet again!" The last thing we need is the politicians involved. They by and large don't understand what we're doing, they generally operate on the basis of image and political expediency. Politicians touching tech is typically poison. But the status quo of Big Tech is untenable also. Google is a wonderful firm with great ideals, but with continuing user support and accessibility problems. Facebook strikes me, frankly, as having a basically evil business model. Apple is handing user data and crypto keys over to the censoring Chinese dictatorship. Microsoft, and the rest—who the hell knows from day to day? One aspect that they've all shared is the "move fast and break things" mantra of Silicon Valley, and a tendency to operate on the basis that "you never want to ask permission, just apologize later if things go wrong." These attitudes just aren't going to work going forward. These firms (and their users!) are now in the crosshairs of the politicians, who see rigorous regulation of these firms as key to their political futures, and they intend to accomplish this by making Big Tech "the fall guy" for a range of perceived evils—smoothing the ways for various forms of micromanaged, government-imposed information control and censorship. As we've already seen in Russia, China, and even increasingly in Europe, this is indeed the path to tyranny. Assuming that the USA is invulnerable to these forces would be stupidity to the max. For too long, user support and ethical questions have had second-class status at most tech firms. It's not that these concerns don't exist at all, it's that they're often very low in the product priority hierarchies. This must change. Ethics, user trust, and user support issues must proactively rise to the top of these hierarchies, lest opportunistic politicians leverage the existing situation for the imposition of knee-jerk "solutions" that will not only seriously damage these firms, but will ultimately be devastating to their users and broader communities as well. There have long existed corporate roles in various "traditional" industries -- who long ago learned how to avoid being easily steamrolled by the politicians—to help avoid these dilemmas. Full-time ethicists and ombudsmen, for example, can play crucial roles in these respects, by helping firms to understand the cross-product, cross-team implications of their projects in relation to internal needs, user requirements, and overall effects on the world at large. Many Internet-related firms have resisted the idea of accepting these roles within their corporate ranks, believing that their other management and public relations employees can fulfill those functions. But in reality—and the continuing Facebook privacy disasters are but one set of examples—it takes a specific kind of longitudinal, cross-team approach to seriously, adequately, and successfully address these escalating issues. Another argument heard against ombudsman and ethicist roles is concerns regarding their supposedly having "veto" power over product decisions. This is a fallacious argument. These roles need not necessarily imply any sort of launch or other veto abilities, and can be purely advisory in terms of internal policy decisions. But having the input of persons with these skill sets in the ongoing decision-making process is still crucial—and lacking at many of these major firms. The time is short for firms to grasp the nettle in these regards. Politicians around the world—not just in traditional tyrannies—are taking advantage of the publicly perceived ethical and user support problems at these firms. All through human history, governments have naturally gravitated toward controlling the information available to citizens—sometimes with laudable motives, always with horrific results. Internet technologies provide governments with a veritable and irresistible "candy store" of possibilities for government-imposed censorship and other information control. A key step that these firms must take to help stave off such dark outcomes is to move immediately to make Big Ethics a key part of their corporate DNA. To do otherwise, or even to hesitate toward making such changes, could easily be tantamount to total surrender.
Although nothing really new, repetita juvant (especially when coming from authoritative source): Emily Taylor - Chatham House https://email-chathamhouse.org/1S3M-5JDSC-NUSXMS-322YLV-1/c.aspx The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. [Above all, remember your humanity. —Sir Joseph Rotblat] Dott. Diego Latella, CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it)
Sadly, this is only to be expected of the current Indian government. The delicious irony is it is making angry noises about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica's activities compromising the data of Indian citizens: https://theprint.in/politics/bhagwat-ravi-shankar-prasad-india-against-facebook/43722/
https://gizmodo.com/schools-are-using-ai-to-check-students-social-media-for-1824002976 Margulis admits there are false positives, where someone is flagged when they don't pose a risk, but critically, there can also be false negatives--students deemed unremarkable by the AI who go on to do violence. Experts are worried that unleashing this technology in schools will only replicate the imbalances we see when these tools are used in public policing. "This is an expansion of the schools' ability to police what students are doing inside of school or on campus to their outside-of-school conduct," says Kade Crockford, who directs the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. "In many cases across the country, schools have been using social media surveillance tools in ways that have harmed, specifically, students of color. So we certainly have concerns about technologies like this being used to expand what we call the school-to-prison pipeline. Hmm. Now what would a smart but mentally ill kid do in this instance? How about creating a benign social media presence to throw authorities off the track? You think kids aren't smart enough to do that? You're fooling yourself! What's the government gonna do as the violent folks in our midst learn not to post photos of guns—and to turn off their cellphones long before committing crimes? Don't assume they're all stupid people. They're not!
NNSquad https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/bad-science-puts-innocent-people-in-jail--and-keeps-them-there/2018/03/20/f1fffd08-263e-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html Since the onset in the 1990s of DNA testing—which, unlike most fields of forensics, was born in the scientific community—we've learned that many forensic specialities aren't nearly as accurate as their practitioners have claimed. Studies from the National Academy of Sciences and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology have concluded that there's insufficient research to support the claims of the broad field of "pattern matching" forensics, which includes analyses of such things as hair fiber, bite marks, "tool marks" and tire tread. These forensic specialties were never subjected to the rigors of scientific inquiry—double-blind testing, peer review—before they were accepted in courtrooms. Most are entirely subjective: An analyst will look at two marks or patterns and determine whether they're a "match." Most of these disciplines can't even calculate a margin of error.
Ever since the case of the San Bernadino shooter pitted Apple against the FBI over the unlocking of an iPhone, opinions have been split on providing backdoor access to the iPhone for law enforcement. Some felt that Apple was aiding and abetting a felony by refusing to create a special version of iOS with a backdoor for accessing the phone's data. Others believed that it's impossible to give backdoor access to law enforcement without threatening the security of law-abiding citizens. In an interesting twist, the battle ended with the FBI dropping the case after finding a third party who could help. At the time, it was theorized that the third party was Cellebrite. Since then it has become known that Cellebrite—an Israeli company—does provide iPhone unlocking services to law enforcement agencies. Cellebrite, through means currently unknown, provides these services at $5,000 per device, and for the most part this involves sending the phones to a Cellebrite facility. (Recently, Cellebrite has begun providing in-house unlocking services, but those services are protected heavily by non-disclosure agreements, so little is known about them.) It is theorized, and highly likely, that Cellebrite knows of one or more iOS vulnerabilities that allow them to access the devices. In late 2017, word of a new iPhone unlocker device started to circulate: a device called GrayKey, made by a company named Grayshift. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Grayshift was founded in 2016, and is a privately-held company with fewer than 50 employees. Little was known publicly about this device—or even whether it was a device or a service—until recently, as the GrayKey website is protected by a portal that screens for law enforcement affiliation. According to Forbes, the GrayKey iPhone unlocker device is marketed for in-house use at law enforcement offices or labs. This is drastically different from Cellebrite's overall business model, in that it puts complete control of the process in the hands of law enforcement. Thanks to an anonymous source, we now know what this mysterious device looks like, and how it works. And while the technology is a good thing for law enforcement, it presents some significant security risks. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2018/03/graykey-iphone-unlocker-poses-serious-security-concerns/
http://www.eweek.com/security/how-ddos-attacks-techniques-have-evolved-over-past-20-years
Mike Elgan, Computerworld, 24 Mar 2018 As Facebook just learned, a social network's reputation can sour in an instant. Here's how to save your own. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3265729/social-media/the-new-social-media-imperative-distance-yourself.html selected text: Elon Musk deleted the Facebook pages of both Tesla and SpaceX on Friday. We learned something new this week about social networks that we didn't know before: Their reputations can change in an instant. It takes years to establish a personal, professional or corporate presence on social sites. Millions of man-hours spent on crafting posts, engaging with followers and mastering site-specific techniques and practices can be suddenly wasted when that social site starts "breaking bad" in the public imagination. Just look at what happened to Facebook.
According to Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch, the system misidentified automatic gunfire from the Gaza Strip as incoming rockets heading toward the southern Israeli community of Zikim. Haimovitch told reporters that this was not a bug in the system, but the result of it being programmed to be more sensitive in light of the current unrest in the area. "We don't take chances as it relates to threats to Israeli citizens and property," he said. http://www.timesofisrael.com/1-million-worth-of-iron-dome-missiles-fired-at-nothing-due-to-oversensitivity/
Danny Palmer | March 22, 2018—16:01 GMT (09:01 PDT) | Topic: Security Hackers are targeting accessible x86-64 Linux web servers around the world. http://www.zdnet.com/article/cryptocurrency-mining-malware-uses-five-year-old-vulnerability-to-mine-monero-on-linux-servers/ So when was the last time you heard that line about number of eyes on code?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/03/a-tamper-proof-currency-wallet-just-got-trivially-backdoored-by-a-15-year-old/ I would like to add an out-of-band note from my colleague Robert N. M. Watson, who added a little realism to this item: As Joe Bonneau recently pointed out to me, one really great thing about cryptocurrencies is that they put a clear financial cost on flaws in crypto-protocols, and create an incentive scheme to improve the quality of both designs and implementations of those protocols (... and also to break them). Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art in both designs and implementations appear less mature than some of its currency holders would prefer! [By the way, my humblest apologies for the messed-up URLs in the previous RISKS-30.60. I need to build an emacs macro to auto-unscramble the miserable munging of URLs that is forced on incoming mail to RISKS, which SRI's Office 365 garbles annoyingly with SafeLinks. I goofed the translation of "https%3A%2F%2F" by accidentally changing "%3A" into a semicolon instead of a colon. Sorry! (However, I did subsequently perform a semicolonoscopy on the archive copy.)]
Cybersecurity effectiveness as a tipping point in a country's resilience and sustained viability as regional hub of commercial Internet connectivity. Headline hyperbole? Not in Singapore, where this risk drives government policy debates and funding priorities. http://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/cyber-security-key-to-spores-survival-csa-chief “The more digitalised and connected our economy, the more important it becomes to secure our systems in cyberspace,'' Mr Koh said in his keynote speech at the 3rd Annual Billington International Cybersecurity Summit in Washington. “The financial cost of cyberattacks can be high, but indirect costs, such as the loss of trust from the public, can be even higher. This is especially relevant for Singapore, whose brand name is often associated with trust, transparency and efficiency.'' Brand outrage and trust erosion characterize the Internet of Mistakes. Interesting to note that the Transparency International's *Corruption Perceptions Index 2017* ranks Singapore #6, the United States tied for #16. North Korea is #171 of 180. See http://www.transparency.org/news/
[The specifics of the chair design and electronics are unclear, but the possibility that the only way to disable or reverse an "electronic footrest" is to break it is alarming. GW] Jennifer Hassan. *The Washington Post*. 21 Mar 2018 Man dies after trapping his head in a movie theater seat http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/21/man-dies-after-trapping-his-head-in-a-movie-theater-seat/ LONDON—A man has died of a heart attack after reportedly getting his head trapped in a movie theater seat in Birmingham, England, as he tried to retrieve a dropped cellphone. The incident, which took place at the Vue Cinema in the Star City entertainment complex, was described as a *freak* accident. According to *The Birmingham Mail*, the man had dropped his cellphone between two *Gold Class* seats and was attempting to retrieve it when an electronic footrest came down on his head, wedging him underneath. Customers pay more to sit in the reclining Gold Class seats, described as luxury seating. “He was stuck and panicking. His partner and staff tried to free him but couldn't.'' The chair leg-rest was eventually broken free and he managed to get out. West Midlands Ambulance Service confirmed it was called to reports of a patient in cardiac arrest on March 9. The man was taken to a Birmingham hospital in a serious condition, but died of his injuries a week later, on March 16. In a statement, Vue International confirmed the man's death: “Following an incident which took place on Friday 9 March at our Birmingham cinema, we can confirm that a customer was taken to hospital that evening. We are saddened to learn that he passed away on 16 March.'' Vue said a “full investigation into the nature of the incident is ongoing.'' A health and safety investigation from Birmingham City Council also was underway.
Tom Foremski, 20 Mar 2018 The very public demise of Theranos momentarily satisfies the Schadenfreude of Silicon Valley's critics, but it's a distraction that protects the reputations of rich and powerful men that financed and ran the company for years. http://www.zdnet.com/article/theranos-fraud-that-duped-billionaires-but-silicon-valley-culture-blamed/ selected text: “The Theranos story is an important lesson for Silicon Valley,'' said Jina Choi, director of the SEC's San Francisco Regional Office. “Innovators who seek to revolutionize and disrupt an industry must tell investors the truth about what their technology can do today, not just what they hope it might do someday.'' Richard Waters, in the Financial Times, writes, “For start-ups given to ethically dubious demos or the occasional white lie about the performance of their technology, it is an object lesson in the danger of getting in over their heads.'' If there is a meaningful lesson for Silicon Valley investors in the Theranos case it is this: A startup founder's passion does not equate to talent or ability. Also, always demand to see basic financial information and proof to back up technology claims.
[Does anyone else think this could get misused in any way? GW] Stephanie Condon for Between the Lines, ZDNet, 22 Mar 2018 In the coming months, users will be able to send or request money via voice-activated speakers like Google Home. http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-assistant-now-sends-and-requests-money-from-your-contacts/ opening text: Google Pay users can now use the voice-activated Google Assistant on their smartphones to send or request money from people in their contacts, Google announced Thursday. The new service is free and currently on Android and iOS phones in the US. A user says something like, "Hey Google, request $20 from Sam for the show tonight," and funds would be immediately transferred, even if the recipient doesn't have Google Pay. The recipient would get an email or text message about the payment, or a notification if they're already installed the Google Pay app.
I read this on Yahoo today: http://www.yahoo.com/news/man-dies-getting-head-stuck-184447624.html Now, the article makes no mention of computers, but something made that chair move. Also, we are trying to build autonomous cars when we can't even get a chair right?
The Senate gave final passage to a bill to combat sex trafficking, disregarding concerns in Silicon Valley that it could chill Internet content and harm free speech. http://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/business/sex-trafficking-bill-senate.html
> How good are you at telling the difference between domain names you know > and trust and impostor or look-alike domains? The answer may depend on how > familiar you are with the nuances of internationalized domain names > (IDNs), as well as which browser or Web application you're using. This is now covered by CWE-1007: Insufficient Visual Distinction of Homoglyphs Presented to User http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/1007.html If you find such an instance of this PLEASE REQUEST A CVE identifier. Requesting a CVE Identifier makes it much more likely that it will get fixed (e.g. adding some visual cues to prompt users that they're not looking at ascii text, a warning, whatever). To request a CVE Identifier please use http://iwantacve.org/ and http://cveform.mitre.org/ for Open Source and Closed Source. respectively.
"So, here are two messages reported by Lauren Weinstein on this subject, where problems had been diagnosed but either not considered or considered not relevant (respectively)." The inference that the discovered cracks in this case actually are relevant is premature. The inference that officials should have applied the precautionary principle in this case is also unwarranted at this point. I object to public speculation and the rush to draw lessons learned before the actual cause has been determined and released. Although someone is to blame (presumably), others are innocent and there is a human cost to innocent people and their families caused by incorrect premature speculation as to causes. The TWA 800 case is a good example why public speculation is bad. I made the same complaint in RISKS-18.42 about premature public speculation about the causes of airplane crashes.
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