Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: September 8, 2019

How does Apple (privately) find your offline devices?

Matthew Green – Cryptography Engineering Blog: [June 5, 2019] Apple announced a cool new feature called “Find My”. Unlike Apple’s “Find my iPhone“, which uses cellular communication and the lost device’s own GPS to identify the location of a missing phone, “Find My” also lets you find devices that don’t have cellular support or internal GPS — things like laptops, or (and Apple has hinted at this only broadly) even “dumb” location tags that you can attach to your non-electronic physical belongings.

The idea of the new system is to turn Apple’s existing network of iPhones into a massive crowdsourced location tracking system. Every active iPhone will continuously monitor for BLE beacon messages that might be coming from a lost device. When it picks up one of these signals, the participating phone tags the data with its own current GPS location; then it sends the whole package up to Apple’s servers….(It’s worth mentioning that Apple didn’t invent this idea. In fact, companies like Tile have been doing this for quite a while. And yes, they should probably be worried.) If you haven’t already been inspired by the description above, let me phrase the question you ought to be asking: how is this system going to avoid being a massive privacy nightmare? Let me count the concerns…”

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Law: Basic Questions

Surden, Harry, The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Law: Basic Questions (August 22, 2019). Forthcoming chapter in Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI, 2020. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3441303 [h/t Joe Hodnicki] “Ethical issues surrounding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in law often share a common theme. As AI becomes increasingly integrated within the legal… Continue Reading

Safe Online Surfing Challenge Launches

“The FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge, which had record participation in 2018-2019, is reopening for the start of the new school year to help students navigate the web securely. As the FBI sees more and more crimes begin online, the growing participation numbers show that educators and caregivers also recognize the importance of… Continue Reading

Real-time maps warn Hong Kong protesters of water cannons and riot police

Quartz – The “Be Water” nature of Hong Kong’s protests means that crowds move quickly and spread across the city. They might stage a protest in the central business district one weekend, then industrial neighborhoods and far-flung suburban towns the next. And a lot is happening at any one time at each protest. One of… Continue Reading

Our past on the internet is disappearing before we can make it history

Lapham’s Quarterly – Please, My Digital Archive. It’s Very Sick. “Digital history isn’t history at all—until, without warning, it is. In an age in which any internet user is a creator-in-the-making, reaching a handful of virtual friends or entire corners of the web in a moment’s notice, the line between archive-worthy material and the detritus… Continue Reading

Tech Paging Big Brother: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

The New York Times – As fake and illegitimate texts proliferate online, books are becoming a form of misinformation.The author of “1984” would not be surprised. “I started browsing Orwell on Amazon after writing about the explosion in counterfeit books offered by the retailer. The fake books appeared to help Amazon by, for example, encouraging publishers… Continue Reading

The Decline of Online Piracy: How Markets Not Enforcement Drive Down Copyright Infringement

Quintais, João and Poort, Joost, The Decline of Online Piracy: How Markets – Not Enforcement – Drive Down Copyright Infringement (August 14, 2019). American University International Law Review, Vol. 34 , No. 4, pp. 807-876 (2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3437239 “This article deals with the acquisition and consumption of music, films, series, books, and games… Continue Reading