Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events (15 August)

Here are Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events.

Coming Events

• On 18 August, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will host the “Bias in AI Workshop, a virtual event to develop a shared understanding of bias in AI, what it is, and how to measure it.”
• The United States’ Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that its third annual National Cybersecurity Summit “will be held virtually as a series of webinars every Wednesday for four weeks beginning September 16 and ending October 7:”
  • September 16: Key Cyber Insights
  • September 23: Leading the Digital Transformation
  • September 30: Diversity in Cybersecurity
  • October 7: Defending our Democracy
  • One can register for the event here.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights Subcommittee will hold a hearing on 15 September titled “Stacking the Tech: Has Google Harmed Competition in Online Advertising?.” In their press release, Chair Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asserted:
  • Google is the dominant player in online advertising, a business that accounts for around 85% of its revenues and which allows it to monetize the data it collects through the products it offers for free. Recent consumer complaints and investigations by law enforcement have raised questions about whether Google has acquired or maintained its market power in online advertising in violation of the antitrust laws. News reports indicate this may also be the centerpiece of a forthcoming antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice. This hearing will examine these allegations and provide a forum to assess the most important antitrust investigation of the 21st century.
• On 22 September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold a public workshop “to examine the potential benefits and challenges to consumers and competition raised by data portability.” By 21 August, the FTC “is seeking comment on a range of issues including:
  • How are companies currently implementing data portability? What are the different contexts in which data portability has been implemented?
  • What have been the benefits and costs of data portability? What are the benefits and costs of achieving data portability through regulation?
  • To what extent has data portability increased or decreased competition?
  • Are there research studies, surveys, or other information on the impact of data portability on consumer autonomy and trust?
  • Does data portability work better in some contexts than others (e.g., banking, health, social media)? Does it work better for particular types of information over others (e.g., information the consumer provides to the business vs. all information the business has about the consumer, information about the consumer alone vs. information that implicates others such as photos of multiple people, comment threads)?
  • Who should be responsible for the security of personal data in transit between businesses? Should there be data security standards for transmitting personal data between businesses? Who should develop these standards?
  • How do companies verify the identity of the requesting consumer before transmitting their information to another company?
  • How can interoperability among services best be achieved? What are the costs of interoperability? Who should be responsible for achieving interoperability?
  • What lessons and best practices can be learned from the implementation of the data portability requirements in the GDPR and CCPA? Has the implementation of these requirements affected competition and, if so, in what ways?”
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold an open meeting on 30 September, but an agenda is not available at this time.

Other Developments

• The Global Engagement Center (GEC) at the U.S. Department of State published the “GEC Special Report: Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem” The GEC drew on “on publicly available reporting to provide an overview of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.”  The GEC identified the five pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem:
  • official government communications;
  • state-funded global messaging;
  • cultivation of proxy sources;
  • weaponization of social media; and
  • cyber-enabled disinformation.
  • The GEC stated
    • This report provides a visual representation of the ecosystem described above, as well as an example of the media multiplier effect it enables. This serves to demonstrate how the different pillars of the ecosystem play distinct roles and feed off of and bolster each other. The report also includes brief profiles of select proxy sites and organizations that occupy an intermediate role between the pillars of the ecosystem with clear links to Russia and those that are meant to be fully deniable. The emphasis on these proxy sites is meant to highlight the important role they play, which can be overlooked given the attention paid to official Russian voices on one end of the spectrum, and the social media manipulation and cyber-enabled threats on the other.
• The United States (U.S.) Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has restarted its process for rolling out its new electronic health record (EHR) and announced it has “revised its previous schedule to convert facilities to its new HER capabilities with updated timelines for deployments in August in Columbus, Ohio, and October in Spokane, Washington.” The VA opted to replace its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) with a commercial off-the-shelf system the U.S. Department of Defense has chosen, Cerner Millennium. However, this $16 billion acquisition has encountered numerous difficulties and delays, which has caught he continued attention of Congress.
  • The VA claimed “The new timeline will preserve the 10-year implementation schedule and the overall cost estimates of VA’s EHR modernization program…[and] [a]fter the conversion at these sites, VA will bring other select facilities forward in the timeline.”
  • In June 2020, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found:
    • VA met its schedule for making the needed system configuration decisions that would enable the department to implement its new EHR system at the first VA medical facility, which was planned for July 2020. In addition, VA has formulated a schedule for making the remaining EHR system configuration decisions before implementing the system at additional facilities planned for fall 2020.
    • VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program was generally effective in establishing decision-making procedures that were consistent with applicable federal standards for internal control. However, VA did not always ensure the involvement of relevant stakeholders, including medical facility clinicians and staff, in the system configuration decisions. Specifically, VA did not always clarify terminology and include adequate detail in descriptions of local workshop sessions to medical facility clinicians and staff to ensure relevant representation at local workshop meetings. Participation of such stakeholders is critical to ensuring that the EHR system is configured to meet the needs of clinicians and support the delivery of clinical care.
• The United States (U.S.) Government Accountability Office (GAO) studied and reported on privacy and accuracy issues related to the use of facial recognition technology requested by the chairs of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Reform Committees. This report updates a 2015 report on the same issues and renews the agency’s call first made in 2013 that Congress “strengthen[] the current consumer privacy framework to reflect the effects of changes in technology and the marketplace—particularly in relation to consumer data used for marketing purposes—while also ensuring that any limitations on data collection and sharing do not unduly inhibit the economic and other benefits to industry and consumers that data sharing can accord.”
  • In the new report, the GAO explained that “[s]takeholders we interviewed identified additional activities that companies could improve the use of facial recognition technology. These activities include
    • defining the purpose for the technology’s use and clearly notifying consumers how companies are using the technology—such as surveillance or marketing;
    • identifying risks and limitations associated with using the technology and prohibiting certain uses (e.g., those with discriminatory purposes); and
    • providing guidance or training related to these issues.
  • The GAO asserted
    • However, these voluntary privacy frameworks and suggested activities that could help address privacy concerns or improve the use of facial recognition technology are not mandatory. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, in most contexts facial recognition technology is not currently covered by federal privacy law. Accordingly, we reiterate our 2013 suggestion that Congress strengthen the current consumer privacy framework to reflect the effects of changes in technology and the marketplace.
• The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) “announced the dismantling of three terrorist financing cyber-enabled campaigns, involving the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, al-Qaeda, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)…the government’s largest-ever seizure of cryptocurrency in the terrorism context.”
  • The DOJ claimed
    • These three terror finance campaigns all relied on sophisticated cyber-tools, including the solicitation of cryptocurrency donations from around the world.  The action demonstrates how different terrorist groups have similarly adapted their terror finance activities to the cyber age.  Each group used cryptocurrency and social media to garner attention and raise funds for their terror campaigns.  Pursuant to judicially-authorized warrants, U.S. authorities seized millions of dollars, over 300 cryptocurrency accounts, four websites, and four Facebook pages all related to the criminal enterprise.
• The United States (U.S.) National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) revealed it has “has been providing classified briefings and other assistance to federal procurement executives, chief information officers and chief information security officers from across the U.S. Government on supply chain threats and risks stemming from contracting with five Chinese companies.” The NCSC explained the “supply chain security briefings are designed to assist federal agencies implement” Section 889 of the “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2019” (P.L. 115-232).
  • The NCSC stated:
    • One provision of the NDAA prohibits the U.S. Government from directly using goods and services from five specified Chinese companies — Huawei, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications, Hanghzou Hikvision and Dahua Technology Company.
    • Another, broader, provision of Section 889 prohibits federal agencies from contracting with any company that uses goods and services from these five Chinese firms. This particular prohibition takes effect on August 13, 2020, unless a federal agency authorizes a waiver for a specific company, which can only be granted by the agency head after receiving NCSC supply chain security guidance.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) denied two petitions to stay an April 2020 rulemaking that would make the 6Ghz band of spectrum available to users other than the incumbents. The FCC noted “wo parties—Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International, Inc. (APCO)—petitioned to stay the Order:
  • EEI, a trade association representing investor-owned electric utilities, seeks only to stay the effectiveness of the rules that apply to low-power indoor devices. 
  • APCO, a non-profit association of persons who manage and operate public-safety communications systems, seeks to stay the rules for both standard-power and low-power indoor operations.
  • In the rule and order, the FCC explained
    • We authorize two different types of unlicensed operations—standard-power and indoor low-power operations. We authorize standard-power access points using an automated frequency coordination (AFC) system. These access points can be deployed anywhere as part of hotspot networks, rural broadband deployments, or network capacity upgrades where needed. We also authorize indoor low-power access points across the entire 6 GHz band. These access points will be ideal for connecting devices in homes and businesses such smartphones, tablet devices, laptops, and Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to the Internet. As has occurred with Wi-Fi in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, we expect that 6 GHz unlicensed devices will become a part of most peoples’ everyday lives. The rules we are adopting will also play a role in the growth of the IoT; connecting appliances, machines, meters, wearables, and other consumer electronics as well as industrial sensors for manufacturing.
• In a speech, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair Rod Sims laid out the status of his agency’s actions against Google, Facebook, and other large technology platforms flowing from its final report in its “Digital Platforms Inquiry” that “proposes specific recommendations aimed at addressing some of the actual and potential negative impacts of digital platforms in the media and advertising markets, and also more broadly on consumers,” including:
  • The ACCC recently launched an action against Google regarding misleading representations it made to consumers to obtain their consent to expand the scope of personal information it collected and used about its’ users online activities.
  • In another case, which we brought against Google last year, we allege that Google misled consumers into sharing location data with Google. We contend Google did not clearly inform consumers using Android mobile devices that a particular account setting allowed Google to collect location data. We assert that many consumers may have unknowingly provided more of their personal location data to Google than they intended. Google then used consumers’ location data to enhance the value of its advertising services to prospective advertisers. This case is currently in Court with a hearing scheduled in late November.
  • Currently the ACCC is considering the acquisition by Google and Facebook of Fitbit and Giphy, respectively. We are considering questions such as whether they have the ability to give themselves advantages by favouring their own products, or whether these acquisitions are raising barriers to entry for other competitors.
  • In April 2020 the Federal Government directed the ACCC to develop a mandatory code of conduct to address bargaining power imbalances between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms. We recently published the draft legislation for the code.
• A British appeals court overturned a decision that found that a police force’s use of facial recognition technology in a pilot program that utilized live footage to be legal. The appeals court found the use of this technology by the South Wales Police Force a violation of “the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European  Convention  on  Human  Rights,  data  protection  legislation,  and  the  Public  Sector Equality Duty (“PSED”) under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.”

Further Reading

• “North Korean Hacking Group Attacks Israeli Defense Industry” by Ronen Bergman and Nicole Perlroth – The New York Times. Israel is denying the claims of a cybersecurity firm that hackers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) deeply penetrated its defense industry. Through the use of sophisticated phishing, including fake LinkedIn accounts and fluent English speakers, employees at Israeli defense companies were tricked into stalling spyware on these personal computers and then the hackers allegedly eventually accessed classified Israeli networks. The attacks show growing sophistication from DPRK hackers and that those looking to penetrate networks will always seek out weak spots.
• “Pentagon Requests More Time to Review JEDI Cloud Contract Bids” by Frank Konkel – Nextgov. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) has asked for yet more time to resolve who will win the second round of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract that may prove worth more than $10 billion to the winner. The Pentagon had told the court it was on schedule to make an award ion the rebid of the contract that Microsoft had won over Amazon. The latter claimed political interference from the White House violated federal contract law, among other claims, resulting in this lawsuit.
• “Google rival’s study urges letting mobile users pick search defaults” by Ashley Gold – Axios. DuckDuckGo, a search engine, claims in newly released research that permitting Android users to choose their search engine would decrease Google’s market share by 20%. This could be relevant to the United States (U.S.) Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust investigation. As a point of reference, in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia, Google’s share of the mobile search engine market is 95%, 98% and 98%. DOJ may seriously look at this remedy as the European Commission (EC) imposed this as part of its antitrust case against Google, resulting in a record €4.34 billion fine.
• “Facial Recognition Start-Up Mounts a First Amendment Defense” By Kashmir Hill – The New York Times. Clearview AI has retained legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams to make the argument that its collection, use, and dissemination of publicly photos scraped from the internet is protected as free speech. Abrams is quoting as saying that while privacy is, of course, an important right, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution would trump any such rights. It is expected that this argument will be employed in the myriad suits against the facial recognition technology firm in the range of suits against the company.
• “An advanced group specializing in corporate espionage is on a hacking spree” By Jeff Stone – cyberscoop. A new hacking group, RedCurl, has gone on a worldwide hacking campaign that broke into businesses in the United Kingdom, Canada, and other places. The hackers phished a number of businesses successfully by impersonating someone from the human resources in he organization.

© Michael Kans, Michael Kans Blog and michaelkans.blog, 2019-2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Michael Kans, Michael Kans Blog, and michaelkans.blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.