Data Ignorance is Strength!

It is Tuesday. The rest of the country (world?) is talking about the pending public hearings on the impeachment inquiry.

But I’m going to talk about data and algos.

First, Google. It was reported yesterday by the WSJ that the company is engaged with Ascension on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal-health information of millions of people across 21 states.

Data like lab results, doctor diagnoses, hospitalization records, and personal data including health histories, patient names, and dates of birth. 

Calling Dr. Google, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!

Microsoft, meanwhile, indicated in a blog post that it would honor Calilfornia’s digital privacy law throughout the entire U.S., an attempt to elude a patchwork of state data privacy laws and a call for federal privacy legislation.

And then there’s the new Apple Card algorithm which is being probed by the New York Department of Financial Services for alleged algorithmic gender discrimination.

There have apparently been several instances where Apple and banker Goldman Sachs Group are giving husbands credit limits of up to 20 times to that of their wives.

Including, with much irony, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

“So 1984 won’t be like…1984.”

 

A Changing SAP

Big news on the enterprise software front overnight. SAP announced that CEO Bill McDermott would be leaving the company after nearly a decade at the helm. McDermott has overseen SAP’s shift to the cloud, and the company’s stock was up 75% over the past five years.

Board members Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein were appointed co-CEOs.

For SAP clients out there, also know that IBM just rolled out a new open source SDK that lets users call Watson services directly from ABAP code in SAP systems. ABAP is the primary programming language supported on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP server platform.

On the frenzied AI dealmaking front, AI-powered checkout firm Standard Cognition has bought DeepMagic, which provides autonomous retail kiosks. This apparently to better compete with Amazon Go’s checkout experience.

DeepMagic allows customers to swipe a payment card when entering a smaller kiosk or store, pick up items that are detected by cameras and then walk out while having their card charged.

Sorry, no cash!

And for those of you who are using G Suite (especially those in newsrooms) who thought your documents were encrypted end-to-end, the Freedom of the Press Foundation says differently. 

What’s in a Domain Name Server?

Happy Monday.

The news you need to know about this fine Monday morning (that doesn’t involve impeachment inquiries): Google and Mozilla are looking to encrypt the Internet domain name system (better known as DNS), which could keep bad actors from snooping on websites and spoofing.

But which could also keep ISPs from gathering user data because the browser session data would become opaque to them.

As a report in The Wall Street Journal observed, Google indicated it is making this move to improve users’ security and privacy and will leave consumers more in charge of who shares their Internet data.

Though ISPs are logically concerned by the move, so are the Three Letter Agencies, for which the move could make it more difficult to monitor Internet traffic.

And with Google operating its own DNS service, the story cites that some “are concerned that the DNS upgrade could ultimately concentrate too much off the Internet’s traffic in the hands of Google.”

Engadget is reporting separately that this move is “raising hackles among American officials” and that the U.S. Department of Justice has received complaints and the House Judiciary Committee is investigating.

Turns out the answer to the question “What’s in a name?” is, quite a bit.

Don’t Send in the Telegram!

On the subject of Puerto Rico and the Telegram chat hacks: Am I the only person out there wondering how this happened if Telegram is supposed to be so secure?

I’ve looked on Telegram’s Twitter feed and blog, and it’s a major no comment, bury your head in the sand.

Rumors have abounded today that PR Gov. Rickardo Rossello will be resigning, but I’ve received no telegrams to that effect just yet.

Did nobody everywhere learn anything from Iran Contra??!  If you don’t want it to become a scandal, don’t write it down. ANYWHERE!  The Nation magazine went long on this story a few years ago now.

On to the much bigger story of the day: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has hit Facebook with a $5 billion fine and new privacy checks, reports a lot of outlets, including The Verge.

In the agreement filed today, the FTC alleges that Facebook violated the law by failing to protect data from third parties, serving ads through the use of phone numbers provided for security, and lying to users that its facial recognition software was turned off by default. In order to settle those charges, Facebook will pay $5 billion — the second-largest fine ever levied by the FTC — and agree to a series of new restrictions on its business.

Aside from the multibillion-dollar fine, Facebook will be required to conduct a privacy review of every new product or service that it develops, and these reviews must be submitted to the CEO and a third-party assessor every quarter. As it directly relates to Cambridge Analytica, Facebook will now be required to obtain purpose and use certifications from apps and third-party developers that want to use Facebook user data. However, there are no limits on what data access the company can authorize to those groups once the disclosure is made.

NOTE: I own a few Facebook shares, but I still have four words…fox (still)…guarding…henhouse.

On the streaming wars front: Netflix is launching a $2.80 per month mobile-only subscription plan in India, although it’s restricted to one mobile device at 480p def.

Will Netflix expand this option to the U.S. and other markets to gain more share? Stay tuned!

And on the funding front: Payroll and HR software maker Gusto raised a $200M Series D co-led by Fidelity and Generation Investment Management, and camping listing/booking platform Hipcamp raised a $25M Series B led byy Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total take to $41.8M. 

Don’t forget to bring the marshmallows!

Amazon’s AI Coalmine Canary

Happy Thursday.

So Amazon has announced that it is going to spend $700M to retrain 100K of its workers (a third of its workforce) by 2025, and seems to be doing so as an acknowledgment partly due to the impact of technology and automation on jobs.

Plus, it’s just good, smart business.

Subheads directly from the Amazon press release:

Programs will help Amazonians from all backgrounds access training to move into highly skilled technical and non-technical roles across the company’s corporate offices, tech hubs, fulfillment centers, retail stores, and transportation network, or pursue career paths outside of Amazon

Based on a review of its workforce and analysis of U.S. hiring, Amazon’s fastest growing highly skilled jobs over the last five years include data mapping specialist, data scientist, solutions architect and business analyst, as well as logistics coordinator, process improvement manager and transportation specialist within our customer fulfillment network

Employee upskilling investment builds on Amazon’s $15 minimum wage and comprehensive benefits including medical insurance, 401k savings plan, and generous parental leave

I like BI’s headline: “Jeff Bezos just sent a clear signal that AI will remake American jobs.”

Deadend Jobs – Skills Retraining + Artificial Intelligence and/or Robotic Automation = Canary in the Coalmine.

Retrain, or become a Luddite.

Meanwhile, the French have passed a 3 percent digital services tax on sales in France for large Internet companies with over 25M Euros in French revenues. 

Expect U.S. retaliatory tariffs from Monsieur Trump, tout suite!

Next: Bird scooters are losing money hand over handlebars, some $100M in the first quarter, with revenue shrinking to about $15M. 

But hey, go ahead and continue stringing scooters across the downtown Austin landscape in a bid to drive up your next Series round.

You’re gonna need it if you only have $100M left in the scooter piggy bank!

Finally, I said to anyone who would listen in 1999 that one day, privacy would be considered a competitive differentiator. Well, I finally feel vindicated, and not dealing with privacy and data protection is finally carrying a hefty price that business can no longer ignore.

OneTrust, a company which builds tools to help companies navigate data protection and privacy policies both internally and with its customers, has raised $200M in a Series A and that values the company at $1.3B.

Billion, with a “B.”  That should buy lots of privacy.

Facebook Going Private?

Facebook’s going private.

Not in the market sense of the term, but rather, in the sense that Mark Zuckerberg and company have decided to double down on privacy.

That, and I have a vast area of swampland in south Florida I can sell you for cents on the dollar.

But seriously, at its F8 developer conference yesterday, these were the words Zuck spoke:

“I believe the future is private…This is the next chapter for our services.”

As CNET had reported, Zuckerberg last month indicated Facebook would refocus the entire company around privacy, and that infrastructure of all of Facebook’s services — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger — would be more technical integrated and prioritize end-to-end encryption.

As to what the company introduced in yesterday’s keynote, Business Insider described it this way:

the California-based tech giant announced a sweeping redesign of the social network — ditching its iconic blue menu bar and replacing it with a cleaner, white design, and placing greater-than-ever emphasis on groups.

And this:

The new Facebook design also gives Stories — the buzzy ephemeral-photo-sharing format — prominent placement at the very top of users’ feeds.

There are also significant structural changes that place greater emphasis on user-created groups. Users can post to groups directly from the homepage, groups are given greater prominence on the left-hand sidebar (on desktop), and new tools are being added to specialized types of groups.

The redesigned mobile app will launch “right away,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed announcement, while it’ll roll out more slowly on desktop — “in the next few months.”

As of this morning, I’m still waiting for those changes to arrive.  That, and privacy on Facebook, which still makes chuckle out loud when I write that.

Why?

Because I’ve yet to figure out how a social network whose business model is based entirely on monetizing our personal information makes such a model work with private, more personal and encrypted communications.

But maybe I’m just slow.

Send A Telegram

Happy Monday.

There’s been no end of excitement here in Austin the past few weeks.

First, we had a good ten days of SXSW. Then this weekend an apparently very exciting Indy Race.

And this week, the WGC returns to Austin Country Club for the Dell Technologies Match Play golf tournament.

It’s enough to make one want to send a telegram.

And BleekingComputer is reporting that one can do just that, with more privacy capability than ever, with the new and improved Telegram app.

Telegram announced today they have had added a feature that allows users to delete any message in a one-on-one chat and have ti be removed from both chat user’s devices.

This builds on the initial “unsend” feature which allowed users to remove any message they’d sent within the last 48 hours fromm both devices.

“Today, we are giving hundreds of millions of users complete control of any private conversation they have ever had,” Telegram stated in a blog post. “You can now choose to delete any message you have sent or received from both sides in any private chat. The messages will disappear for both you and the other person – without leaving a trace.”

I would imagine this feature will be very popular with journalists, whistleblowers, and human rights activists everywhere.

What A Week in Tech (and Privacy)

What a headspinning week in tech!

I don’t really even know where to begin.

On the one hand, we saw more stratospheric (and sometimes recordbreaking) tech earnings from the likes of Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

On the other, we saw more privacy gaffes that make me think my personal digital data was a lot safer during the 2016 elections than it was here in the present of 2018.

The New York Times’ Mike Isaac suggested in an article yesterday that Tim Cook and Apple held significant cards in their enterprise agreement faceoff with Facebook.

And Kara Swisher wrote in the Gray Lady that Tim Cook “has become the critic-in-chief for Facebook” — particularly when it comes to privacy matters — even as Apple had to face up to its own privacy snafu with FaceTime Group chats (although Apple said today it had fixed that particular flaw).

Thankfully I don’t use such group chats, but it was still not exactly reassuring that the privacy industrial complex is clearly growing bigger and making billions and still doing a sheit job of protecting our data.

Those two missions — making lots and lots and lots of money and protecting users’ personal information — now seem to be not only completely at odds, but almost at war.

And that’s before we really turn the volume up on artificial intelligence’s capabilities and the genies (and demons) that that could unleash.

TGIF.  I need a beer.

Please, just don’t tell my Facebook page or my FaceTime app — my insurance company might be listening.

Google in the Hot Box

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is in the hotbox today on Capitol Hill as he testifies before the House Judiciary Committee.

I’ve had some of the later testimony on in the background, and there have already been lots of questions about data and data sharing, preloaded apps, privacy, DoubleClick cookies and the merging of offline data (which I found sooo 1999!).

The New York Times is following much more closely, and here are some highlights of what they’ve observed:

Republican lawmakers displayed the party’s growing distrust toward Google, raising a broad array of tough questions on the search giant’s market power, plans to relaunch service in China, and whether the site suppresses conservative content. At the core of their questions was a concern over the company’s commitment to free expression.

Kevin McCarthy, House Republican Leader, had this to say:

“All of these topics — competition, censorship, bias, and others — point to one fundamental question that demands the nation’s attention. Are America’s technology companies serving as instruments of freedom or instruments of control?”

There was also discussion around liberal-leaning biases of employees and whether or not those biases “affect[ed] filtering decisions for its search engine,” a claim many right-leaning leaders have suggested in the past.

Location information was also prevalent, and Texas Republican Ted Poe held up his own smartphone and asked Pichai if Google was tracking his whereabouts if we walked to the other side of the room.

Pichai’s response: “Not by default,” suggesting it depended on the congressman’s app settings.

The Times also observed that Google’s been taking heat both internally and externally for “Project Dragonfly,” it’s initiative to build a censored search engine that could be used in the Chinese market.

My observation: Regulation of American Internet giants is not a question of if, but when, and how much. They’ve amassed too much personal data far too quickly and treated it with reckless abandon, and now the question becomes what measures can an American regulatory regime take that has both teeth for the consumer but doesn’t stifle innovation for industry.  

It’s a tall order and a complicated ask, but they, that’s why all those lobbyists get paid the big bucks! ; )

Another Facebook Breach

Happy Friday!

Well, depending on who you ask.

The BBC, Gizmodo, and others are reporting a new Facebook data breach, this time of private Facebook messages of at least 81,000 unfortunate souls.

It’s being reported the culprit was a Chrome Extension exploit, and is apparently not related to the more widespread September breach previously reported of 120 million Facebook accounts.

Some details:

The hackers, who may be Russian since they reached out to the BBC Russian Service, appear to have the Facebook messages of at least 81,000 people, mostly of Russians and Ukrainians, but also from people in the U.S., UK, and Brazil, according to the BBC.

“Browsers like Chrome can be very secure, but browser extensions can introduce serious gaps in their armor. The addition of browser extensions increases what is otherwise a small attack surface. Malicious extensions can be used to intercept and manipulate the data passing through the browser,” said Rick Holland, CISO of Digital Shadows, which helped the BBC analyze the breach.

As to the content of those messages:

Many of the messages are relatively benign and include simple chats about going on vacation and attending concerts. But as you’d expect, there are also more sensitive discussions, including “intimate correspondence between two lovers,” as the BBC describes it.

Hoped all 81K Facebook users whose private messages were sold!