Google Starts Removing Private Medical Records from Search

Google updated their policy for personal info, adding 'private medical records' to the things they remove from search results.

What else have they excluded so far? National or government issued identification numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers and images of signatures.

The concern is that the information, which can be highly damaging if mistreated, can be leaked, hacked, or subject to errors.

Google VS Terrorism

Google's now going to be doing new things to reduce terrorist videos.

They'll be using a new algorithm to automatically find terrorism images, and will have more people working to monitor videos.

It will also effect educational and other videos that are about terrorism or include images that promote subjugation of religions or races. They'll have warnings now, and they won't have commenting available. This means that they will also have less engagement and will be harder to find.

CIA Infecting Wi-Fi Routers for Last 10 Years

Wikileaks has released more CIA spying information as part of their Vault7 series, which earlier included the CIA hack that was used by the EternalBlue group to create the WannaCry pandemic.

According to the recent leak, 25 models of routers, including Linsys and DLinks, can be controlled by the CIA. It is suspected that small modifications would allow the tech to take control of 100 more models, too.

It's called CherryBlossom. It turns the router into a tool the CIA can use to monitor and manipulate all traffic, as well as infect all connected devices with malware (plant their own programs on computers to do what they want with them).

The documents leaked by Wikileaks date to 2007.

People Don't Seem to Like Facebook's 'Safety Check'

There was a serious fire in London this week. People in the area received Facebook push alerts saying "The fire in London, United Kingdom" with a button that said "Tell friends that you're safe."

A lot of people seem to not like the notifications, though. The sense is they are "uncomfortable" with them and that the notifications might add to peoples' stress to drive engagement. Also, the notifications rely on Facebook's geolocation, which isn't very accurate, so people 100's of miles away sometimes got the notification.

Grads Graduating Without Learning Any Critical Thinking Skills

On the test that measures critical thinking, some colleges actually had scores lower for grads than for freshmen, although other schools showed pretty good improvements.

'Critical thinking' refers to certain skills: Being able to understand the value of an argument based on the validity of facts involved, forming a conclusion about veracity based on available information, as well as being able to form cohesive arguments, are included.

The tests, called CLA+, started less than 20 years ago. Their purpose was to assess what really took place in a student's learning over their 4-6 years at college, rather than testing the domain-specific facts and other information memorized in classes.

An example of a test question would be a challenge to a student to form an argument for or against purchasing a particular model of business plane for the company they work for, when that model had recently been reported in the news after being in a crash. The student is provided with written material about the plane to inform their argument, such as newspaper articles about the accident, federal reports on the type of engine and its known issues, charts on the planes performance, magazines with reviews of the plane and other similar models. The student has to "prepare a memo that addresses several questions, including what data support or refute the claim that the type of wing on the model of plane leads to more in-flight breakups, what other factors might have contributed to the accident and should be taken into account, and your overall recommendation about whether or not the company should purchase the plane."

With these tests, it's not a matter of just looking at the numbers, like 1,100 out of 1,600 versus 1,200 out of 1,600. People also look at a student's position compared to others who took the same test.

When Wall Street Journal looked at test results recently. though, they looked at how many students were in the "below basic skills" level. While some colleges saw improvements, -- numbers like 40% for freshmen to less than 10% for grads -- a lot of others only saw changes of a few percent, including a couple of schools where the grad score was lower than the freshman.

What does the CLA+ test?

A Global Anti-Hoax Mechanism?

This was the idea advocated by a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson at this years SPIEF economic forum. She was speaking at the "Hoax vs. Truth: challenges of the modern information world" session.

"We are trying to somehow spur a discussion regarding the creation of a certain global mechanism, an instrument that would counteract the spread of false information," she said. She gave some details about the projects, saying it would involve the collaboration of journalists and news organizations with outreach in various parts of the world.

She said that Russia also advocated working on some kind of framework for snuffing out fake information when it attended the UN's information committee 2 months ago, but that the U.S. had opposed it.

However, Russia is not known for reliable information coming from its state-run and state-dominated media, and the chief of Germany’s DPA news agency commented that such a program might lead to further censorship and a new "Ministry of Truth."

New Tech Means More People Will Be Making Money From Their Intellectual Property - Russian Economic Diversification Authority

According to Igor Drozdov, the board chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, who spoke at Russia's SPIEF economic forum this year, new technologies will allow more people "to earn real money using intellectual property institutions."

He also talked about tech that would be developed in order to protect IP, describing projects similar to what Microsoft is currently working on.

"Currently, works of authorship are analyzed by humans, but as artificial intelligence technologies become more and more sophisticated, they can at one point analyze texts just like humans, making AI expert evaluation possible."

Russian Gov Wants Control of Big Data

Big Data is the "new oil" of the digital economy, according to speakers at Russia's 2017 SPIEF economic forum.

In order to prevent uncontrolled sales of this valuable and important info, the government should streamline and oversee it, according to the participants.

The chips haven't yet settled in the global understanding of how we should treat Big Data. Is it private information or public domain? is one of the most pressing questions around which laws and regulations will be made.

"Right now we are undergoing a major revolutionary upheaval in the society," noted residential aide Igor Shchegolev, "not only a technological revolution, but a revolution of moral standards as well." He said that sometimes ordinary citizens don't understand what they're doing, and inadvertently give away too easily things like personal information.

"Maybe some of the users will do what Native Americans did, when they traded their land for glass beads, unaware of its true value," he added.

"Today, a vast amount of Internet companies offer software for free, but collect Big Data on users in return," commented Alexander Zharov, the head of Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor. "Currently, the Russian legislation and international laws do not mention the notion of Big Data. We need to codify approaches toward the processing of Big Data, terms of its storage, transfer and secondary use."

"My forecast is that a law on the issue will inevitably appear," maybe in 2018 or 2019, he told reporters on the sidelines of the forum.

Bilderberg Group to Meet on Russia, Trump and “Information War”

This year's meeting, taking place in Chantilly, Virginia, near the White House, includes the following topics: ‘Russia in the international order,’ China, ‘The Trans-Atlantic defence alliance: bullets, bytes and bucks,’ ‘The war on information,’ ‘Direction of the EU’ and ‘Why is populism growing?’

It's the 65th meeting of the secretive group. Kissinger, Thiel, and upper level staff of news organizations like Bloomberg, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and the London Evening Standard will also be among the 130 so far confirmed.

2017 Attendees

UK: After Telling People There Are 3,000 Terrorists, Actually 23,000

20,000 "subjects of interest" posing "residual risk" plus 3,000 judged to be a threat and currently under investigation or active monitoring. That's the most recent piece of information given by UK's security services.

Authorities had previously reported to the public a figure of 3,000.

The new information was released following the Manchester bombing, which security services said they were expecting and were just not able to prevent because "you can't stop them all."

Microsoft Obtains Patent to Use for Detecting Pirated Content

The company was granted a patent for technology that scans items users have stored on the cloud when they are shared. 

Microsoft envisions using software based on the patent for services like Google Drive, Dropbox and other storage services, social networks, and pirate sites. 

A summary of how the patent is understood: "When objects are shared by one user with another user, prohibited content, if identified as such, can be blocked from being shared, while the remainder of the shared objects can be accessed by the other user."

Microsoft intends that people who share copyrighted content can be banned.

It is illegal to share copyrighted content, although not illegal to store it on the cloud. 

White House Calls Trump Story False, Cites Things Not Related to News Story

White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made a public statement in response to the Washington Post and other news organisations stories this week that Trump told Russian officials information he many say he shouldn't have, denying the news.

McMaster stated:

"The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The President and the Foreign Minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two counties, including threats to civil aviation.

"At no time - at no time - were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the President did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the Secretary of State, remember it being the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources. And I was in the room. It didn't happen."

However, none of the news stories had anything to do with the things McMaster said the president didn't say -- the reports were that Trump revealed highly classified intel to an American adversary. Later, when asked, McMaster did not deny that, but said he doubted whether the president "wasn't even aware of where this information came from. He wasn't briefed on the source or method of the information either."

Microsoft Releases Large Update After WannaCry Event

Microsoft issued a large Windows update days after the WannaCry malware pandemic infected thousands of computers and led to a huge wave of Windows users updating their OSs to close the SMBv1 exploit left open by Windows until March when a leak of NSA intel made the vulnerability, as well as the NSAs exploit tool, public.

The update was unusually large, taking over an hour on some computers.

Most noticeable changes after the update: Microsoft adds a mail icon to the toolbar (currently, more people use Google for mail); OneDrive is added to the tools menu; Windows Defender Security Center also added to toolbar. In "Apps & Features," Microsoft OneConnect (paid Wi-Fi cellular) is added." Techies have recommended the removal of OneConnect, which has been part of Windows "Pre-Installed Apps" for a while.

It also "installs" apps that you already have installed, so it is more difficult to find what things Microsoft actually added when you update. However, Windows installed a lot of new apps (their own) in this update.

Microsoft removed the option to set the program to open types of files with. Now, it only opens automatically with Windows new file viewing apps. (This can be corrected by going to "Default Apps" in Start Menu and selecting apps for media types.)

China Making It's Own Wikipedia, but Public Can't Edit It

The government, which enforces strict censorship of media, has decided it needs its own online encyclopedia. Wikipedia, like many other popular free information sources on the internet, is blocked in China.

China's encyclopedia will not be like Wikipedia, though. It will not allow public edits, and its editors will be hand-picked by the government.

The want to put together 300,000 entries. Analysts have said they do not expect to see subjects China does not like to talk about, such as "Tiananmen Square 1989" and "Falun Gong spiritual group" to be included.

Turkey Blocks Wikipedia

A formal judgement has approved the administrative measure, indicating that a permanent restriction is now in place for all language editions of the online encyclopedia in Turkey.

Some are pointing towards Wikipedia's depiction of Erdogan as a dictator as a cause:

"Erdoğan detractors have noted that under Erdoğan, more journalists have been incarcerated in Turkey than in any other country, including North Korea. Detractors have also pointed out the fact that the April referendum essentially nullified the traditional legal 'check' of parliamentary fiscal review, that parliament had previously held over his executive branch of government. Detractors have claimed that Erdoğan's unceasing efforts at broadening his executive powers while also minimizing his executive accountability may amount to the 'fall of Turkish democracy,' and the 'birth of a dictator.'

"The loss of availability is consistent with internet filters used to censor content in the country," according to independent, non-partisan network monitoring observatory Turkey Blocks.

"SSL errors are issued for https requests, indicating failing to connect to the authentic servers, while the unencrypted addresses now return an nginx http 404 error indicative of filtering."

Police Illegally Obtained Journalist's Phone Records Under New Metadata Program

The Australian Federal Police announced this week that they illegally obtained a journalist's phone records under the Turnbull government's new metadata retention plan.

The breach was accidental, according to the police, and happened as part of an investigation into a leak of police material.

The journalist was not notified about their data being accessed, due to the sensitive nature of the police work, AFP said.

"This was human error ... . There was no ill will or malice or bad intent by the officers involved who breached the Act. But simply it was a mistake."

AFP said their practices would now see "significant changes."

Facebook: 'Governments Exploit Us'

Facebook has acknowledged that they are exploited by governments in manipulating public opinion, and also said they would try to do something about reducing these types of "information operations."

Governments use Facebook to amplify a view, sow distrust, and spread confusion, according to the company.

Recently, Facebook made an attempt to cut down this use of their platform by suspending 30,000 accounts in France before the French presidential election.

Facebook was a key tool in the campaign of current U.S. President Donald Trump as well, according to his campaign team.

Source: Facebook Newsroom

New Website Tracks Government Money at All Levels: USAFacts

Info on money -- revenues and expenses -- at all levels of U.S. government is being made freely available in a new website by former Microsoft CEO and current L.A. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.

The website is USAFacts.org.

Ballmer was not satisfied with the information available through web search. He said the project involved organization and accessible presentation of existing information more than anything else.

The website has interesting presentations of the data. Just for one example, it can be seen how mortgage interest deduction, which can be assessed in terms of how well it promotes home ownership, makes its way to the pockets of the various income brackets.

Wikipedia Creator Making News Version: Wikitribune

Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales is creating Wikitribune, a news version of Wikipedia where he hopes news will be more fact-based than what he sees elsewhere.

He will be hiring many journalists for the initial phase, and see how things develop from there.

Wikitribune will not focus on doing original journalism. It will use the same community model as Wikipedia to put together long-form contextual articles for news events, as well as finding related questions that can be filled in by people at home.

Regarding whether the venture would succeed, Wales stated, "[O]ne of my main questions is the question of scale - I think if we can get to scale, it will be successful. If we aren't able to produce enough good work early on to persuade people to contribute further support, I think that means that potentially we are going to struggle to get traction. But the response so far to the announcement has been so positive that I'm feeling ok."