Prosecutor slams Krafts appeal to block Orchids of Asia tapes – Boston Herald

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A Florida prosecutor slammed New England Patriots owner Robert Krafts arguments to suppress surveillance tapes made at a Florida spa allegedly recording sex acts, calling the case a significant Fourth Amendment ruling in filings submitted Tuesday.

Kraft, who pleaded not guilty to two prostitution charges in February for sex acts allegedly recorded in January at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Fla., earned a victory in May when a Palm Beach County judge suppressed police surveillance evidence, calling filming of non-criminal massages unacceptable.

Prosecutors appealed the May decision to suppress video, and Florida Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Paul DeSousa refuted Krafts arguments to support the May decision in a 23-page reply brief filed last night.

(Kraft) urges that massages should not have been recorded at any time other than the end of a massage; but the first of his offenses came at the end of a massage, DeSousa wrote. And he insists that recording was improper when men left on their underwear at the start of a massage; but he removed his own underwear immediately.

DeSousa also argued Jupiter Polices nonstop covert surveillance over a five-day period was necessary to gather all facts, and it would have been a difficult burden for police to determine when to film and not film activities for signs of prostitution.

The sides have argued case law surrounding video surveillance in briefs filed since October, and DeSousa wrote in a motion attached to his reply brief the appeals decision in Floridas Fourth District Court of Appeals will be the first state appellate court to resolve the Fourth Amendment questions at play here.

Krafts misdemeanor case has been on hold since the appeal filed in May, and another appeal by the women charged with running the Orchids of Asia Day Spa is locked in a similar appeal battle.

Also in the brief, DeSousa says third parties have filed at least one federal lawsuit for monetary damage alleging the Orchids of Asia tapes violated their own Fourth Amendment rights.

A civil lawsuit by Kraft in a Florida court alleging denial of investigative documents by prosecutors is also pending a ruling on a motion to dismiss by the state.

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Prosecutor slams Krafts appeal to block Orchids of Asia tapes - Boston Herald

When They Come for You – Sharyl Attkisson

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The following is from Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson. Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

If you think youre hearing more accounts than ever about improper government intrusion into our lives, youre a lot like author and journalist David Kirby. He researched that for new book When They Come For You: How Police and Government Are Trampling Our Liberties and How to Take Them Back.

Sharyl: When you say, When They Come for You, who is the They?

Kirby: The they can be anything from a local social services agent in your community, to the president of the United States. This goes on at the state, federal and local level. It goes on in red states and blue states, rich states, and poor states, big cities, and small towns. I found violations of the Fourth Amendment, the First Amendment, freedom of speech, people having their homes raided without a warrant. People having their cars taken away from them because they were suspected of a crime even though they didnt commit a crime. People in debtors prison because they cant pay their court fees and fines, and of course child protective services that come in the middle of the night, and just yank your kid away.

Sharyl: Do you think theres been an escalation in events like this, or are we just able to find them, and notice them more?

Kirby: Its a very good question. Theres not a lot of hard data unfortunately. There is more monitoring. Social media, people have cameras with them everywhere so its more noticeable. But I do think it is getting worse. I think particularly with surveillance, with the First Amendment, with freedom of the press, freedom of protestors. I think it started after 911, the PATRIOT Act. It got worse under Obama, as you well know, with surveillance of the media. Now I think its getting even worse, particularly cracking down on protesters, spying on protestors, and doing things like threatening to sue media outlets for libel, or wanting to change the libel laws.

Sharyl: Many Americans say, I obey the law. If the government wants to surveil me, look at my computer, I dont really care. Is there a counterpoint to that?

Kirby: I mean thats the Fourth Amendment. Its the most threatened amendment in our country, I think, after the First Amendment, which is a close second. But we need to protect those protections for everybody, and once you just acquiesce and say, Well, its okay if theyre listening in on my phone call, then the door starts opening wider and wider.

Sharyl: Is it fair to say you consider yourself a liberal, or a liberal Democrat?

Kirby: Im a lefty. Yes. Left of center.

Sharyl: Do you notice any division? Is one party or the other better or worse at any of this?

Kirby: Theyre both bad to be honest. I can pick apart, and my book does, and Im equally critical of the Obama Administration as the Trump Administration. A lot of my stories take place in blue states.

Sharyl: But what do you attribute that to, if there isnt even an ideological divide into where this happens?

Kirby: Well, I think when you talk about ideology, I think people on the far left and on the far right are actually a lot more united over these issues than they realize. People on the left dont like government intrusion any more than anybody else does. It is more of a libertarian point of view. I call myself a lefty libertarian, which sounds oxymoronic, but I figured it out. I would say people like Rand Paul is certainly bringing these things up once in a while. He has sponsored some bills in Congress. They go absolutely nowhere. He does get Democratic cosponsors. There are people, progressives, who are interested in reforming these issues, and reigning in the government. But like I said, it goes nowhere.

Sharyl: What would you say is the takeaway message you would like people to walk away from reading your book with?

Kirby: Know your Bill of Rights. Read them, study them, know what protections you are offered under them in case you ever need to use them, and if you are concerned about these things, its up to us. These are our personal freedoms, and they are under attack.

A new report from Pew Research Center says a majority of Americans, 64%, are concerned about how much data is collected about them by the government online.

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TSA drops fine against Texas man who refused search – Overton County News

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Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has agreed to withdraw a fine against a Texas man who, after successfully passing through an airport security metal detector and then being randomly selected to pass through a whole-body imaging scanner, chose not to board a flight rather than be subjected to a third search an invasive pat-down by TSA agents.

Jonathan Cobb was fined $2,660 by TSA and charged with interfering with airport screening after he politely refused, based on past traumatic experiences with TSA, to be subjected to a pat-down search at George W. Bush International Airport and opted instead not to board his ticketed flight. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute came to Cobbs defense, challenging the $2,660 fine as excessive and successfully arguing that Cobb had a Fourth Amendment right to opt out of the search and elect not to travel.

What we are witnessing is an unofficial rewriting of the Fourth Amendment by government agencies and the courts that essentially does away with any distinctions over what is reasonable when it comes to searches and seizures by government agents, said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People.

The rationale, of course, is that anything is reasonable in the war on terrorism. By constantly pushing the envelope and testing the limits of what Americans will tolerate, the government is thus able to ratchet up the level of intrusiveness that Americans consider reasonable.

As Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, recognized, Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual, and putting terror in every heart.

Jonathan Cobb was scheduled to travel to Chicago from Houstons George W. Bush International Airport on February 25, 2019. Prior to boarding his ticketed flight, Cobb entered a TSA screening area. After passing through the metal detector without any alarms, Cobb was randomly selected for additional screening and told to proceed through the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) scanner.

Although Cobb offered to remove his belt because he feared it would cause an alarm, the AIT operator instructed him to leave the belt on. The machine did alarm and Cobb was told that he must submit to a third search a pat-down of his body.

Cobb politely and calmly refused, telling the agents that he would rather leave the airport and miss his flight than submit to a pat-down.

After Cobb refused to submit to the pat-down, he was taken to a private area, where a TSA supervisor told him he must submit to a pat-down because of the AIT alarm.

Cobb explained that his refusal to endure a pat-down search was based upon a traumatic TSA screening in 2012 when he was selected for a pat-down, which he found excessively invasive and demoralizing; however, Cobb offered to allow a full visual inspection of his person or to reenter the AIT scanner without his belt. TSA agents reported the matter to local law enforcement.

When Cobb continued to insist, calmly and firmly, that he would not submit to the pat-down and would instead choose to miss his flight, police escorted Cobb out of the airport.

Two months later, Cobb received a notice that he was being fined $2,660 dollars for interfering with TSA screening.

In coming to Cobbs defense, Rutherford Institute attorneys argued that Cobb had a Fourth Amendment right to opt out of traveling rather than be subjected to an objectionable pat-down search by TSA screening agents. Affiliate attorney Jerri Lynn Ward of Garlo Ward assisted The Rutherford Institute in defending Cobb.

Founded in 1982 by constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute is a civil liberties organization that provides free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated.

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TSA drops fine against Texas man who refused search - Overton County News

Snowden: A Whistle-Blower Who Lived to Tell About It – lareviewofbooks

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DECEMBER 15, 2019

I GENERALLY CARE relatively little for the personal lives of people of note, but something that always nagged me just slightly about Edward Snowdens 2013 revelations that the NSA was spying on pretty much everyone was how angry was his girlfriend?

After all, we all knew Snowden had a girlfriend, since it didnt take long for the media to uncover that her name was Lindsay Mills, that (much to their infinite delight) she had photos of herself in lingerie, and that her significant other had suddenly turned up in Hong Kong halfway through a business trip and started to fill the world in on US mass surveillance without running it by her first.

It must have been quite the shock.

I therefore found it uncharacteristically satisfying that Permanent Record included a chapter composed of extracts from Lindsay Millss diary. It was genuinely interesting to get an insight into how someone might cope with this very unusual situation being thrust upon them in a more candid tone than we generally get from the guarded Snowden throughout the rest of the book. These excerpts were all the more necessary, as this really is a book about the personal no further details of public significance are released in this title, which is a work primarily of analysis and reflection.

The general schema of the book is precisely what one might expect: Snowdens childhood in North Carolina and the DC Beltway; his decision to enlist in the US Army following 9/11; his roles as a defense contractor in the United States, Switzerland, and Japan; his ultimate decision to blow the whistle on mass surveillance and subsequent temporary asylum in Russia. Prior reviews have been accompanied by a few snarky remarks: The New Yorker, for example, claimed that Snowden saw the early internet as a techno-utopia where boys and men could roam free, although I cannot recall Snowden making such exclusionary gendered distinctions. Presumably it complements Malcolm Gladwells earlier piece on why Snowden is not comparable to Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg (since he is a hacker not a leaker) in flat contradiction to Ellsbergs own defense of Snowden published in the Washington Post:

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I dont agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago. [] Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly.

So eager has everyone been to snipe and show their moral fiber as good little citizens, that they have rarely found the time to dig into Permanent Records main themes. Rather than spilling more facts, Snowdens aim seems to have been to contextualize his previous disclosures and explain their significance. Thus, while many parts of the book are truly gripping a goodly portion of it details how Snowden removed information detailing surveillance from his workplace under a pineapple field in Hawaii and arranged to share it with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong it is the authors underlying themes and motivations that truly deserve our attention.

It is apparent early on that Snowden pursued two main purposes in releasing Permanent Record: 1) to convince skeptics that he acted for the good of the country and to defend the US Constitution (indeed the books release was timed to coincide with Constitution Day on September 17), and 2) to educate readers about technology, or at least that part of it related to mass surveillance.

Early on, while still describing his 80s childhood and initial fascination with what he then termed Big Masheens, Snowden recalls imbibing lessons from his Coast Guard father Lonnie about the potential for technology to bring its own form of tyranny with it. According to Snowden:

To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, youll work, but when your equipment breaks down youll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you.

Technological tyranny is a theme Snowden comes back to later in the book, reflecting on Mary Shelleys Frankenstein he was after all posted to Geneva, where part of the novels action is set.

That may sound a bit clich, until you learn that Snowdens sales partner during his time at Dell literally nicknamed the cloud system they developed for the CIA Frankie because its a real monster. That wasnt just a private office joke, but how he tried to convince the agency to greenlight the project during a sales pitch. Its these little pieces of not-exactly-earth-shattering, but still pleasantly informative detail that help the book keep ticking over and compensate for the often distant tone of its author. Snowden frequently describes his feelings, but rarely does he make the reader feel them.

Snowden also lavishes attention on explaining how he interacted with the internet as a child and teen. While many have interpreted these lengthy passages as either nave utopianism or pathetic addiction, his point is much more important than that. Im much of an age with Snowden and therefore remember many of the things he recalls: phreaking, personal homepages, chat rooms, and the days when you could just ask perfect strangers for advice and theyd give it to you. What I think I hadnt fully considered before reading this book is that at least some people in this rather narrow cohort absorbed some knowledge of modern technology. Despite being nowhere near as interested in computers as Snowden (and having a positive antipathy to Big Masheens), I learned how to build circuits and program from Basic to Java as part of my general education. That gave me the ability to learn more later in life and to form a better (if still far from expert) understanding of the nuts and bolts of computing infrastructure.

By contrast, many people today know how to use tech, but they dont understand it. Just like few people who use money understand economics. And just like an ability to grasp finance creates an enormous power differential, so does the ability to understand tech.

Snowden is at pains to redress this balance, methodically explaining everything from SD cards, to TOR, to smart appliances, to the difference between http and https, to the fact that when you delete a file from your computer, it doesnt actually get deleted. He bestows the same attention to detail on these subjects as he does describing the labyrinthine relationships of his various employers and the intelligence agencies, and this clarity helps turn the book into a relatable story about issues rather than a jargon-stuffed, acronym-filled nightmare.

Only by understanding how technology works on a basic level, so argues Snowden, can journalists ask the right questions of power and regulators regulate effectively. He strengthens this case by noting examples of times when major announcements (construction of enormous data storage facilities; a CIA presentation in which the speaker literally admonished the journalists present to think about their rights) were simply ignored.

They did not make waves, Snowden thinks, because journalists and regulators simply didnt realize their significance. There is, as he says repeatedly in the book, a lag between technology and regulation.

It is an issue that others in a position to know, like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have pointed out. Everything from advances in robotic warfare to artificial intelligence to total surveillance aided by facial recognition is dismissed as alarmist until well after it is happening, when its then dismissed in true Nineteen Eighty-Four style with a shoulder shrug as inevitable.

And when that doesnt happen, tech tends to be treated as an entirely new phenomenon requiring heavy-handed, and often counterproductive, regulation.

While it is entirely true that people are bullied on social media, for example, we shouldnt forget that people were bullied in real life in the past, too. And threatened. And the victims of fraud. And defamation. And child abuse. As a result, we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that we often do already have a well-developed arsenal of remedies that can be adjusted for the internet era without the need to jettison constitutional values in the name of protection and safety.

There are ways to apprehend criminals effectively without the total take of information that intelligence agencies so lazily demand. Vigilante pedophile-hunting groups have been quite successful in luring would-be predators to justice by posing as minors on social media sites. While it is beyond question that such activities should be left to properly trained and authorized police forces not righteous citizens who can do as much harm as good it does show that the individualized pursuit of crime can still be very effective in the social media age. Indeed, in regards to some crimes, like forms of child abuse, detection may well be easier than in earlier times with many culprits unable to resist the temptation to groom potential victims online.

Rather than veering between complacency and panic, we should be thinking about the various ways in which to update our legal framework for the modern digital age something Snowdens revelations about the warrantless mass surveillance programs he uncovered have given us a particular urgency to do.

The part of the law most significant to Snowden, and which he quotes in the book, is the US Constitutions Fourth Amendment, which reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

According to Snowden, the NSA sought to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by creating a huge database of all online activity the permanent record of the books title ideally stored in perpetuity and which they would only search when [the organizations] analysts, not its algorithms, actively queried what had already been automatically collected. Intelligence agencies also argued that because individuals have already given permission to third parties, particularly telecommunications companies, to host their data, that data no longer resided in the private sphere and thus constitutional privacy had been forfeited.

After all, the magic of what feels private sitting in front of your computer or scrolling through your phone at home can only happen by connecting to distant servers.

Those who support a living document interpretation of the Constitution may see this as an eventual opportunity to expand the scope of the terms papers, and effects for the modern era, something Snowden himself suggests; originalists might argue that only a constitutional change itself can suffice to fully address privacy rights in a digital age.

Some of the actions that Snowden describes monitoring people through their webcams in their homes via XKEYSCORE would certainly seem like unproblematic violations if committed against US citizens or persons on US soil under present wording and interpretations. Others like hunting through the vast reams of information we sign over to private companies may prove more difficult. Justice Scalia, the nations most well-known originalist prior to his death in 2016, is alleged to have refused to be drawn on whether or not computer data was an effect in the sense of the Fourth Amendment at a public lecture in 2014.

In more practical terms, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided in 2015 (ACLU v. Clapper) that bulk collection was not covered by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, stating in part, Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a program of which many members of Congress and all members of the public were not aware, a decision followed shortly by the passing of the USA Freedom Act, under which telecoms companies keep records that law enforcement may then request.

However, it is somewhat doubtful whether legal remedies alone will effectively stop the political-intelligence agency complex that Snowden describes so adroitly in his book. He recalls the panic he witnessed at Fort Meade and outside the Pentagon during 9/11, and later the blame as politicians emphasized the prevention of terror attacks as the standard for measuring their own competence. Intelligence agencies felt both the horror of having to develop some way to guarantee safety and the power of being able to extort huge budgets from Congress in the interests of doing so. Once an agency has the capability to engage in mass surveillance and is under significant pressure to maintain security, its difficult to imagine it failing to indulge regardless of legalities.

Snowden mentions encryption, SecureDrop, and the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as potential ways for citizens to uphold their own privacy, but Im less than convinced. Encryption is not readily available to the average person working on an average budget; few people will ever have any reason to use SecureDrop, and I doubt many of the alleged positive effects of the GDPR, which has mainly led to Europeans agreeing to any and every pop-up in order to get to their content ASAP while introducing barriers to sharing and advertisement for small businesses (precisely not the threat).

In this context, perhaps the right to be forgotten (in fairness, now enshrined in Article 17 of the GDPR, although the principle derives from an earlier 2014 court case) is more relevant. After all, Snowdens main fear is the creation of the unforgiving permanent record, where every mistake, minor trespass, and ill-considered comment remains preserved for all time and just waiting to be used against one. Indeed, he contrasts this with the early days of the web, where one could develop opinions freely and cast aside identities that one had outgrown. Snowden regards this freedom as pivotal to development and maturation, as we all tend to curate our lives over the years, forming the identity we want to have at the expense of conflicting past actions.

Despite the fact that he never made it to his intended destination Ecuador Snowden remains, much like Ellsberg, a powerful example of a person who blew the whistle on state abuses and not only lived to tell about it, but is living an apparently well-adjusted life. As he lets us know at the end of the book, Lindsay eventually joined him in Moscow, refrained from slapping him silly (as Snowden admits he deserved), and agreed to marry him. Its a fitting low-key end for a book, and a story, that is more about substance than style.

Roslyn Fuller is author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose and In Defence of Democracy and is the director of the Solonian Democracy Institute.

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Snowden: A Whistle-Blower Who Lived to Tell About It - lareviewofbooks

Democrat can read minds, that’s how they know Trump committed impeachable offenses (PODCAST) – Sharyl Attkisson

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December 17, 2019 by Sharyl Attkisson 1 Comment

When it comes to President Trumps alleged impeachable offenses, with the factual record lacking, Democrats say they can read minds.

Listen to this short podcast by clicking the arrow in the player below. Or listen on iTunes or your favorite podcast distributor under The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast and Full Measure After Hours. And follow the podcasts on Twitter @TheSharylPodcast @FullMeasureAH

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkissons work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Trump impeachment

Emmy-Award Winning Investigative Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Host of Sinclair's Full Measure

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Democrat can read minds, that's how they know Trump committed impeachable offenses (PODCAST) - Sharyl Attkisson

Power on Trial: Judge mentions Burke 45 times in jury instructions – Newsday

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The wait begins

"OK, you may deliberate," U.S. District Court Judge Joan Azrack told jurors Monday in the trial of Thomas Spota, Suffolk's former district attorney, and Christopher McPartland, former head of Spota's anti-corruption unit.

It was 11:34 a.m., after she'd read the panel 41 pages of instructions more like 40, actually, since the last page contained a single sentence and after she'd consulted with prosecutors and attorneys in the panel's presence, perhapsfor one last time.

Attendance in the courtroom was sparse.

Supporters for Spota, including family members, sat on the benches behind the defense table.

On the prosecution side, in contrast to other days during the trial, a single prosecution-witness-turned-observer sat and he left after the jury filed out to begin deliberating.

About an hour later the panel received a giantstack of materials entered by prosecutors and defense attorneys at trial.

By then, the courtroom was almost empty.

Get inside the courtroom during the trial of ex-Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota.

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And so it wasthat thewait began.

Jurors heard mention of James Burke, former Suffolk police chief of department, about 45 times during Azrack's instructions.

They heard mention of Christopher Loeb, the man Burke assaulted, about13 times.

Much of that came as Azrack detailed the elements of "Accessory After the Fact to the Deprivation of Christopher Loeb's Civil Rights," which is the fourth of four counts charged against both Spota and McPartland.

(The others are conspiracy to tamper with witnesses and obstruct an official proceeding, witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding, and obstruction of justice.)

Burke did plead guilty to charges stemming from Loeb's assault.

And that fact was brought up numerous times during the trial.

In considering the accessory after the fact charge against Spota and McPartland, however, the judge instructed jurors that prosecutors had to establish that Burke had committed a crime.

With that, the judge's instructions, in a way,offered a closer look into Burke's actions.

Burke, in assaulting Loeb on Dec. 14, 2012, would have had to beacting "under color of law," that is, that Burke "acted or was clothed with" authority.

"An individual who acts under color of law may be a state officer , Azrack read.

Burke had to have "deprived the victim of a federal right," Azrack read.

"I instruct you that The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects persons from being subjected to excessive force while being arrested , she read.

"In other words, a law enforcement official may only employ the amount of force reasonably necessary under the circumstances to make the arrest," she told jurors.

In addition to the first two elements, she read, Burke had to have "acted willfully."

Willfully means that Burke acted voluntarily and intentionally, with the intent to deprive a person of a federal right made definite by court decisions and other rule of law , Azrack read.

In testimony during the trial, Anthony Leto, a former Suffolk detective,described Burke's assault onLoeb.

"You have had the opportunity to observe the witnesses," Azrack read. You must decide what testimony to believe and what not to believe."

Over six weeks, jurors heard from 30 witnesses.

Some of them were cooperating witnesses, that is, they have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the investigation into Loeb's assault and are seeking leniency in return for cooperating with prosectors.

Others testified under a grant of immunity, that is, under an order from the judge that bars their testimony from being used against them in a criminal case (except perjury, giving a false statement or otherwise failing to comply with the immunity order).

The government's key witness, former Suffolk Det. Lt. James Hickey, was criticized early and often by defense attorneys questioning whether alcohol abuse and a hospital stay for an "impaired mental state" impacted his credibility.

Soit wasno surprise to see this, among the lengthy section ofinstructions regarding witness credibility to jurors:

Consider what effect, if any, a witness's alcohol use or abuse may have had on that witness' ability to perceive, remember, or relate the events in question," Azrack read.

In testimony, Emily Constant, Spota's former second in command, told prosecutors that she did not want to see either her former bossor McPartlandfound guilty.

Which may (or may not) be why the instructions on witness credibility also included this:

"Does the witness have a relationship with the government or one or more of the defendants which may affect how he or she testified?" Azrack read.

Constant was neither a cooperating nor immunized witness.

She testified under subpoena.

"The testimony of cooperating and immunized witnesses should be examined by you with great care and caution," Azrack read.

Those witnesses include Hickey, as well as other former Suffolk detectives including Leto, who also admitted assaulting Loeb.

"You should ask yourselves whether the witness would benefit more by lying or by telling to truth," Azrack read. "If you believe the witness was motivated by hopes of personal gain, was the motivation one that would cause the witness to lie, or was it one that would cause the witness to tell the truth ?

After a quietmorning, the panel fired off three notes.

The first, at 3:13 p.m., said: "Please provide Hickey testimony, Day 2 and Day 3."

Defense attorneys for Spota and McPartland began questioning Hickey during his second day on the stand.

The jury's request also would cover redirect from both prosecutors and defense attorneys.

At 4:23 p.m. as transcripts of the requested Hickey testimony was being prepared there came a second note:

"Can we get Spiros Moustakas' testimony?"

Moustakas, a former Suffolk assistant district attorney, initially was assigned to handle Loeb's prosecution on charges stemming from robbing vehicles belonging to Burke and others.

The last note of the day as prosecutors and defense attorneys began working on the Moustakas testimony came at 4:34 p.m.:

"We'd like to look at Spota pressconference re: Newsday."

The video, a defense exhibit, showed a portion of a 2014 Spota news conference,during which he slammed Newsday (thoughnot by name) for publishing a story that he said put police in danger.

Jurors were brought back into the courtroom to see the video and then they returned to the jury roomfor the last few minutes before a 5 p.m. dismissal.

As they rose to leave, Azrack promised that the Hickey and Moustakas testimony transcripts would be ready for them on Tuesday morning, when deliberation is set to resume.

Joye Brown has been a columnist for Newsday since 2006. She joined the newspaper in 1983 and has worked as a reporter, an editor, newsroom administrator and editorial writer.

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Power on Trial: Judge mentions Burke 45 times in jury instructions - Newsday

New study says the next wave of automation is coming for Orlando’s workforce – Orlando Weekly

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Automation has put a huge dent in the need for jobs in the auto industry. There's no need for so many cashiers because people can check-out on machines.

One study suggests the next wave of automation will wipe out work in industries that make up a big chunk of Orlando's workforce.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics, Kempler Industries, an Illinois-based machinery buyer and seller, listed the jobs most susceptible to automation. The study also lists the regions that could suffer the most potential job loss.

That chunk of the workforce is made up of hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks, secretaries, administrative assistants, and textile bleaching and dyeing machine operators all jobs the analysis forecasts will be on the robot chopping block.

Las Vegas, at 31 percent, was the only metro to edge-out Orlando on Kempler's list of impending automation-doom. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metros finished third and fourth.

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New study says the next wave of automation is coming for Orlando's workforce - Orlando Weekly

What Employees Tell Us About Automation and Re-skilling – MIT Sloan

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There is an ever greater focus on the impact of automation on work and what it will mean for jobs. Certain kinds of routine work are on the front lines, including the analytical activities of administrative assistants and bank cashiers, and the manual jobs of warehouse assistants, assembly line workers, and delivery drivers. Many tasks within these jobs are likely to be automated: For instance, delivery workers now scan packages and generate automated driving statistics.

The agenda for routine, lower-skilled work in this new world includes upskilling (giving employees access to new and often higher-value tasks within the same job) or re-skilling (making them able to accomplish a completely new set of tasks). Neither of these undertakings is straightforward, however. Bringing new skills to the workplace inevitably brings a range of stakeholders into the picture, including the companies doing the re-skilling, the government and education systems that help out, and the employees themselves.

Weve heard from managerial populations about how theyre navigating this agenda. In a survey of CEOs, for example, two-thirds (67%) said they have a responsibility to retrain employees whose tasks and jobs are at risk of being automated out of existence.

What has not been adequately heard in this conversation are the voices of employees themselves. How are people who perform low- to medium-paying jobs thinking about upskilling and re-skilling? What do they see as the opportunities and challenges?

These were our starting questions in a series of focus groups and roundtable conversations held with people whose jobs are most susceptible to automation. My research company, Hot Spots Movement, collaborated with BritainThinks, a strategy consultancy, and Capita, a consulting, digital services, and software business, to speak with people across the U.K., including those who work for Capita. Our research was published in a November 2019 report.

The conversations were fascinating. They gave us deeper insight into the working lives of those on the front line of automation, while also highlighting key areas in which future action is needed. We heard four key themes: excitement about the upsides, the need for preparation to reduce anxiety, the importance of getting change right the first time, and the impact of personal coaching.

During the course of our conversations, many people told us they could see or imagine the positive impact of automation on their jobs and the tasks they performed. They described how automation had the potential to remove some of the most boring and repetitive aspects of their roles.

The automation of scheduling has made my job more efficient and a lot quicker, is how one delivery driver described it. It has smoothed out the little frustrations and helps me meet my performance targets.

Automation has already meant fewer manual tasks and more intellectually challenging tasks for some. It also has meant more exciting work and the possibility of securing new and different jobs.

As we spoke to people, we learned that one of the details that really affected their experiences was how much opportunity they had to prepare, both for a single automation event and for the longer-term trajectory of automation.

Employees felt that changes worked well when they had some control over making their own plans for managing their future options. For example, one person said, We heard about it relatively early, and the staff welcomed it with open arms it was something we really needed.

Without advance preparation and prior insight, however, employees were left to worry and speculate about potential changes. As one person said, Weve introduced bar coding into the store, so we need one [clerk] instead of four. Thats good; it saves money. But what happens to the other three people?

For many employees, following the path of automation means they must let go of some component of their jobs to robots or AI while developing new skills to perform new tasks. Some of these new skills are simply a slight expansion of current skills. Others require new ways of operating.

Getting these new approaches right can be tricky. When everything clicks, people really feel excited. As one person remarked, Its satisfying when it works there is nothing better than pressing go and it works how you want. Getting new changes right boosted peoples confidence.

For those who did not have sufficient on-the-job support, the chances of getting it wrong were high. People described how changes that didnt go smoothly sapped their enthusiasm and confidence. When things went wrong, managers were quite hard to get ahold of, said one discussion participant. Technology that didnt operate as planned or was poorly implemented brought a lot of rework and undermined peoples trust in the new systems.

Training budgets are tight in most companies, and nowhere is this more evident than in low-paid work, where it can be hard to make a case for training. Its no surprise, therefore, that efforts to re-skill the most routine jobs often focus on low-cost e-learning.

Thats fine to a point. In our discussions, employees said they were comfortable with e-learning, describing how they already learn at home from video platforms like YouTube. (There are, for example, enormously popular online cooking channels that teach new skills.) Many embrace video tutorials, and we heard examples of people being self-taught and proud of it. But there was a general feeling that without the support of peers and managers, e-learning was just not enough.

To capitalize on employees initial excitement about the potential of automation, company leaders need to take four actions before they make changes:

Build enthusiasm. Leaders need to create projects that show how jobs will change. They need to give employees an opportunity to see the benefits themselves.

Lay out plans in advance. Anxiety significantly impacts the possibility of change and learning. Leaders can reduce this by clearly describing what the implication of automation will be and creating a pathway that describes how employees will be upskilled in their current jobs or re-skilled into new jobs.

Provide no-pressure run-throughs. Leaders must help employees get change right the first time. People we spoke with talked about the importance of getting clear walk-through demonstrations and the opportunity to try out new technologies and responsibilities in a safe space.

Arrange ongoing face-to-face training. Leaders need to be sure to supplement e-learning with peer support groups and coaching.

Lynda Gratton is a professor of management practice at London Business School and director of the schools Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Companies program. She is coauthor of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity (Bloomsbury, 2016). She tweets @lyndagratton.

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What Employees Tell Us About Automation and Re-skilling - MIT Sloan

The Twin Trends of Aging and Automation – GC Capital Ideas

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The twin trends of rapid population aging and automation have been unprecedented in speed and scope. Both academia and industry have dedicated extensive research to understanding the direction, magnitude, variations, and impacts of these separate trends.

In the first report of this two-part series, Marsh & McLennan Advantage Insights, in collaboration with Mercer and Oliver Wyman (each an affiliate of Guy Carpenter), contributed to this literature by focusing on how automation affects workers above the age of 50 across 15 major markets in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. The report showed that older workers are at moderate-to high risk of being displaced by automation, with those in advanced and emerging markets in Asia at highest risk.

There is broad consensus in the literature that older workers not only experience major difficulties in the labor market, but also face severe fallout from displacement due to automation. Displacement leads to a more precarious financial situation, as well as adverse health effects both physically and sociopsychologically. These are serious issues that have commanded increasing attention from governments through research and public policy but governmental efforts alone, unfortunately, will not be enough. The call has been growing for companies to be part of the solution and help ensure adequate social protection and well-being for older workers. This now constitutes a critical part of the discourse on healthcare and inequality in many countries.

At the same time, many companies now also find themselves under pressure to remain competitive by undergoing digital transformation. This focus on the technological side of organizational transformation has led many organizations to overlook the plight of older workers, regarding the problem as NIMBY (Not In My Backyard), until they realize that they themselves are increasingly relying on an aging workforce. In turn, companies will also increasingly face other macro problems associated with population aging, such as talent shortages and loss of institutional knowledge, heightening the need to keep older workers productive for longer.

In this paper, the contributors propose potential solutions to these challenges. They first re-conceptualize the perception of older workers through unpacking their values as experienced workers those above the age of 50 whose tenure within organizations and industries has provided them with a wealth of experience and knowledge that companies can leverage to enhance competitiveness. This term will be used throughout the paper. The report takes a corporate perspective to the intersection of aging and automation to argue that companies must seriously challenge current dominant narrative of older workers and seek to build more age-inclusive organizations. The question is, how do new technologies feature in this new vision?

Proposed answers to this question have focused on technological potentials how technology can be applied and deployed to aid older workers. To complement this, we propose that companies approach the question from a workforce perspective to cultivate and leverage a tech-empowered experienced workforce: Many companies have underestimated experienced workers capacity to contribute, as well as the potential synergies between technology and an experienced workforce, and would benefit greatly by directing their energy to foster this synergy. The strategy proposed here can serve as a blueprint for these areas of synergy, thereby laying the foundation for wider initiatives to bolster organizational resilience to fast-paced technological changes as a whole.

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Convoys latest digital trucking breakthrough is 100% automation of the load pricing process – GeekWire

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Convoy CEO Dan Lewis, right, speaks with Ben Gilbert, left, and David Rosenthal at a recording of the Acquired podcast at the University of Washington in Seattle on Tuesday. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Convoy has reached another milestone on the long road toward complete automation of the trucking industrys brokering process.

The Seattle-based digital freight network announced Wednesday that it has achieved fully automated load pricing. The breakthrough comes less than a year after Convoy achieved fully automated load matching. Convoy says the combined pieces of brokering, which traditionally involved manual, time-consuming work identifying available trucks and negotiating on bids via calls and emails, can be handled by its platform in minutes with no calls or emails.

Convoy has come a long way since CEO and co-founder Dan Lewis was visiting shippers and truck stops, learning about the market and getting feedback on Convoys early ideas. Speaking Tuesday night at a live recording of the Acquired podcast in Seattle, he recalled walking into a shippers office for the first time, so nervous that all he could do was ask to use the bathroom.

But as he talked with drivers and shippers about the concept, Lewis found an industry in need of transformation. That was in contrast with some of his past ideas.

Id had some really bad ideas really bad ideas, said Lewis, a veteran of companies including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. This one, every time I shared it with someone from the industry, they were excited about it and felt like it was necessary.

Fast-forward more than four years, and Convoy is one of the Seattle regions unicorns, valued at more than $1 billion. The 4-year-old startup, backed by high-profile investors including Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates and U2s Bono, competes against traditional brokers such as C.H. Robinson, the largest U.S. freight broker, and newer players such as Uber Freight.

Convoy says its new milestone in automated pricing will help it operate more efficiently, and lead to reduced costs for shippers and full trucks for carriers.

Weve been working for the past four years on improving our pricing models, Convoy Chief Product Officer Ziad Ismail told GeekWire. And as weve been building more and more density we have more and more data for us to train our models. Weve also gotten more drivers to use our app. The combination of those two things have led us to 100-percent automated pricing in Convoys top markets.

Those markets include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Los Angeles, among others.

Truckers earn more when they get more load options, better routes, and make fewer empty mile trips. Convoy aims to increase capacity and decrease costs for shippers with more truckers on its platform. Automated brokering produces further benefit for both sides of the marketplace, the company said.

The technological breakthrough comes just a month after Convoys latest funding round of $400 million, at a $2.7 billion valuation. And in Ismails view, its a top tech accomplishment for the company, alongsideAutomated Reloads, which uses machine learning to group full-truckload shipments for carriers and is helping reduce empty mile carbon emissions.

Once you automate the core of the marketplace, which is the matching and pricing side, your ability to run experiments ends up being completely different, Ismail said. When you have human-based processes, trying to run small experiments to test differences is very difficult. But once you have a digital network, you can innovate, experiment and learn at a completely different pace. And so thats kind of what were seeing now, its setting Convoy up really to experiment the way that you would expect a true technology company to experiment.

Speaking with Acquired podcast co-hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal at the University of Washington in Seattle last night, Lewis recalled overhearing skeptical brokers cast aspersions on Convoys early plans, under the theory that computers dont match freight; people match freight.

Such skepticism from traditional players put Convoy in a position to write the rules and be the first to come up with the models for key parts of the process including payments, matching and providing data and insights to customers, Lewis said.

In a sign of how much things have changed, Lewis didnt outright dismiss the question of whether Convoy could someday operate a third-party marketplace for other brokers, similar to what Amazon does with its marketplace for third-party sellers. It could move in that direction at some point, he acknowledged.

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Convoys latest digital trucking breakthrough is 100% automation of the load pricing process - GeekWire

Aragon Research Positions HelloSign as a Leader in the Tech Spectrum for Workflow and Content Automation, 2020 – Business Wire

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SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HelloSign, a leading eSignature and digital workflow platform, today announced it has been positioned by Aragon Research, Inc. in the Leader section of the Tech Spectrum for Workflow and Content Automation, 2020.1

HelloSign which offers eSignature, digital workflow, and electronic fax solutions helps more than 80,000 customers and millions of people close deals faster, onboard new hires with ease, and automate their document-centric processes.

The Aragon Tech Spectrum is an evaluation of vendors in emerging and mature markets based on their strategy and performance. According to the report, Workflow and content automation (WCA) is becoming the de facto way to automate business processes that involve documents. WCA overlaps with robotic process automation (RPA) but it focuses on the machine creation and routing of documents. This shift to the automation of content represents a change in how documents will be produced.

We believe being positioned as a leader in the Workflow and Content Automation Tech Spectrum is a validation of the value our solutions deliver to businesses who want to simplify complex processes, says Whitney Bouck, COO, HelloSign. This is a great reflection of the deep investments weve made in automating document-based workflows.

Disclosure

Aragon Research does not endorse vendors, or their products or services that are referenced in its research publications, and does not advise users to select those vendors that are rated the highest. Aragon Research publications consist of the opinions of Aragon Research and Advisory Services organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Aragon Research provides its research publications and the information contained in them "AS IS," without warranty of any kind.

About HelloSign

HelloSign simplifies work for millions of individuals. Over 80,000 customers world-wide trust the HelloSign platform which includes eSignature, digital workflow and electronic fax solutions with HelloSign, HelloWorks and HelloFax to automate and manage their most important business transactions. For more information visit http://www.hellosign.com.

Aragon Research. The Aragon Research Tech SpectrumTM for Workflow and Content Automation, 2020 by Jim Lundy, December 2019

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Aragon Research Positions HelloSign as a Leader in the Tech Spectrum for Workflow and Content Automation, 2020 - Business Wire

Edge computing key industrial automation trend in 2020 – DesignNews

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Factory connectivity and communications have become cornerstone technology trends for automation and control engineers in the last 10+ years as the development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has emerged as a corporate objective. But as we head into 2020, edge computing is evolving into a unifying force for machine designers implementing computing at the edge architectures that provide performance and security in a world offering a wide range of communication solutions.

New edge computing architectures are leveraging edge nodes and gateways to connect IoT devices and subsystems with different types of data centers (private, public or hybrid). Edge nodes perform local processing and storage operations. (Image source: Industrial Internet Consortium

A new white paper from the Industrial Internet Consortium, The Edge Computing Advantage explores not only the business benefits of edge computing but also how it has become a keystone in the IIoTs evolution in the smart factory.

The authors of the white paper conclude that edge computing has grown steadily as a way to extend the technology of data centers closer to the physical devices within the factory. Cloud computing offers flexibility and scale, offering benefits by connecting systems, but also need to be balanced against increased security risks.

Emergence of edge computing paradigm

Given that many industrial facilities have maintained a so-called airgap between plants and the Internet (by not being physically connected to the Internet), edge computing has continued to emerge. The benefits: better use of bandwidth on factory networks, reduced latency and variation of data along with use of local data and computation that improves privacy, reliability, resiliency and safety.

Along with these practical benefits, edge computing technology itself is providing a flexible approach that uses a fully distributed computing model between IoT devices and layers of edge nodes that provide communications to the data center.

According to the white paper, the topology of the network enables IoT systems to make use of layers of edge nodes and gateways to interconnect IoT devices and connected subsystems with various types of data centers. The cloud is the highest-order resource, and is usually implemented in large, protected data centers. It may be public, private or a hybrid to process and store data for specific vertical applications. Edge nodes perform local processing and storage operations.

IT and OT convergence

Efficient, reliable and maintainable Industrial IoT data handling presents significant challenges because the data management solutions that exist today have been mainly designed for information technology (IT) applications. A customized solution to fill the gap between the IT and OT (operations technology) applications is required.

A wide range of suppliers are providing intelligent IoT gateways to help build seamless data processing solutions that bridge this gap. Gateways are being used to mass-deploy IoT devices in the field, acquire data and route it on-demand to a centralized system, other devices or a remote site. The use of edge nodes along with traditional routers, gateways and firewalls provides both storage and computation capabilities that is distributed across devices, nodes and the data center itself.

Opportunities and challenges

The white paper concludes with a discussion of both the opportunities and challenges that this new computing paradigm is creating. Whats expected in 2020 is a continuation of the blurred lines from the edge to the data center, as cloud-computing and edge-computing architectural models merge and emerge.

To read the full IIC white paper, view this PDF.

Al Presher is a veteran contributing writer for Design News, covering automation and control, motion control, power transmission, robotics, and fluid power.

January 28-30:North America's largest chip, board, and systems event,DesignCon, returns to Silicon Valleyfor its 25th year!The premier educational conference and technology exhibition, this three-day event brings together the brightest minds across the high-speed communications and semiconductor industries, who are looking to engineer the technology of tomorrow. DesignCon is your rocket to the future. Ready to come aboard?Register to attend!

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Edge computing key industrial automation trend in 2020 - DesignNews

RPA (Robotic Process Automation): Whats In Store For 2020? – Forbes

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Business concept. Improving productivity, reliability and business processes. Automation concept

Its been a banner year for the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) software market.The fundings have definitely been eye-catching.In April, UiPath announced a Series D round for $568 million, led by Coatue, for a valuation of $7 billion.

Then last month there was Automation Anywhere, which raised $290 million in a Series B round led by Salesforce Ventures for a valuation of $6.8 billion.

So why all the interest?Simply put, RPA has been shown to generate quick and high levels of ROI (Return On Investment) for customers.The software essentially automates worker activities that are often tedious and repetitive.

And with all the money sloshing around in the RPA space, we should expect quite a bit of action next year. Vendors with a combination of cash and vision will succeed, said Ryan Duguid, who is the chief of evangelism and advanced technology at Nintex.Theyll flesh out their stacks by combining RPA, traditional BPM, workflow, and cloud services, layering in process documentation, process discovery and analytics, and looking to enable a virtuous cycle of process improvement.

His company has already been working on this expansion strategy.Nintex acquired EnableSoft (for drag-and-drop functions) and Promapp (a process mapping and documentation platform).

Keep in mind that RPA has been concentrated in certain industries, like finance.But it seems like a pretty good bet that the technology will see expansion across more sectors.As RPA adoption approaches near-ubiquity, well see an uptick in public sector adoption over the next year, ultimately improving citizens access to critical public services, like Social Security, said Prince Kohli, who is the CTO of Automation Anywhere.The RPA benefits of speed, reduced costs and productivity are especially relevant to this sector.

Jon Theuerkauf, the Chief Customer Officer at Blue Prism, agrees with this. Well see RPA extend its reach across mainstream industries such as the medical, pharma and telecom spaces given the high volumes of sensitive data, he said.Ultimately, a true connected-RPA cloud-based platform will look like the re-creation of a human being and possess a skill-set that allows the platform to collaborate with employees on key day-to-day tasks.

But in terms of the core RPA technology, expect to see dynamism in the new year as well.Here are some areas to consider:

Although, the biggest technology trend will likely be AI (Artificial Intelligence).Executives will prioritize opportunities to automate more aggressively, linking AI projects to KPIssuch as revenue growth, cost reduction and enhanced customer experience, said Bill Hobbib, who is the SVP of Marketing at DataRobot.Executives also will place greater emphasis on change management and encourage greater involvement from business usersrather than just data scientists or specialist teamsto increase their AI capabilities across more lines of business and processes.

All great, right? Absolutely. But as with any technology, there are nagging issues too.

For example, there are over 70 vendors on the marketand many will have a tough time standing out. Technology and solutions are getting increasingly similar, so if a smaller company has a true differentiator, or a solution that bridges a gap, they will be prime for acquisition, said Ray LeBlanc, who is the product strategy manager at Verint. These smaller companies are also more dependent upon partnerships, and we will likely see M&A activity by SIs and other large service providers and BPOs.

There will also likely be some reality checks with RPA, as the hype is at fever pitch.Next year, the market will wise up and realize that not everything that claims to be RPA is actually RPA, said Francis Carden, who is the vice president of digital automation and robotics at Pega.In truth RPA is just one component of a broader intelligent automation platform that must be combined with other automation technologies.

Finally, as RPA continues to grow, the industry will come under increasing scrutiny.This seems inevitable.

RPA will be on the global stage, said Guy Kirkwood, who is the Chief Evangelist at UiPath.Extra-governmental organizations, like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, will discuss RPA in the context of jobs, wages and global economics.

Tom (@ttaulli) is the author of the book,Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction.

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RPA (Robotic Process Automation): Whats In Store For 2020? - Forbes

Automation And Machine Learning: Transforming The Office Of The CFO – Forbes

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By Steve Dunne, Staff Writer, Workday

In a recentMcKinsey survey,only 13 percent of CFOs and other senior business executives polled said their finance organizations use automation technologies, such as robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning. Whats more, when asked how much return on investment the finance organization has generated from digitization and automation in the past 12 months, only 5 percent said it was a substantial return; the more common response was modest or minimal returns.

While that number may seem low right now, automation is coming to the finance function, and it will play a crucial role in furthering the CFOs position in the C-suite. Research suggests corporate finance teams spend about 80 percent of their time manually gathering, verifying, and consolidating data, leaving only about 20 percent for higher-level tasks, such as analysis and decision-making.

In its truest form, RPA will unleash a new wave of digital transformation in corporate finance. Instead of programming software to perform certain tasks automatically, RPA uses software robots to process transactions, monitor compliance, and audit processes automatically. This could slash thenumber of required manual tasks, helping to drive out errors and increase the efficiency of finance processeshanding back time to the CFO function to be more strategic.

According to the report Companies Using AI Will Add More Jobs Than They Cut, companies that had automated at least 70 percent of their business processes compared to those that had automated less than 30 percent discovered that more automation translated into more revenue. In fact, the highly automated group was six times more likely to have revenue growth of 15 percent per year or more.

In the right hands, automation and machine learning can be a fantastic combination for CFOs to transform the finance function, yet success will depend on automating the right tasks. The first goal for a finance team should be to automate the repetitive and transactional tasks that consume the majority of its time. Doing this will free finance up to be more of a strategic advisor to the business. AnAdaptive Insights surveyfound that over 40 percent of finance leaders say that the biggest driver behind automation within their organizations is the demand for faster, higher-quality insights from executives and operational stakeholders.

Accentures global talent and organization lead for financial services, Andrew Woolf, says the challenge for businesses is to pivot their workforce to enter an entirely new world where human ingenuity meets intelligent technology to unlock new forms of growth.

Transaction processing is one of the major barriers preventing finance from achieving transformation and the ultimate goal of delivering a better business partnership. It's not surprising that its the first port of call for CFOs looking toward automation.

RPA combined with machine learning provides finance leaders with a great way of optimising the way they manage their accounting processes. This has been a painful area of finance for such a long time and can have a direct impact on an organizations cash flow, says Tim Wakeford, vice president, financials product strategy, EMEA at Workday. Finance spends a huge amount of time sifting through invoices and other documentation to manually correct errors in the general ledger, while machine learning could automate this, helping to intelligently match payments with invoices.

Machine learning can also mitigate financial risk by flagging suspect payments to vendors in real time. Internal and external fraud costs businesses billions of dollars each year. The current mechanism for mitigating such instances of fraud is to rely on manual audits on a sample of invoices. This means looking at just a fraction of total payments, and is the proverbial needle in the haystack approach to identifying fraud and mistakes. Machine learning can vastly increase the volume of invoices which can be checked and analyzed to ensure that organizations are not making duplicate or fraudulent payments.

Ensuring compliance to federal and international regulations is a critical issue for financial institutions, especially given the increasingly strict laws targeting money laundering and the funding of terrorist activities, explains David Axson, CFO strategies global lead, Accenture Strategy. At one large global bank, up to 10,000 staffers were responsible for identifying suspicious transactions and accounts that might indicate such illegal activities. To help in those efforts, the bank implemented an AI system that deploys machine-learning algorithms that segment the transactions and accounts and sets the optimal thresholds for alerting people to potential cases that might require further investigation.

Read the second part of this story, How Automation and Machine Learning Are Reshaping the Finance Function, which takes a closer look at how automation and machine learning can drive change.

This story was originally published on theWorkday blog. For more stories like this, clickhere.

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Automation And Machine Learning: Transforming The Office Of The CFO - Forbes

This Was A Big Year For Fintech, Real Estate, Insurance, And Automation – Crunchbase News

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As 2019 enters its final weeks, it seems timely to start looking at what sectors are poised to close out the year with a bang.

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For this first installment, were concentrating on industries that attracted both high funding totals and a lot of individual funding rounds. The methodology, which well detail more below, 1 focuses most heavily on North American startups and attempts to avoid the distortive effects of single supergiant rounds on funding totals.

We ended up focusing on four sectors that are attracting rising funding: Fintech, real estate, insurance and automation. All are seeing particular traction at the late stage, where checks are largest.

Below, we unpack the numbers and trendlines for each industry in more detail:

Fintech And Banking

This seems to be the year that every startup decided to become a bank. And every venture capitalist decided to write a check to one or more of those startups.

Much of the funding went to neobanks, a fancy term to describe upstart digital banks working on everything from savings and checking accounts to mobile debit cards. Many are focused on bringing banking services to both consumers and businesses that have previously been underserved by traditional banks.

Investors are apparently banking on some big returns. Companies focused on fintech, banking and mobile payments in North and South America brought in $11.7 billion in 2019, per Crunchbase (see query). Thats up from $9.2 billion in all of 2018, per Crunchbase.

It wasnt just a handful of giant investments either. This years funding was spread across more than 700 known rounds for startups.

Still, supergiant rounds did help boost the totals. One of the best known upstart banking brands, Chime, pulled in an astonishing $700 million across two mega-rounds this year, pushing its valuation to $5.8 billion. Brazils Nubank, meanwhile, raised a whopping $400 million in a single July round.

Real Estate And Property Management

The single biggest headline generator in the venture-backed real estate space for 2019 was undoubtedly the implosion of WeWork and its ill-fated IPO. But setting that debacle aside, other trendlines for the real estate startup sphere this year have been pretty positive.

As of early December, investors had pumped just over $5.2 billion into an assortment of U.S. startups. The largest funding recipients include Knotel, the furnished workspace rental provider, Knock, the online home-selling platform, and Compass, a tech-enabled real estate brokerage. Altogether, those three companies raised nearly $1.2 billion in funding rounds this year alone. Other potentially less capital-intensive areas of proptech also attracted investors favor, including a bevy of property management software providers.

Insurance

Insurance is a startup sector thats been growing steadily for a few years now, and it hit its highest funding levels to date in 2019.

As of mid-December, U.S. companies in the insurance and insuretech categories secured just over $4.75 billion in seed through late stage funding (see query). Thats up from $3.4 billion in 2018.

A huge wave of seed-stage insurance startups launched three to five years ago, and thats one of the reasons big financings and investment totals are rising so much. Hot companies in that cohort are rapidly maturing, and theyre seeking ever-larger later-stage rounds. Corporate venture arms of established insurance companies are also active in the space, contributing to rising valuations.

Clover Health, a provider of health plans for Medicare recipients, closed the largest funding round, a $500 million Series E. Root Insurance, which offers car insurance with rates tied to driver behavior, raised $350 million, while Lemonade, a home and renters insurance provider, pulled in $300 million.

Automation

Automation is essentially shorthand for getting technology to do something that used to require a human. In the dawn of the industrial age, this generally entailed huge, heavy machines voraciously sucking down fuel. Today, its likely a software program capable of running on a pocket-sized device.

To that end, automation software developers are securing rising sums of venture capital. In 2019, U.S. companies in the space pulled in $2.89 billion in known funding, per Crunchbase data. (See query.), exceeding 2018 levels. This years total is expected to rise higher in coming months as more late-reported funding rounds get added to the database.

Familiar names topped the list of largest funding recipients. UiPath, which develops software to automate repetitive tasks for office workers, pulled in $568 million in Series D financing, bringing total funding to date to $1 billion. Rival Automation Anywhere, meanwhile, closed on a fresh $290 million last month.

Its Not All Up

Overall, 2019 is shaping up as yet another really strong year for U.S. venture funding. The rise of supergiant funding rounds, a robust fundraising environment for well-regarded venture firms, and growing momentum across a host of hot sectors are all factors contributing to keeping the investments flowing.

But while this piece highlights standout sectors, it wasnt all rosy in startup-land this year. Thats why, for the next installment in this end-of-year series, well look at sectors that posted significant declines in 2019.

For now, though, well end on an optimistic note, observing that while everything was up, automation, real estate, fintech and insurance all posted pretty impressive venture funding tallies.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.

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This Was A Big Year For Fintech, Real Estate, Insurance, And Automation - Crunchbase News

Picnic Announces Its Automated Pizza Assembly Robot Will Serve Attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7-10, 2020 – Yahoo Finance

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Working with hospitality partner and Las Vegas Convention Center food service provider, Centerplate, Picnic will allow CES attendees, for the first time, to enjoy pizza produced by its acclaimed robot using AI, cloud and automation technology

Seattle-based Picnic, an innovator of food production technology and Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) solutions, announced today that its automated food assembly system has been selected by Centerplate, a leader in live event hospitality, to serve attendees of the worlds largest technology event, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), January 7-10, 2020, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Centerplate will use and showcase Picnics robot, with capabilities of producing up to 300 12-inch customized pizzas an hour, on the CES show floor. Specific location details for Picnics robot and where to enjoy its pizza will be revealed at hellopicnic.com, prior to the start of CES 2020.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191218005222/en/

Centerplate Executive Chef Taylor Park stands in front of Picnic's automated pizza assembly robot at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners. Continuing their relationship with Centerplate, Picnic will now allow attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (January 7-10, 2020) to enjoy pizza produced by its acclaimed robot that uses AI, cloud and automation technology. (Photo by Kyu Han of Picnic)

"Picnics distinct culmination of food production customization and throughput, smart data and cloud analytics is quickly resonating with food service operators," said Clayton Wood, CEO of Picnic. "Our continued relationship with Centerplate illustrates our ability to tailor our offerings to the specific needs of our partners and jointly transform the food experience for their consumers. This is one robot that wont be a CES exhibitor only showing futuristic concepts; it is already in use in real-world kitchen settings and will only continue to grow its capabilities, as will be seen through Picnics delivery of mass customization food production and great-tasting pizza provided to CES attendees."

Centerplate, providing live event hospitality for more than 115 million guests each year at hundreds of prominent sports, entertainment and convention venues, revealed, in October 2019, that Picnics successful pilot was operating at their T-Mobile Park location, home of the Seattle Mariners. In addition to todays announcement, Centerplate is also using Picnics robot to provide all of the pizzas at Enchant Christmas, the current winter wonderland holiday event, taking place at the stadium through December 29th.

Story continues

"Picnics automated food assembly platform has shown an ability to enhance quality and speed of service for our kitchen operations," said Steve Pangburn, CEO of Centerplate. "Our initial pilot with Picnic was very positive and their differentiated capabilities are proving beneficial. We look forward to introducing Picnic to the Las Vegas Convention Center in January and helping them scale their technology in an effective way."

The Picnic platform is initially focused on the production of high-volume, customizable pizzas. However, the companys technology is applicable to other food categories. "Bun, bowl, tortilla or plate our automated assembly system is designed for and capable of improving the businesses of many food service segments," added Wood.

Many U.S. and international food service providers are recognizing that Picnics platform offers unique capabilities to address common business-thwarting challenges and pain points. As part of the systems intelligence, deep learning AI technology continually learns and helps to meet the changing needs of all types of food service operators, keeping them more competitive and protecting their brands.

"Picnic continues to experience increasing interest in our technology and solutions from large chains to mom and pop storefronts, and emerging food service venues, such as virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens," said Wood.

The compact, freestanding system integrates Picnics issued U.S. patent and other U.S. and international patent-pending modular, configurable equipment, with its software, cloud and deep learning technology.

The platform only requires a small footprint and the modular, configurable equipment makes it flexible to slip into a wide array of stationary and mobile kitchen formats. It is extremely flexible and painless to set up. Its safe to work around and only minimal training is required.

Picnic will deliver, install and maintain the system, and provide platform and software updates for a monthly fee with no money upfront. The company can also provide custom design software solutions for operators to integrate with existing point-of-sale and ordering systems.

Companies interested in installing Picnics new platform in their food operations can contact the company by visiting hellopicnic.com, emailing info@hellopicnic.com or calling 206.717.3455.

About Picnic

Founded in 2016 Vivid Robotics, Inc., (dba Picnic) (hellopicnic.com), has collected an experienced team of food and technology industry veterans to develop and provide specialized intelligent technology and exclusive solutions for the food service and hospitality industries. Restaurants, convenience and grocery stores, university and corporate campuses, casinos, hotels, cruise lines, sports venues, catering groups, healthcare cafeterias, small kiosks, ghost kitchen operators, mobile food operations, food trucks, delivery and military sites are among the many segments poised to benefit from the companys automated food assembly platform integrating RaaS, software, cloud and deep learning technology.

Follow Picnic on hellopicnic.com, facebook.com/picnicgroup; linkedin.com/company/picnicnews; twitter.com/picnicnews; and Instagram.com/picnicnews.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191218005222/en/

Contacts

Mike McLaughlinmike@hellopicnic.com

Teresa FaustiTeresa@fausticommunications.com

Amanda Barryabarry@summitslc.com

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Picnic Announces Its Automated Pizza Assembly Robot Will Serve Attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7-10, 2020 - Yahoo Finance

Customers Rank Verint Highest in Overall Vendor Satisfaction in New Report on Robotic Process Automation – Business Wire

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MELVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Verint Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: VRNT), The Customer Engagement Company, today announced that it received the highest overall vendor satisfaction, product, professional services and product innovation scores from customers according to DMG Consulting LLCs new 2019-2020 Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Product and Market Report*.

On the heels of these new rankings, Verint is continuing to expand its RPA leadership position via the introduction of a new analytics solution Robotic Process Automation Discovery to help organizations best leverage RPA in the cloud or on premise to accelerate time-to-value in intelligent automation initiatives.

Verint RPA: High Customer Satisfaction Scores in All Three DMG Ratings Categories

The DMG report provides extensive analysis of the RPA market and vendors who offer solutions that address service, contact center, back-office and other enterprise uses. Verint received the highest customer scores among all featured vendors in Vendor Satisfaction ratings for professional services and product innovation, while tying for highest scores in product, implementation, and responsiveness to product enhancement requests. Verint also received the highest scores among all vendors covered in the report for six product capabilities and seven product effectiveness categories.

Commenting on the overall RPA market outlook, Donna Fluss, president, DMG Consulting, says: DMG expects the pace of growth to remain very strong, experiencing year-over-year increases of 100% or more in each of the next five years. Use cases for RPA are growing in both front- and back-office operations, and organizations are beginning to appreciate the benefits of a collaborative, hybrid workforce.

Verint Robotic Process Automation Discovery

One of the biggest challenges facing organizations in digital transformation is identifying automation opportunities. Verints new Robotic Process Automation Discovery solution provides actionable insight into enterprise workflows, to identify automation opportunities with the greatest potential for return on investment, while streamlining RPA development and deployment. Activities that previously took consultants months to deliver, can now be completed in a few weeks.

Verints solution leverages AI to automatically capture information behind the scenes on how business applications are used for daily tasks, analyze information to map tasks to processes, determine key trends and identify automation opportunities with the highest ROI, based on factors such as worker hourly rates and average handle time. AI drives workflow generation to make RPA development and deployment easier, faster, and more efficient.

Automation Discovery identifies and discovers what processes can be improved through automation, says Verints John Goodson, SVP and general manager, Products. Achieving this kind of profound visibility can eliminate the noise associated with process automation and have a positive, rapid impact on digital transformation initiatives.

Read the latest blog, Speed RPA Process Selection and Time to Value. To learn more about Verints Robotic Process Automation solution, click here.

About Verint Systems Inc.

Verint (Nasdaq: VRNT) is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions with a focus on customer engagement optimization and cyber intelligence. Today, over 10,000 organizations in more than 180 countriesincluding over 85 percent of the Fortune 100count on intelligence from Verint solutions to make more informed, effective and timely decisions. Learn more about how were creating A Smarter World with Actionable Intelligence at http://www.verint.com.

* Source: DMG Consulting LLC, 2019-2020 Robotic Process Automation Product and Market Report, published Q3 2019

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding expectations, predictions, views, opportunities, plans, strategies, beliefs, and statements of similar effect relating to Verint Systems Inc. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and they are based on management's expectations that involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2019, our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended October 31, 2019, and other filings we make with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and, except as required by law, Verint assumes no obligation to update or revise them or to provide reasons why actual results may differ.

VERINT, ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE, THE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT COMPANY, CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SOLUTIONS, CYBER INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS, GI2, FIRSTMILE, OMNIX, WEBINT, LUMINAR, RELIANT, VANTAGE, STAR-GATE, TERROGENCE, SENSECY, and VIGIA are trademarks or registered trademarks of Verint Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries. Verint and other parties may also have trademark rights in other terms used herein.

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Customers Rank Verint Highest in Overall Vendor Satisfaction in New Report on Robotic Process Automation - Business Wire

Equinor ties up offshore Norway automation, safety needs – Offshore Oil and Gas Magazine

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The control room on the Snorre A platform in the North Sea.

(Photo: Even Kleppa - Woldcam / Equinor ASA)

Offshore staff

STAVANGER, Norway Equinor has awarded new framework agreements to five suppliers for safety and automation systems for its facilities across the Norwegian continental shelf.

The agreements may also be extended to the companys international E&P activities and for new development projects.

Total value of the five-year fixed periods is just above NOK5 billion ($554 million), with three five-year extension options depending on the lifespan of the installations.

The arrangements cover daily operation and maintenance, modifications and upgrading, with cyber security an increasingly important part of the work scope.

Kongsberg Maritime: Norne, Heidrun A and B, sgard A and B, Kristin, K-lab Krst, Statfjord A, B, C and Johan Sverdrup. Mariner has a separate agreement.

Siemens: Troll C, Oseberg field center, Oseberg East, Oseberg South, Njord A + B, Visund and Snorre A and B.

ABB: Krst, Kollsnes, Mongstad, Sture, Tjeldbergodden and Snhvit (all onshore plants) Troll A, Oseberg C, Gullfaks A, B, C, Sleipner, Aasta Hansteen, Johan Castberg, Draupner, Grane, Gudrun, Heimdal and Veslefrikk. Peregrino (Brazil) has a separate agreement.

Honeywell: Valemon, Kvitebjrn and Troll B. Kalundborg has a separate agreement.

Emerson: Gina Krog and Martin Linge.

12/18/2019

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Equinor ties up offshore Norway automation, safety needs - Offshore Oil and Gas Magazine

Mining automation: is Mali leading us into the future of work? – Raconteur

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Miners at the underground Syama gold mine in the Malian desert are of a different kind. Gone are the days of descending in elevator shafts to toil with picks and shovels. The 1,500 workers at this state-of-the-art subterranean mine are as likely to be dressed in office wear as overalls and hobnail boots.

Owned by Australia-based Resolute Mining, the $223-million site is the worlds first fully automated mine. Equipped with everything from driverless trucks to robotic drills, the mine operates 24/7 and is up to 30 per cent more efficient than conventional mining operations.

Mining automation is taking off at pace around the world, but what are its implications for workers? Does its spell the end for soot-faced mine workers and, if so, what does the future hold for them?

John Welborn makes no bones about the fact that mining is entering an epoch-changing moment, yet Resolute Minings chief executive only sees advantages for workers. Automation offers jobs that are safer, higher skilled, longer lasting and, thanks to efficiency gains, better paid, he insists.

Because automation was built into the creation of the Syama gold mine, the threat of job losses hasnt arisen. That said, Mr Welborn concedes that mining companies looking to shift to more automated systems have an obligation to invest in training up new employees and retraining existing workers.

We need to work across sectors in new ways to equip people with the skills they will need in an increasingly uncertain future

Again, he is characteristically upbeat about the prospects of doing so. By way of illustration, he cites his octogenarian mother who, although once unable to even operate a video recorder, now uses a smartphone with ease. What has changed, he suggests, is the intuitive nature of modern technology.

He goes on to note that all 16 senior managers at the Syama underground mine were initially expats. Four years on, six are Malian. The remaining ten, meanwhile, have instructions to train up eventual local replacements within the next 36 months.

Such inclusion of local people is vital if the mining sector is to maintain its social contract, argues Nicky Black, director of social and economic development at the International Council on Mining and Metals, who says local communities rightly expect to benefit from mining automation.

Meeting this expectation will require proactive steps by the industrys big players. We will need to work across sectors in new ways to equip people with the skills they will need in an increasingly uncertain future, she says.

Initial moves are already afoot. The government of Western Australia, for example, has a memorandum of understanding in place with COMESA (the trade bloc for eastern and southern Africa) that includes provisions to transfer mining-related knowledge and training.

Individual companies are also taking a lead. A case in point in Sandvik. The Swedish engineering firm, which is behind much of the automated tech in the Syama gold mine, offers its new clients a combination of classroom training, high-tech simulators and hands-on instruction. Mastering its automation system only takes a couple of weeks, according to the Riku Pulli, Sandviks vice president of business unit automation.

Rio Tinto is another company addressing the pending skills gap. The London-listed mining giant, which operates a Centre for Mine Automation in Sydney, recently announced a 5.26-million education programme with startup accelerator BlueChilli and Amazon Web Services.

The four-year initiative aims to help school-age learners across Australia acquire work-related digital skills, such as systems design and data analytics. The focus on transferrable skills, rather than mining-specific aptitudes, marks a tacit acceptance of the role that mining companies have in preparing workers for jobs outside, as well as inside, the sector.

Capturing the technology and knowledge spillovers from the mining automation process is especially critical for resource-dependent emerging economies, says technology innovation expert Nahom Ghebrihiwet.

Host countries should aim to convince international mining companies to establish research hubs and encourage mining firms to collaborate with local knowledge institutions, he says.

Creating such hubs will not be straightforward, Dr Ghebrihiwet concedes, although he points to the United Nations-backed African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC) in Addis Ababa as a good place to start. If successful, such alliances can help create spin-off firms that can in turn provide high-tech services to the mining industry as well as other sectors.

In low-income, resource-rich African countries, it will obviously be difficult to establish such research hubs. However, organisations such as the AMDC could help establish pan-African centres of excellence.

While the Syama gold mine proves that an inclusive approach to automated mining is possible, workers remain understandably nervous about the future. Coal India, for example, alone employs nearly 300,000 people. If mining automation affects just a fraction of these jobs, the investment required for retraining will be vast.

Even with the right training, mine workers will be disappointed if they expect a like-for-like swap in their employment. Truck drivers most likely wont be overseeing the truck fleet once it is fully automated. Instead, the promise of automation is new jobs will emerge in areas such as mine maintenance, information processing and data science.

It is futile to try to halt mining automation, especially given the improved safety it offers, says Jeff Geipel, managing director of Canadian non-profit initiative Mining Shared Value. Yet the harsh reality is direct employment at mines is destined to dwindle. So governments and industry will have to be creative to address this, Mr Geipel concludes.

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Mining automation: is Mali leading us into the future of work? - Raconteur

Older workers most anxious about automation – The Actuary

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The findings from Canada Life Group Insurance show that workers aged 50 and over are more likely to feel cautious, unsure and underprepared than those aged under 40.

It was also found that more than half of employees aged over 60 believe they will need to learn new skills to adapt to automation, compared with two-fifths of staff of all ages.

The researchers, which surveyed over 1,000 workers last month, said this suggests that older people are especially concerned about their skills becoming outdated.

While we tend to think about automation in terms of drastic changes like robot assembly lines, it is more widespread and subtle than many realise, said Canada Life Group Insurance marketing director, Paul Avis.

Employees are rightly cautious about its potential impact, with some already recognising it might redefine job roles or require staff to learn new skills."

It was also found that 37% of workers expect people to be replaced by automation, while 28% think the trend will leave staff feeling less in control of their working lives.

There are also fears around health and wellbeing, with 56% of respondents saying that the prospect of greater automation affects their mental health in some way.

Of these, a third say it creates increased pressure to be "always on", while a similar proportion are concerned that their job will fundamentally change as a result of automation.

A third are also anxious or worried about losing their job, and a quarter of employees are concerned that they wont be able to work with or understand new systems.

Almost one in five believe automation makes workers less likely to take time off sick for fear of appearing replaceable.

If automation becomes more widespread, two in five workers said that an employee assistance programme would show them that their employer cares about their health and wellbeing.

Income protection, private healthcare and wellbeing perks were also mentioned as initiatives that could help reassure them.

Despite fears around mental health and job security, the findings also show that 20% of employees are comfortable with the prospect of automation, while 17% are excited by it.

"Employers should communicate clearly with their staff and tackle any fears head-on to ensure increased automation isnt associated with constantly working and being always on," Avis said.

Support through employee assistance programmes provided with most group income protection products alongside other wellbeing benefits, can help to protect staff wellbeing during this complex transition period.

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Older workers most anxious about automation - The Actuary