Daily Archives: July 17, 2017

Trump’s Twitter vs. The First Amendment – MediaFile

Posted: July 17, 2017 at 3:53 am

On Tuesday, July 11, the Knight First Amendment Institute filed a lawsuit in federal court against President Donald Trump over blocking individuals on his Twitter account.

The institute, a nonprofit affiliated with Columbia University, argues that Trumps Twitter account is a public forum under the First Amendment because the president and his staff use it to communicate.

According to Bloomberg Politics, the institute requested that the court deem viewpoint-based blocking by the presidents account unconstitutional, unblock the plaintiffs and pay the plaintiffs attorneys fees.

Regardless of your opinions on Trumps online behavior, the Tuesday lawsuit could have many social, corporate and journalistic implications.

Harassment vs. Freedom of Speech

According to a Pew Research Center survey, 41 percent of Americans have been personally subjected to online harassment, with as many as 18 percent of respondents claiming that they have been subject to more severe treatment, like sexual harassment, stalking or physical threats.

At a time when so many Americans claim to be so negatively affected by cyberbullying, it may be counterintuitive to set legal precedents that could take away users abilities to block harassers online in the future.

Although the lawsuit specifies that Trump should be penalized for viewpoint-based blocking as opposed to blocking in general, if these platforms are deemed as public forums, the precedent could easily be interpreted to protect users hateful speech in the future.

On the other hand, trying to curb viewpoint-based blocking may force users to interact with more diverse perspectives than usual, which could cultivate more interesting, productive discourse on the platform. Forcing opposing opinions to coexist in the same place could also help the general public better understand different political ideas.

Preventing people from censoring the opinions they do not want to see on their timeline could break ideological echo chambers that are currently prevalent on all social media platforms.

Impact on Private Companies

The decision could also affect how social media platforms monitor their users behavior and are allowed to conduct business in general.

Currently, social media applications are considered private institutions. Unlike public institutions, private institutions are not expected to uphold First Amendment protections.

However, if courts can treat Twitter as a public forum, social media companies could be forced to overhaul their terms of service to comply with government policy at the expense of their autonomy.

Is Social Media News?

In the lawsuit, the Knight First Amendment Institute considers Trumps personal Twitter account a public forum because of how the administration uses the social media site to spread news directly to followers.

In an interview with Fox and Friends, Trump defended his decision not to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner and said that he used Twitter so frequently because he feels that the media purposefully misrepresents him.

It allows me to give a message without necessarily having to go through people where Im giving them a message and theyre putting it down differently from what I mean, he said.

Despite this defense, Trumps Twitter use at times serves more as an excuse to take jabs at the media establishment rather than the president relaying substantive, unbiased policy accomplishments to the American people.

And although many famous political pundits and networks cited this in their defense of negative Trump coverage, the presidents comments on news networks reflect how many American conservatives feel.

It seems like common knowledge that the publics trust in media is at an all-time low, but according to a new Politico poll, people only marginally trust CNN (54 percent) more than the White House (52 percent) and Trump (46 percent).

The survey claims that significant percentages of voters mostly Republicans think many outlets are either not too credible or not credible at all, whereas left-leaning voters are more skeptical of the Trump administration and Congress.

Because of the tendency for right-leaning Americans to distrust them, many journalists publicly acknowledge that they should be trying to appeal more to conservatives. But reporting patterns speak louder than words.

Many conservatives cite what they perceive as abnormally critical coverage of the current administration when dismissing mainstream media coverage. According to a Shorenstein survey, 80 percent of Trump coverage was negative during his first 100 days of office.

This extreme amount of negative coverage may explain why many Americans are skeptical of the mainstream media, rendering the press intent meaningless. It also provides a rationalization for why many Americans are willing to accept the presidents social media statements as more legitimate than mainstream news coverage.

If a politicians posts on social media can legitimately be considered news, should the platform monitor content for accuracy, just like a news publication would? And if this is the case, it seems that social medias potential responsibility to purge false information falsifies the lawsuits assertion that social media sites ought not to allow viewpoint-based blocking.

No matter your opinions on the validity of the lawsuit, it most certainly brings up important debates central to the journalistic and social media communities in the Trump administration.

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Acosta’s reminder: Journalists must advocate for First Amendment – San Antonio Express-News (subscription)

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Acosta's reminder: Journalists must advocate for First Amendment
San Antonio Express-News (subscription)
One of the first lessons journalists learn is that the story any story isn't about us. It shouldn't be. It's ingrained in us, and we carry it in every notebook, on every laptop. The gravest of sins is to put yourself in the story. Except when we ...

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Albanian Central Bank Issues Warning to Cryptocurrency Investors – CoinDesk

Posted: at 3:52 am

Albania's central bank calling on potential investors to avoid buying digital currencies, according to a new report.

According to the English-language weekly Tirana Times, the central bank stated that it hasn't issued any licensure to businesses brokering or exchanging digital currencies in Albania.

"As a result, every company that is involved in these operations in the Republic of Albania is not licensed and its activity does not comply with the regulatory and supervisory framework of the Bank of Albania, the bank reportedly said.

It's a missive that largely echoes those issued by other central banks in the past several years. In some of those cases, investors were warned to avoid specific digital currencies, including bitcoin or Onecoin, the latter of which has earned the particular ire of central banks and regulators worldwide.

As with officials at institutions like the Central Bank of Armenia, Albania's central bank suggested that investors avoid buying digital currencies, pointing to more regulated products instead.

"One should orient investments toward financial products and instruments offered by institutions licensed and supervised by the Bank of Albania and the Financial Supervisory Authority, the message stated.

It's unclear at this time which businesses in Albania would be effected should the central bank move to enforce its stance more concretely, though LocalBitcoins lists a handful of traders in cities including Tirana and Elbasan.

Albania map image via Shutterstock

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Bitcoin Takes Weekend Slide – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Bitcoin Takes Weekend Slide
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
The price of the digital currency bitcoin fell over the weekend, dropping below $2,000 and farther away from its June highs, part of a broad selloff in dozens of cryptocurrencies, including ether. Bitcoin on Sunday traded as low as $1,836, according to ...
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all 79 news articles »

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A Brief Glimpse Into the Lives of Chinese Bitcoin Miners – Bitcoin News (press release)

Posted: at 3:50 am

Ever wonder what its like to work at a bitcoin mining farm in China? Just recently two reports revealed the inner workings of Chinese bitcoin mines operating in the countrys Sichuan prvince.

Also read:Japans Cryptocurrency Business Association Plans for August 1 Guidelines

Last week on July 11, Chinas Central Television (CCTV-2) channel aired a special documentary on bitcoin mining operations located in Kangding county in the southwest region of the country. The channels news reporter drives to a desolate mountainous area in Sichuan to visit a three-story mining data center. Each floor is filled with mining rigs housed on metal racks and surrounded by massive fans. CCTV also interviews Wang, the young data center owner in his twenties who runs five mining sites in the area. According to a translation from the local publication, 8btc, Wang says he runs a medium sized data center that can grow bigger. The twenty-year-old native says the operation mines 16 BTC (US$30,000) a day.

We are a middle-sized mining factory with 5000 bitcoin miners, explains Wang. We still have room to run another 5000 mining machines.

Wang and the data centers operations manager Xu says lots of people are choosing to set up mining sites in Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Inner Mongolia. The reason for this is cheaper electricity from hydropower stations located in the mountains. Wang details that typically electricity in China is 0.7 yuan per KwH, but by partnering with neighboring hydropower stations mining facilities are paying 0.3 yuan per KwH (about 0.045 USD at the time of writing).

[Electricity] is directly transmitted from nearby hydropower stations, Wang tells the CCTV journalist. This is mainly why we set up the site here. Bitcoin mining is electricity-consuming and 50 percent of our profits go to the electricity bill.

The price is the outcome of our negotiation with the hydropower station. Put simply, we made a deal with them and give them part of our profits. They provide electricity, we provide machines, and we share the profits. Its win-win.

According to CCTVs broadcast, an executive at the Sichuan Electric Power Company says that these mining sites are not supposed to partner with hydropower stations. The sites have been investigated he says, but nothing materialized from the local government inspection. Furthermore, Wang says he doesnt pay taxes for his bitcoin revenue.

Why should I?We are mining bitcoin, its all about computational power. Its like playing games. Why should we pay taxes for playing games?

Another report from the Chinese photographer Liu Xingzhe covers the interesting world of Chinese bitcoin mines. Lius photographs show workers at data centers in another area located in the Sichuan prvince living in dormitories and taking care of machines for weeks on end. Many of the workers travel from other towns and hitchhike to the remote mountainous region to make a better salary than most local jobs.

Miners at Luis farm work during all hours of the day and eveningreassembling calculatin bards and fixing malfunctioning machines in the middle of the night. Lui tells the publication he has moved his mining operation from Henan to Sichuan to leverage the cheaper electricity in the region. Additionally, Lui details that he manages roughly 7,000 mining rigs for clients located in China.

One of the bitcoin mine workers explains that the nearest town is roughly 20 miles away and there is nowhere to spend money near the facilities. he gd thing is, there isnt anywhere t spend mney, s yu can save yur whle salary, ne miner tld the photographer Liu ingzhe.

What do you think about the Chinese bitcoin mining operations? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock,Liu ingzhe, CCTV, and 8btc.

Do you want to vote on important Bitcoin issues? Bitcoin.com has acquired Bitcoinocracy, and rebranded the project to Vote.bitcoin.com. Users simply sign a statement with a non-empty Bitcoin address and express their opinions. The project focuses on determining truth backed by monetary value and transparency.

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Mining Bitcoin Using Old Computers and Retro Gaming Consoles – Bitcoin News (press release)

Posted: at 3:50 am

Bitcoin mining has grown into a vast economy over the past few years as large ASIC-powered mining farms process transactions for the $32 billion dollar market. In the early days, people could mine bitcoins using their central processing units (CPU) and they still can, but the undertaking is extremely inefficient. However, a few people still mess around mining bitcoins using older computers and retro devices merely for the fun of it and for experimentation purposes.

Also Read:Investment Funds That Offer Cryptocurrency Exposure See Big Gains

The bitcoin mining ecosystem is a competitive environment of pools processing transactions while simultaneously securing the network. Miners run special software and use application-specific integrated circuitry (ASIC) to mine bitcoins these days, using chips far more efficient than your standard CPU. Currently, older computers can mine bitcoins at a prolonged rate, but its still pretty cool to see if a classic system can perform the task of bitcoin mining.

One bitcoin enthusiast has done just that a few times with older computers. Ken Shirriff is well-known in the bitcoin community for his work on getting the bitcoin symbol added to Unicode. Shirriff also has a popular blog where writes about his projects and how he has mined bitcoins using classic devices from the past. Just recently Shirriff has been working on a Xerox Alto restoration and managed to get the seventies built computer to mine bitcoins at 1.5 hashes/second. The Xerox Alto is a well-known computer classic that was the first device to support a graphical user interface (GUI) in 1973.

Ive been restoring a Xerox Alto minicomputer from the 1970s and figured it would be interesting to see if it could mine bitcoins, explains Shirriff.

I coded up the necessary hash algorithm in BCPL (the old programming language used by the Alto) and found that although the mining algorithm ran, the Alto was so slow that it would take many times the lifetime of the universe to successfully mine bitcoins.

The computers 1.5 blocks per second is significantly slower than the chips used today. Shirriff details the Xerox Altos speed would take 5000 times the age of the universe to mine one block. For demonstration purposes, Shirriff used the input of a successfully mined block to see if the algorithm succeeded. Shirriffs code is available on Github for those who would like to try out Xerox Alto mining.

Another project Shirriff worked on back in 2015 was mining with a 55-year-old IBM 1401 mainframe at 80 seconds per hash. This computer was the best-selling computer of the mid-1960sand mainly used for business purposes.

While modern hardware can compute billions of hashes per second, the 1401 takes 80 seconds to compute a single hash, details Shirriff. This illustrates the improvement of computer performance in the past decades, most famously described by Moores Law To summarize, to mine a block at current difficulty, the IBM 1401 would take about 510^14 years (about 40,000 times the current age of the universe).

Lastly, another neat project is another incredibly slow miner built in 2013 out of a 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The creator of the NES mining system was joking around with his friend about mining bitcoins with an 8-bit game console. Well, he took that as a challenge and built a Nintendo that communicated with the network and performed SHA256 hashing. For other portions of the project, he did need a Raspberry Pi for computing that did not take place on the NES.

SHA256 hashing uses many 32-bit operations, and the 6502 in the NES is an 8-bit CPU, explains the retro miner creator. Initially I thought this would be a significant challenge, but with some modifications, I got an open implementation of SHA256 to compile to a 6502 target using the cc65 compiler.

The Raspberry Pi gets a chunk of data, compiles it into a ROM that includes the SHA256 algo and current target data, and sends it to the console via USB CopyNES. Each ROM computes and tests a single hash.

In the end, the NES miner worked and started searching for blocks with Slushs pool, but the creator said there was plenty of room for build improvements. What Im doing now is very slow, and I admit, pretty lame, explains the retro miners blog post. Additionally, bitcoiners have had great discussions concerning mining bitcoin with other gaming consoles like the Playstation 3.

Obviously, these types of projects wont be mass adopted to mine excessive amounts of bitcoins like ASICs because it would take many lifetimes to find one block using a retro device. However even though watching an older computer or gaming console mine bitcoins is super slow its very interesting to see that these devices are compatible with the Bitcoin network.

What do you think about people testing old computers and retro gaming devices with the Bitcoin network? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, Wiki Commons, and Ken Shirriffs blog.

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Breadwallet’s Bitcoin Therapy Hotline Exceeds Expectations … – Bitcoin News (press release)

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The first week with Breadwallets Bitcoin Therapy Hotline exceeded all expectations, announced Breadwallet CMO Aaron Lasher. He did not know what to expect when launching the hotline, according to bitcoin.coms previous interview, butknew there had been a lot of negativity and vitriol permeating the ecosystem. He just wanted to find a way to inject some optimism. That was the ultimate purpose of the hotline, even if it was not touted as 100% serious. It was not a joke either, though.

Also read:Central Bank of Albania Lists Five Most Important Bitcoin Risks in Public Warning

Lasher outlined many highlights about the hotlines performance. He saidquite a few old friends called to catch up or chat. He had many callers who harbored concerns about the blocksize debate and what would happen to their bitcoin. Some of them even appeared to need moral support as a result of bitcoins current bear market trend.

Some just called to request new features for breadwallets nativeapplication. They were interested in new services and promoted manypossible ideas. Lasher said he accepted these calls with humility, saying it may directly alter Breadwallets road map.

He said the hotline also received calls after hours, especially on the weekends. This acted as a testament to the popularity of the hotline. Many of the callers also left a voicemail. Lasher mentioned 20% of the callers were women. This was good news for him, because it suggested the bitcoin community has diversified.

The most shocking revelation of the Hotline for Lasher was the fact he received zero prank calls. Not a single person called just to get a quick laugh and waste time. That appears like it bodes well for the entire community. Lasher elaborated and provided a graph of the calls:

Of all the calls we received, we did not get a single prank call. Frankly this was the most shocking revelation of all, considering it was our biggest fear that people with too much time on their hands would abuse the line for a cheap laugh. But we had zero, nada, zilch. Faith in humanity restored. For those who are interested, below is a distribution of the types of calls we received:

Thenumber to the hotline is still posted on Breadwalletsblog. It is:+1-305-791-491 (Open weekdays 10a-5p EST),

Have you also calledthe Bitcoin Therapy Hotline? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of bitcoinwiki.com, Breadwallet, andwhichwallet.com

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check ourtoolssection.

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Fort Knox-born astronaut prepares for space mission – Elizabethtown News Enterprise

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A sixth-grade teacher took an interest in Randy Bresnik and helped him to shape up.

She paid attention to me and that made a difference in my life, NASA astronaut Bresnik said during a phone call from Star City, Russia.

Bresnik is making final preparations to launch to the International Space Station. He will be joined on Expedition 52 by Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency on the mission. They will launch July 28 and return to Earth in December.

When aboard the space station, which is the only permanently occupied orbiting lab, crew members will conduct several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science, according to a NASA news release.

This will be Bresniks second trip to the International Space Station and his first long-duration mission.

He said its an overwhelming experience to go to space.

Its the physical sensation and seeing the curvature of the Earth, he said. You realize the finiteness of the Earth. To know that every person you know and memory you have, is on that blue marble. It gives you a new perspective.

He said he wished more people could have that experience.

Bresnik was born at the former Ireland Army Community Hospital in Fort Knox. He spent two weeks in Kentucky before moving to Santa Monica, California. Before becoming an astronaut in 2004, he was a U.S. Marine.

Bresnik has cataloged the preparations for his trip on social media. As hes getting ready, he said hes also learned about the upcoming solar eclipse Aug. 21. The astronauts in the space station will be able to see the eclipse and send back photos.

For students who want to go to space one day, Bresnik advises them to work hard in school.

Do it to your fullest extent, and make learning a lifelong opportunity, he said.

Bresnik said astronauts are a tiny part of the space operation, and many people can have a role in missions such as this one.

Katherine Knott can be reached at 270-505-1747 or kknott@thenewsenterprise.com.

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Six Volunteer ‘Astronauts’ Are About to Lock Themselves Inside a Simulated Mars Colony – Futurism

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Simulated Mars Mission

Next to an old nuclear bomber hangar in western Poland, a mission to the surfaces of both the moon and Mars is about to begin.

The two-week mission is just a simulation, of course, since no entity on Earth is prepared toinhabit deep space. But the experiment called the Poland Mars Analogue Simulation 2017 will study a group of six volunteer analogue astronauts as they work through a realistic schedule of space exploration, then provide those findings to anyone whos drawing up crewed missions beyond Earth.

This mission will be one of the most comprehensive Mars analogue missions ever conducted in Europe, Mina Takla, spokesperson for thePMAS 2017 mission, told Business Insider in an email.

The experiment, which Business Insider first learned about through theDawn of Private Space Science Symposiumon June 4, is being spearheaded by theSpace Exploration Project Group, or SEPG. (The group is part of the Space Generation Advisory Council and works with the United Nations on its space exploration research and support efforts.)

Many other partners are involved in the mission, too, including The Mars Society, European Space Agency, and European Space Foundation.

The projects central feature is a U-shaped habitat thats connected to a nuclear fighter [plane] hangar near Pila, Poland, Takla said.

To make the mission possible, PMAS 2017 rounded up money from corporate sponsors, and also raised tens of thousands of dollars throughcrowdfundingsites. To create the habitat, the Space Garden Company a partner to the project secured material donations and also did some fundraising.

Organizers have dubbed their faux habitat project the Martian Modular Analog Research Station, orM.A.R.S.

As Marta Bellon of Business Insider Polandreported in May 2016, a previous design for the base, created by British architect Scott Porter, called for four arms and a domed headquarters built by Freedomes (the same company that built the fictional Mars habitats for the blockbuster movie The Martian).

However, organizers have since dropped the four-armed design for a U-shaped one. The habitats planned location in southern Poland also moved to western Poland in the past year.

The new, U-shaped M.A.R.S. facility will have six units, each with its own dedicated purpose, such as scientific research, crew quarters (including a gym), habitation, hygienic facilities, kitchen area, and storage and systems, Takla said. The entry and exit to the habitat will be via an airlock.

Takla did not provide Business Insider with any sketches or photos of the facility in time for publication, nor could he confirm if and when its construction was completed.

Assuming M.A.R.S. is finished in time, sixanalogue astronautswill land in the habitat on July 31, then work and live and work inside it through August 13.

The volunteers hail from Puerto Rico, Israel, Spain, France, India, the US, Nigeria, and other locations. Meanwhile, a larger support team will operate as mission control in the northern Polish city of Torun, including psychologists tomonitor the astronauts.

[PMAS 2017] will be one of the most international, multicultural, and interdisciplinary analogue missions ever conducted, with members from over 28 different countries and representing scientific disciplines ranging from engineering to astrophysics, psychology, geology, and biology, Takla said.

In addition to following a strict schedule of experiments, maintenance, and personal time, mission managers will simulate other realities for a far-off planetary mission, including spacesuits to leave M.A.R.S., and annoying communications delays.

[T]he first three days of the 14 days of the simulation will be in Lunar mode with a real-time communication between habitat and Mission Control, before we go for the remaining 11 days into the Martian mode, Tajana Lui, co-leader of SEPG, told Business Insider in an email.

When the Martian mode starts, Lui said, the time delay will be 15 minutes, and simulates the long distance between Earth and Mars and the related communication delay.

The PMAS 2017 mission isnt the only project trying to figure out how to run a tightly operated lunar or Martian base.

HI-SEAS in Hawaii, for example which former Business Insider reporter Kelly Dickerson visited has astronauts who live and work inside a habitatbuilt on the side of a barren volcano.

Russia, China, and the ESA have also run six willing astronauts through a psychological gauntlet with its $15 millionMars500 experiment.

That project, which ended a few years ago, had the astronauts stay inside for 520 days, or nearly a year and a half, to see what challenges they faced and how to prevent or solve them when real Mars colonization missions actually begin. (Boredom, concludedan exhaustive studyof the project, is one of the greatest hurdles to overcome.)

Such information could prove extremely valuable to the first nation (or private company,like SpaceX) to land people on Mars. Whoever is spending tens of billions of dollars to get the job done, theyll not only want a crew to survive to tell the tale, but also make the best use of their time some 140 million miles from Earth.

Correction (July 10, 2017): Business Insider was initially given and directed to outdated information about M.A.R.S. We have since corrected and updated this story to reflect the projects current details.

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32 genetic engineering incidents since 2011 revealed in regulator’s … – The Canberra Times

Posted: at 3:47 am

University of Canberra scientists failed to comply with genetic engineering safety protocols while researching a mosquito-borne virus linked to brain damage.

It is one of dozens of compliance incidents involving genetically modified viruses, bacteria and crops that have occurred across Australia since 2011.

Fairfax Mediacan reveal 32 separate incidents of non-compliance committed by universities, government laboratories and large agricultural companies, including:

The risks associated with all 32 incidents reported have been assessed as "negligible" by the federal Office of the Gene Technology Regulator.

Many were minor incidents caused by administrative oversights.

The incidents have been described in reports published by the regulator as well as documents obtained by Fairfax Media under Freedom of Information laws.

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In 2015 the University of Canberra contravened GMO licence conditions during an experiment with the Murray Valley encephalitis virus, a mosquito-borne virus that can cause brain damage.

Scientists were attempting to create a new vaccine by engineering the virus with two genes from the virus that causes Dengue fever.

"At the time of the inspection the University of Canberra notified inspectors that dealings with GMOs had been undertaken in a facility that had not been authorised by the licence," a government inspection report read.

"The University of Canberra did not obtain signed statements from all persons, prior to their commencing dealings, indicating that they understood and agreed to be bound by licence conditions."

A spokeswoman for the university said the breach had been an "administrative oversight" that had been quickly corrected.

"Due to storage space issues in the licensed lab, some GMO material was stored in another certified lab which was appropriate for the material but not under the licence.

"The GMO material was only stored in this certified lab and no research on it was conducted in that location."

Last year agricultural giant Bayer Crop Science was moving planting equipment from a trial site in country NSW when a small batch of GM cotton seeds were spilled.

A report of the incident showed the seeds could have been spilled over a 29 kilometre patch of road in Moree, including the busy Newell Highway.

The seeds had been modified with genes linked to insect or herbicide resistance, although the regulator concluded it was "unlikely" any plants would have grown.

A spokesman for Bayer said the government had been alerted to the incident straight away and all possible risks had been addressed.

"Bayer worked proactively with the OGTR to ensure the risks, however negligible, were addressed and remedied, including monitoring for any [plants] that might come up subsequently."

The Nuseed agri-tech company was involved in an incident in 2016, in which sheep were mistakenly allowed to graze in a paddock containing GM canola in Colac Otway, Victoria.

"Nuseed self-reported the unintentional grazing of sheep on this site," an inspection report found.

"A small number of sheep were able to access the planting area due to an unplanned drop in water levels in a dam which had previously acted as a natural barrier."

Regulators concluded the incident posed a "negligible" risk to the environment.

Nuseed declined to comment when approached by Fairfax.

In 2016 there was a non-compliance incident at the University of South Australia in which material was taken out of a facility without labelling to indicate it contained GM material.

"Persons conducting dealings with the GMO who are not fully trained in licence conditions are at risk if exposed to the GM organism," a government report concluded.

"There is no evidence, however, to suggest this issue has resulted in any harm to human health and safety at this stage."

Simon Terry is a former investment banker now running New Zealand's Sustainability Council advocacy group.

Mr Terry said the risks of genetically modified material entering the environment were more likely to be economic, rather than linked to health or safety.

"Food markets in wealthier countries are very sensitive to GMO content," he said.

"Markets for premium foods simply reject products that contain any detectable level of GMO contamination and whole countries, such as France, operate this way.

"Food producers are especially at risk from GMO varieties that have not been legally approved in the country the exports are going to.

"It is common for countries to test for GMOs at the border and if a GMO that has not been approved is discovered, the entire shipment is rejected."

Australia is currently undertaking a "technical review" of its federal gene technology regulations, with a view to ensuring they reflect technological and scientific advancements.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator said none of the 32 incidents of non-compliance reported since 2011 represented a failure of the current regime.

"Australia's regulatory system is considered world leading with a science and risk based approach that is timely and predictable, providing a clear regulatory pathway for the industry to follow," she said.

"The OGTR continues to work closely with our major trading partners to ensure its regulatory practices remain current and relevant and reflects international practice in relation to the regulation of GMOs."

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