Monthly Archives: March 2020

Futuristic Impacts of AI Over Businesses and Society – Analytics Insight

Posted: March 31, 2020 at 6:25 am

In the past decade, artificial intelligence (AI) has made it to mainstream society from academic journals. The technology has achieved numerous milestones when it comes to digital transformation across society including businesses, education, and healthcare as well. Today people can do the tasks which were not even possible ten years back.

The proportion of organizations using AI in some form rose from 10 percent in 2016 to 37 percent in 2019 and that figure is extremely likely to rise further in the coming year, according to Gartners 2019 CIO Agenda survey.

While the breakthroughs in surpassing human ability at human pursuits, such as chess, make headlines, AI has been a standard part of the industrial repertoire since at least the 1980s. Then production-rule or expert systems became a standard technology for checking circuit boards and detecting credit card fraud. Similarly, machine-learning (ML) strategies like genetic algorithms have long been used for intractable computational problems, such as scheduling, and neural networks not only to model and understand human learning but also for basic industrial control and monitoring.

Moreover, AI is also the core of some of the most successful companies in history in terms of market capitalizationApple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. Along with information and communication technology (ICT) more generally, the technology has revolutionized the ease with which people from all over the world can access knowledge, credit, and other benefits of a contemporary global society. Such access has helped lead to a massive reduction of global inequality and extreme poverty, for example by allowing farmers to know fair prices, the best crops, and giving them access to accurate weather predictions.

Following the trends, we can say that there will be big winners and losers as collaborative technologies, robots and artificial intelligence transform the nature of work. Moreover, data expertise will become exponentially more important. Across various organizations, the role of a senior manager in a deeply data-driven world is about to shift, thanks to the AI revolution. It is estimated that information hoarders will slow the pace of their organizations and forsake the power of artificial intelligence while competitors exploit it.

In the future, judgments about consumers and potential consumers will be made instantaneously and many organizations will put cybersecurity on par with other intelligence and defense priorities. Besides, open-source information and artificial intelligence collection will provide opportunities for global technological parity and soon predictive analytics and artificial intelligence could play an even more fundamental role in content creation.

With the growth of AI-enabled technologies in the future, societies will face challenges in realizing technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying and intruding on the human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information. Also, the surging capabilities of robots and artificial intelligence will see a range of current jobs supplanted, where professional roles such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants could be replaced by artificial intelligence by the year 2025.

Moreover, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerization. All the risks will arise out of human activity from certain technological development in this technology, synthetic biology, nano techno, and artificial intelligence.

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Smriti is a Content Analyst at Analytics Insight. She writes Tech/Business articles for Analytics Insight. Her creative work can be confirmed @analyticsinsight.net. She adores crushing over books, crafts, creative works and people, movies and music from eternity!!

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6 Visions of How Artificial Intelligence will Change Architecture – ArchDaily

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6 Visions of How Artificial Intelligence will Change Architecture

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In his book "Life 3.0", MIT professor Max Tegmark says "we are all the guardians of the future of life now as we shape the age of AI." Artificial Intelligence remains a Pandora's Box of possibilities, with the potential to enhance the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of cities, or destroy the potential for humans to work, interact, and live a private life. The question of how Artificial Intelligence will impact the cities of the future has also captured the imagination of architects and designers, and formed a central question to the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale, the world's most visited architecture event.

As part of the "Eyes of the City" section of the Biennial, curated by Carlo Ratti, designers were asked to put forth their visions and concerns of how artificial intelligence will impact the future of architecture. Below, we have selected six visions, where designers reflect in their own words on aspects from ecology and the environment to social isolation. For further reading on AI and the Shenzhen Biennial, see our interview with Carlo Ratti and Winy Maas on the subject, and visit our dedicated landing page of content here.

The advance of AI technologies can make it feel as if we know everything about our citiesas if all city dwellers are counted and accounted for, our urban existence fully monitored, mapped, and predicted.

But what happens when we train our attention and technologies on the non-human beings with whom we share our urban environments? How can our notion of urban life, and the possibilities to design for it, expand when we use technology to visualize more than just the relationship between humans and human-made structures?

There is much we have yet to discover about our evolving urban environments. As new technologies are developed, deployed, and appropriated, it is critical to ask how they can help us see both the city and our discipline differently. Can architecture and urban design become a multi-species, collaborative practice? The first step is opening our eyes to all of our fellow city dwellers.

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For all of their history, the machines around us have stood silent, but when the city acquires the ability to see, to listen and to talk back to us, what might constitute a meaningful reciprocal interaction? Is it possible to have a productive dialogue with an autonomous shipping crane loading containers into the hull of a ship at a Chinese mega port; or, how do we ask a question of a warehouse filled with a million objects or talk to a city managing itself based on aggregated data sets from an infinite network of media feeds? Consumer-facing AIs like Amazons Alexa, Microsofts Cortana, Google Assistant or Apples Siri repeat biases and forms of interactions which are a legacy of human to human relationships. If you ask Microsofts personal digital assistant Cortana if she is a woman she replies Well, technically I'm a cloud of infinitesimal data computation. It is unclear if Cortana is a she or an it or a they. Deborah Harrison, the lead writer for Cortana, uses the pronoun she when referring to Cortana but is also explicit in stating that this does not mean she is female, or that she is human or that a gender construct could even apply in this context. We are very clear that Cortana is not only not a person, but there is no overlay of personhood that we ascribe, with the exception of the gender pronoun, Harrison explains. We felt that it was going to convey something impersonal and while we didnt want Cortana to be thought of as human, we dont want her to be impersonal or feel unfamiliar either.

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AI (artificial intelligence) can transform the environment we live in. Cities are facing the rise of UI (urban intelligence). Micro sensors and smart handheld electronics can gather large amounts of information. Mobile sensors, referred to as urban tech, allow cars, buses, bicycles, and even citizens to collect information about air quality, noise pollution, and the urban infrastructure at large. For example, noise data can be captured, archived, and made accessible. In an effort to contribute toward urban noise mitigation, citizens will be able to measure urban soundscapes, and urban planners and city councils can react to the data. How will our lives change intellectually, physically, and emotionally as the Internet of Things migrates into urban environments? How does technology intersect with society?

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Thanks to the development of the digital world, cities can be part of natural history. This is our great challenge for the next few decades, The digital revolution should allow us to promote an advanced, ecological and human world. Being digital was never the goalit was a means to reinvent the world. But what kind of world?

In many cases, digital allows us to continue doing everything we invented with the industrial revolution in a more efficient way. Thats why many of the problems that arose with industrial life have been exacerbated with the introduction of new digital technologies. Our cities are still machines that import goods and generate waste. We import hydrocarbons extracted from the subsoil of the earth to make plastics or fuels, which allow us to consume or move effectively while polluting the environment. Cities are also the recipients of the millions of containers filled with products that move around the world, and where we produce waste that creates mountains of garbage.

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We may imagine that one day, when a city was full of sensors to give it the ability of watching and hearing, data could be collected and analyzed as much as possible to make the city run more efficiently. Public space would be better managed to avoid any offense and crime, traffic flows be better monitored to avoid any traffic jam or traffic accident, public services be more evenly distributed to achieve social equity in space, land use be more reasonably zoned or rezoned to achieve a land value as high as possible, and so on. The city would function as a giant machine of high efficiency and rationality that would treat everyone and everything in the city as an element on the giant machine, under the supervision and in line with the values of the hidden eyes and ears. But, the city is not a machine, it is an organism composed of first of all numerous men who are often different one from another, and then the physical environment they create and shape in a collective way. Before the appearance of the city full of sensors, man needs to first work out a complete set of regulations on the utilization of sensors and the data they collect to deal with the issues of privacy and diversity.

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In his bookThe Second Digital Turn, Mario Carpo provides an incisive definition of the difference between artificial intelligence and "human" intelligence. Through the slogan "search, don't sort", he well describes how our way of using email has changed after the spread of Gmail:

We used to think that sorting saves time. It did; but it doesnt any more, because Google searches (in this instance, Gmail searches) now work faster and better. So taxonomies, at least in their more practical, utilitarian modeas an information retrieval toolare now useless. And of course computers do not have queries on the meaning of life, so they do not need taxonomies to make sense of the world, eitheras we do, or did.[Mario Carpo,The Second Digital Turn. Design Beyond Intelligence, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2017, p. 25.]

Machine-intelligence is an infinite search based on a finite request: Carpo's machine, which announces the second digital turn (or revolution?), is able to find a needle in a haystack - so long as someone asks it to look for a needle, for reasons that are still human. There is no longer any need for shelves, drawers, or taxonomies to narrow down the search-terms into increasingly coherent sets (as was the case with "sorting"). The machine will find the needle wherever it is, in the chaos of the pseudo-infinite space of the World Wide Web or, in a more general sense, of the "Big Data". It will do so in an instant. And herein lies its intelligence: it can look for a needle in a pseudo-infinite haystack (Big Data) at a very high speed (Big Calcula).

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New MI5 head promises to focus on China and harness AI – The Guardian

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MI5s deputy head will take the top job at the spy agency next month promising a sharper focus on China and to work more closely with the private sector in harnessing artificial intelligence in tackling hostile state and terrorist activity.

Ken McCallum, a career MI5 officer, has been the agencys deputy director general since April 2017 and was seen by insiders as the heir apparent at an organisation that prides itself on internal appointments to its leading position.

The Glaswegian is the youngest ever boss of MI5, although the organisation will only say he is in his 40s and replaces Sir Andrew Parker, who had been due to step down in April after seven years as the director general in charge of the the UKs domestic security service.

His appointment was announced by the home secretary, Priti Patel, on Monday.

MI5s purpose is hugely motivating, McCallum said. Our people with our partners strive to keep the country safe, and they always want to go the extra mile. Having devoted my working life to that team effort, it is a huge privilege now to be asked to lead it as director general.

Insiders said that McCallum wanted to be clearer about the threat posed by China particularly in terms of industrial espionage and cyberwarfare in the belief that the level of spying by Bejiing in the UK was not appreciated more widely.

But the agency recognises that its concerns about China, which predate the coronavirus crisis by many months, also need to be set against the fact that the vast country also remains an important economic partner for the UK.

MI5 is expected to continue to support the decision to allow Huawei to supply 5G mobile phone equipment, even if highlighting other threats from China could provide further ammunition to Bejings critics on the Conservative backbenches, who are threatening to try to block the Chinese companys involvement.

McCallum also hopes to work more closely with technology companies to try to better exploit advances in technology at a time when the agency also remains concerned about the rise of hard-to-crack end-to-end encryption.

The spy agency believes it no longer has the internal capability to develop what it needs in fields such as artificial intelligence and data analysis, while McCallum will continue to demand that spy agencies have lawful access to secure messaging services.

At one point, around a decade ago, McCallum was responsible for MI5s cyber activities, when the subject was less fashionable in intelligence circles. It was a period that helped shape his interest in China and working with the technology industry.

As deputy director general, McCallum was responsible for the agencys operational work during a period when there were terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, and for MI5s response to the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal by Russia.

McCallum has 25 years experience within MI5, spending the first 10 years of his career working on Northern Ireland, focusing on terrorism and the development of the peace process around the time of the 1998 Good Friday agreement.

He was asked to take charge of counter-terror investigations and risk management relating to the London 2012 Olympics, before being promoted to become director general, strategy in 2015, responsible for MI5s relationships with its sister intelligence agencies GCHQ and MI6.

McCallum will become the 18th director general of MI5 since its foundation in 1909, although its leaders have only been publicly avowed since 1993. Modern agency chiefs serve fixed periods of office, preventing them from becoming entrenched at the top of the agencies they run.

Parker, 57, had his term extended despite a difficult period in 2017 when the UK was hit by a spate of terrorist attacks; after the attack at London Bridge, the agency admitted that the ringleader, Khuram Butt, had been on its radar but the signs that the Islamist terrorist was planning the attack that killed eight with two associates were missed.

Fresh concerns also emerged this winter when Usman Khan, a man convicted of terror offences and released on licence, killed two in an attack also near London Bridge, prompting an emergency tightening of terror sentencing amid concerns that people were continuing to be radicalised in prison.

But the military defeat of Islamic State in Syria and the death of its leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi has given some cautious grounds for optimism. The terror threat was reduced from severe to substantial last November.

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The global AI agenda: Promise, reality, and a future of data sharing – MIT Technology Review

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Artificial intelligence technologies are no longer the preserve of the big tech and digital platform players of this world. From manufacturing to energy, health care to government, our research shows organizations from all industries and sectors are experimenting with a suite of AI technologies across numerous use cases.

Among the organizations surveyed for this report, 72% had begun deploying AI by 2018, and 87% by 2019. Yet much remains unknown about AIs real, as opposed to potential, impact. Companies are developing use cases, but far from all are yet bearing fruit. How, business leaders ask, can we scale promising use cases to multiple parts of the enterprise? How can we leverage data, talent, and other resources to exploit AI to the fullest? And how can we do so ethically and within the bounds of regulation?

MIT Technology Review Insights surveyed 1,004 senior executives in different sectors and regions of the world to understand how organizations are using AI today and planning to do so in the future. Following are the key findings of this research:

Download the full report.

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Role of AI soars in tackling Covid-19 pandemic – BusinessLine

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For the first time in a pandemic, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a role like never before in areas ranging from diagnosing risk to doubt-clearing, from delivery of services to drug discovery in tackling the Covid-19 outbreak.

While BlueDoT, a Canadian health monitoring firm that crunches flight data and news reports using AI, is being credited by international reports to be the first to warn its clients of an impending outbreak on December 31, beating countries and international developmental agencies, the Indian tech space too is buzzing with coronavirus cracking activities.

CoRover, a start-up in the AI space that has earlier developed chatbots for railways ticketing platform, has now created a video-bot by collaborating with a doctor from Fortis Healthcare. In this platform, a real doctor from Fortis Healthcare not a cartoon or an invisible knowledge bank will take questions from people about Covid-19.

Apollo Hospitals has come up with a risk assessment scanner for Covid-19, which is available in six languages and guides people about the potential risk of having the virus. The Jaipur-based Sawai Man Singh Hospital is trying out a robot, made by robot maker Club First, to serve food and medicines to patients to lower the exposure of health workers to coronavirus patients.

This is the first time in healthcare that Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing are being used to create a Virtual Conversational AI platform, which assists anyone to be able to interact with doctors and have their queries answered unlike other search engines, which do not guarantee the authenticity of information, CoRovers Ankush Sabharwal claimed, while talking of its video-bot, which is likely to be launched soon.

Sabharwal told BusinessLine that answers to numerous questions have been recorded by Pratik Yashavant Patil, a doctor from Fortis Healthcare. In his AI avatar, Doctor Patil will bust myths, chat with you and will probably have answers to a lot of your questions.

Another start-up, Innoplexus AG, headquartered in Germany but founded by Indians, is claiming that its AI-enabled drug discovery platform is helping to arrive at combinations of existing drugs that may prove more efficacious in treating Covid-19 cases.

Its AI platform, after scanning the entire universe of Covid-related data has thrown up results to show that Hydroxycholoroquine or Chroloquine, an anti-malaria drug that is being prescribed as a prophylactic for coronavirus under many protocols works more effectively with some other existing drugs than when it is used alone, the company claims.

Our analysis shows that Chloroquine works more effectively in combination with Pegasys (a drug used to treat Hepatitis C] or Tocilizumab, (a rheumatoid arthritis drug) or Remdesivir (yet to be approved antiviral drug for Ebola) or Clarithromycin (an antibiotic). We are hoping to work with drug regulators and partners to test these in pre-clinical and clinical trials, said Gunjan Bhardwaj, CEO, Innoplexus.

To be sure, hundreds of clinical trials are currently under way with several cocktails of medicines for Covid-19 across the world, and some of these drugs were part of trials held in China and Taiwan. The World Health Organization (WHO) itself is monitoring a global mega clinical trial for testing drugs for Covid-19 called solidarity, which India decided to join on Friday.

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Collaboration allows introduction of MSK AI radiology in NHS Trusts – Med-Tech Innovation

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Connected health specialistWellbeing Softwareis working in partnership with artificial intelligence (AI) expertRadioboticsto accelerate the introduction of Musculoskeletal (MSK) AI radiology across NHS Trusts.

In 2018/19, the NHS performed43.5 million imaging tests in England; with the most common being Plain Radiography (X-ray) accounting for 22.7 million images. This high volume of diagnostic images is handled by a limited number of radiologists across the UK or outsourced; in 2018,outsourcing expenditurereached 165 million.

Automating the analysis and reporting of low-risk, routine MSK X-rays using Radiobotics AI solution can help free up time for radiologists, who can then evaluate more complex and urgent cases. The AI algorithms are designed to support evidence-based clinical decision making, lowering the rates of misdiagnosis and ensuring that patients receive faster results and treatment. For the Trust, the solution could also deliver overall cost savings by reducing time per case and lowing outsourcing fees.

Chris Yeowart, director at Wellbeing Software said: While other AI vendors are focused on urgent clinical diagnosis, Radiobotics is offering a solution that addresses the growing number of low risk or routine MSK X-rays that come through A&E or GP referrals. By enabling more efficient diagnosis of these cases, they are freeing up radiologists for more critical evaluations. We are glad to have them listed on our marketplace and look forward to introducing them to our substantial network of NHS customers.

Radiobotics is the latest AI vendor to join WellbeingsAI Connect Marketplace, having chosen to integrate their technology through WellbeingsAI Connectgateway, which allows hospitals to embed its chosen algorithms into their radiology workflow, no matter what RIS or PACS theyre running.

Mads Jarner Brevadt, CEO & co-founderat Radiobotics, said: Radiobotics currently offers a unique solution for detection of knee osteoarthritis in x-rays, which is part of our MSK imaging suite under development, that will include solutions for the whole skeletal system aimed at radiology and orthopaedic departments. We are very excited to partner with a highly trusted company as Wellbeing, being the leading provider of RIS in UK, we could not ask for a better partner to bring our solutions to hospitals in the UK and assist us in creating value for the overburdened NHS hospitals."

Radiobotics currently offers a solution for detection of knee osteoarthritis and they will soon have a range of MSK imaging solutions including hip, spine, hand, foot and shoulder imaging, with a number of prototypes in progress. Based on advanced computer vision and deep learning methods, Radiobotics AI image analysis generates fully automated text reports with findings and conclusion.

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Helm.ai raises $13M on its unsupervised learning approach to driverless car AI – TechCrunch

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Four years ago, mathematician Vlad Voroninski saw an opportunity to remove some of the bottlenecks in the development of autonomous vehicle technology thanks to breakthroughs in deep learning.

Now, Helm.ai, the startup he co-founded in 2016 with Tudor Achim, is coming out of stealth with an announcement that it has raised $13 million in a seed round that includes investment from A.Capital Ventures, Amplo, Binnacle Partners, Sound Ventures, Fontinalis Partners and SV Angel. More than a dozen angel investors also participated, including Berggruen Holdings founder Nicolas Berggruen, Quora co-founders Charlie Cheever and Adam DAngelo, professional NBA player Kevin Durant, Gen. David Petraeus, Matician co-founder and CEO Navneet Dalal, Quiet Capital managing partner Lee Linden and Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev, among others.

Helm.ai will put the $13 million in seed funding toward advanced engineering and R&D and hiring more employees, as well as locking in and fulfilling deals with customers.

Helm.ai is focused solely on the software. It isnt building the compute platform or sensors that are also required in a self-driving vehicle. Instead, it is agnostic to those variables. In the most basic terms, Helm.ai is creating software that tries to understand sensor data as well as a human would, in order to be able to drive, Voroninski said.

That aim doesnt sound different from other companies. Its Helm.ais approach to software that is noteworthy. Autonomous vehicle developers often rely on a combination of simulation and on-road testing, along with reams of data sets that have been annotated by humans, to train and improve the so-called brain of the self-driving vehicle.

Helm.ai says it has developed software that can skip those steps, which expedites the timeline and reduces costs. The startup uses an unsupervised learning approach to develop software that can train neural networks without the need for large-scale fleet data, simulation or annotation.

Theres this very long tail end and an endless sea of corner cases to go through when developing AI software for autonomous vehicles, Voroninski explained. What really matters is the unit of efficiency of how much does it cost to solve any given corner case, and how quickly can you do it? And so thats the part that we really innovated on.

Voroninski first became interested in autonomous driving at UCLA, where he learned about the technology from his undergrad adviser who had participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a driverless car competition in the U.S. funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And while Voroninski turned his attention to applied mathematics for the next decade earning a PhD in math at UC Berkeley and then joining the faculty in the MIT mathematics department he knew hed eventually come back to autonomous vehicles.

By 2016, Voroninski said breakthroughs in deep learning created opportunities to jump in. Voroninski left MIT and Sift Security, a cybersecurity startup later acquired by Netskope, to start Helm.ai with Achim in November 2016.

We identified some key challenges that we felt like werent being addressed with the traditional approaches, Voroninski said. We built some prototypes early on that made us believe that we can actually take this all the way.

Helm.ai is still a small team of about 15 people. Its business aim is to license its software for two use cases Level 2 (and a newer term called Level 2+) advanced driver assistance systems found in passenger vehicles and Level 4 autonomous vehicle fleets.

Helm.ai does have customers, some of which have gone beyond the pilot phase, Voroninski said, adding that he couldnt name them.

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The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Set Off A Massive Expansion Of Government Surveillance. Civil Libertarians Aren’t Sure What To Do. – BuzzFeed News

Posted: at 6:24 am

The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has grown to over 740,000 cases and 35,000 deaths around the world, has been so singular an event that even some staunch advocates for civil liberties say theyre willing to accept previously unthinkable surveillance measures.

Im very concerned about civil liberties, writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept, who built his career as a critic of government surveillance, told BuzzFeed News. But at the same time, I'm also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.

Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance. But like others who have spent years raising concerns about government overreach, he now accepts the idea that surveilling people who have contracted the coronavirus could be better than harsher measures to save lives.

The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years even before Snowden, and then obviously, the two or three years during Snowden advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China, Greenwald said.

Greenwald said he was still trying to understand how to balance his own views on privacy against the current unprecedented situation. We have to be very careful not to get into that impulse either where we say, Hey, because your actions affect the society collectively, we have the right now to restrict it in every single way. We're in this early stage where our survival instincts are guiding our thinking, and that can be really dangerous. And Im trying myself to calibrate that.

The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China.

And he is far from the only prominent civil libertarian and opponent of surveillance trying to calibrate their response as governments around the world are planning or have already implemented location-tracking programs to monitor coronavirus transmission, and have ordered wide-scale shutdowns closing businesses and keeping people indoors. Broad expansions of surveillance power that would have been unimaginable in February are being presented as fait accompli in March.

That has split an international community that would have otherwise been staunchly opposed to such measures. Is the coronavirus the kind of emergency that requires setting aside otherwise sacrosanct commitments to privacy and civil liberties? Or like the 9/11 attacks before it, does it mark a moment in which panicked Americans will accept new erosions on their freedoms, only to regret it when the immediate danger recedes?

Under these circumstances? Yeah, go for it, Facebook. You know, go for it, Google, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and 2016 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, told BuzzFeed News. But then, when the crisis goes away, how is that going to apply given that it's in place? I mean, these are the obvious questions, and no, that would not be a good thing.

"My fear is that, historically, in any moment of crisis, people who always want massive surveillance powers will finally have an avenue and an excuse to get them, Matthew Guariglia, an analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News.

Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), told BuzzFeed News that its possible to find a solution that protects privacy and prevents the spread of the virus.

People like to say, 'well, we need to strike a balance between protecting public health and safeguarding privacy' but that is genuinely the wrong way to think about it, Rotenberg said. You really want both. And if you're not getting both, there's a problem with the policy proposal.

An aerial view from a drone shows an empty Interstate 280 leading into San Francisco, California, March 26.

Beyond the sick and dead, the most immediate effects that the pandemic has visited upon the United States have been broad constraints that state and local governments have imposed on day-to-day movement. Those are in keeping with public health experts recommendations to practice social distancing to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

While the US hasnt announced a nationwide stay-at-home order like France and Italy have, large parts of the US are under some degree of lockdown, with nonessential businesses shuttered and nonessential activities outside the home either banned or discouraged. And while President Trump and his allies have focused on the economic devastation wrought by this shutdown, some libertarians have raised concerns about the damage those decrees have done to people's freedoms.

Appearing on libertarian former Texas lawmaker and two-time Republican presidential candidate Ron Pauls YouTube show on March 19, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie pointed to a Kentucky man who, after testing positive for the coronavirus, refused to self-isolate, and whom sheriff's deputies forced to stay home. (Massie later came under bipartisan criticism for attempting to hold up the coronavirus stimulus bill in the House.)

What would they do if that man walked out and got in his car? Would they shoot him? Would they suit up in hazmat uniforms and drag him off? Massie said. Those are the images we saw in China two months ago and everybody was appalled at those images. And now were literally, we could be five minutes away from that happening in the United States, here in Kentucky.

Its crazy, and what concerns me the most is that once people start accepting that, in our own country, the fact that somebody could immobilize you without due process, that when this virus is over people will have a more paternalistic view of government and more tolerance for ignoring the Constitution, Massie said.

Last Monday, Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, announced that he had tested positive for the disease, only a few days after Ron Paul wrote in his online column that the pandemic could be a big hoax pushed by fearmongers to put more power in government hands.

But the elder Paul's concerns are not shared among some of his fellow former Libertarian Party nominees for president.

Johnson said measures to encourage people to stay in their homes and temporarily shutter businesses taken by states like New York were appropriate. I really have to believe that they're dealing with [this] in the best way that they possibly can, he told BuzzFeed News. And I think it's also telling that most of them are following the same route.

Johnson added that although it was easy to raise criticisms, as a former governor, he saw few other options.

You're just not hearing it: What are the alternatives? Johnson said. I don't know, not having [currently] sat at the table as governor, what the options were. And given that every state appears to be doing the same thing, I have to believe that everything is based on the best available information.

A security guard looks at tourists through his augmented reality eyewear equipped with an infrared temperature detector in Xixi Wetland Park in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang province Tuesday, March 24. Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

A map application developed by The Baidu Inc. displays the locations visited by people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Feb. 21. Qilai Shen / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Gaming out the role of intense surveillance during a pandemic isnt just a theoretical political debate on YouTube. Surveillance at previously politically unimaginable scales has reached countries around the world.

Imagine opening an app, scanning a QR code, and creating a profile thats instantly linked with information about your health and where you've been. The app tells you if youve been in close contact with someone sick with the coronavirus.

This software already exists in China. Developed by the Electronics Technology Group Corporation and the Chinese government, it works by tapping into massive troves of data collected by the private sector and the Chinese government. In South Korea, the government is mapping the movements of COVID-19 patients using data from mobile carriers, credit card companies, and the Institute of Public Health and Environment. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's internal security agency to tap into a previously undisclosed cache of cellphone data to trace the movements of infected persons in that country and in the West Bank. And in the Indian state of Karnataka, the government is requiring people in lockdown to send it selfies every hour to prove they are staying home.

No such tools currently exist in the United States but some in the tech community who might have been expected to oppose such capacities have found themselves favoring these previously unthinkable steps.

Maciej Cegowski, the founder of Pinboard and a frequent critic of tech companies intrusions into privacy, wrote a blog post arguing for a massive surveillance program to fight the virus.

My frustration is that we have this giant surveillance network deployed and working," Cegowski told BuzzFeed News. "We have location tracking. We have people carrying tracking devices on them all the time. But were using it to sell skin cream you know, advertising. And were using it to try to persuade investors to put more money into companies. Since that exists and we have this crisis right now, lets put it to use to save lives.

We put up with the fire department breaking down our door if theres a fire at our neighbors house or in our house because we know that in normal times our houses are sacrosanct.

This position is a major departure for Ceglowski, who has warned of how tech companies have invaded our ambient privacy and argued that tech giants reach into our lives is as pernicious a force as government surveillance.

We put up with the fire department breaking down our door if theres a fire at our neighbors house or in our house because we know that in normal times our houses are sacrosanct, Cegowski said. I think similarly if we can have a sense that well have real privacy regulation, then in emergency situations like this we can decide, hey, were going to change some things.

Those doors are already being broken down. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network a collaboration between Facebook, Camber Systems, Cuebiq, and health researchers from 13 universities will use corporate location data from mobile devices to give local officials "consolidated daily situation reports" about "social distancing interventions."

Representatives from the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network did not respond to requests for comment.

A person watching live data reporting about the worldwide spread of the coronavirus.

Lots of companies claim that they have the technology to save peoples lives. But critics worry that they are taking advantage of a vulnerable time in American society to sign contracts that won't easily be backed out of when the threat passes.

Sometimes people have an almost sacrificial sense about their privacy, Rotenberg told BuzzFeed News. They say things like, Well, if it'll help save lives for me to disclose my data, of course, I should do that. But that's actually not the right way to solve a problem. Particularly if asking people to sacrifice their privacy is not part of an effective plan to save lives.

In response to the pandemic, some data analytics and facial recognition companies have offered new uses for existing services. Representatives from data analytics company have reportedly been working with the CDC on collecting and integrating data about COVID-19, while Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state agencies to track patients infected by the virus.

Neither Palantir nor Clearview AI responded to requests for comment, but the appearance of these controversial companies has raised alarms among those in the privacy community.

The deployment of face recognition, as a way of preventing the spread of virus, is something that does not pass the sniff test at all, Guariglia said. Even the companies themselves, I don't think, can put out a logical explanation as to how face recognition, especially Clearview, would help.

The leaders of other technology companies that design tools for law enforcement have tried to offer tools to combat COVID-19 as well. Banjo, which combines social media and satellite data with public information, like CCTV camera footage, 911 calls, and vehicle location, to detect criminal or suspicious activity, will be releasing a tool designed to respond to the outbreak.

We are working with our partners to finalize a new tool that would provide public health agencies and hospitals with HIPAA-compliant information that helps identify potential outbreaks and more efficiently apply resources to prevention and treatment, a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable.

Those efforts cause concerns for people like Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, who told BuzzFeed News that such tools, once deployed, would inevitably be used for more purposes than to fight the pandemic.

We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable, she said. It's not necessarily a question of if data that was handed over to the government because of this crisis would be repurposed. It's a matter of when.

In addition to those companies, many camera makers have been making a bold claim: Using just an infrared sensor, they can detect fevers, helping venues filter out the sick from the healthy. These firms include Dahua Technology in Israel, Guide Infrared in China, Diycam in India, Rapid-Tech Equipment in Australia, and Athena Security in the US.

In late February, Guide Infrared announced that it had donated about $144,000 worth of equipment that could warn users when fever is detected to Japan. The company said its devices would be used in Japanese hospitals and epidemic prevention stations.

Although Guide Infrared claimed that its temperature measurement solutions have helped in emergencies including SARS, H1N1, and Ebola, the Chinese army and government authorities are some of its major customers, according to the South China Morning Post. Its been used in railway stations and airports in major Chinese regions. Its also partnered with Hikvision, a Chinese company blacklisted by the US over its work outfitting Chinese detention centers with surveillance cameras.

Australian company Rapid-Tech Equipment claims that its fever-detection cameras can be used in "minimizing the spread [of] coronavirus infections." Its cameras are being used in Algeria, France, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many more countries, according to its website. UK camera maker Westminster International said that it has a "supply range of Fever Detection Systems for Coronavirus, Ebola & Flu."

US company Testo Thermal Imaging sells two cameras with a FeverDetection assistant. A section of its website titled Why fever detection? argues that managers of high-traffic venues have a responsibility to filter for fevers: Whether ebola, SARS or coronavirus: no-one wants to imagine the consequences of an epidemic or even a pandemic.

A Testo spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company has seen a massive increase in demand for its products in response to the coronavirus and that its cameras are being used worldwide. The spokesperson declined to provide specific examples or name specific countries.

While the appetite for fever-detecting cameras is clearly there, civil liberties advocates have concerns. Guariglia said that, regardless of their thermal imaging capabilities, surveillance cameras are surveillance cameras.

More surveillance cameras always have dubious implications for civil liberties. Even if their contract with thermal imaging ends at the end of six months, Guariglia said, I bet those cameras are gonna stay up.

A man wearing a protective mask walks under surveillance cameras in Shanghai.

Julian Sanchez, an analyst with the Cato Institute and commentator on digital surveillance and privacy issues, told BuzzFeed News he was willing to accept measures he might otherwise have concerns about to limit the spread of the virus.

Im about as staunch a privacy guy as it gets, Sanchez said. In the middle of an epidemic outbreak, there are a number of things Im willing to countenance that I would normally object to, on the premise that they are temporary and will save a lot of lives.

But he still questioned the efficacy of some of the current proposals: Theres a ton of snake oil being pitched by surveillance vendors, he said.

More than that, he had concerns about what would happen to civil liberties after the pandemic passed, but the measure put in place to combat it did not.

I think a lot of civil liberties advocates would say, Well, if this is very tightly restricted, and only for this purpose, and it's temporary, then, you know, maybe that's all right. Maybe were able to accept that, if were confident it's for this purpose, and then it ends, Sanchez said. The question is whether that's the case.

Sanchez worried that the coronavirus, like the war on terror, is an open-ended threat with no clear end inviting opportunities for those surveillance measures to be abused long after the threat has passed.

In the same week that he spoke, the US Senate voted to extend until June the FBI's expanded powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, originally passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks 19 years ago.

Mar. 30, 2020, at 21:57 PM

Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state governments. An earlier version of this story misstated the government agency it had reportedly been in contact with.

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Aiming for KO in KY The only Republican primary challenger with the backing of the RJC – Jewish Insider

Posted: at 6:24 am

Todd McMurtry is a seasoned trial attorney who first received national exposure after representing a student filmed in a confrontation with protesters after last years March for Life in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit, filed against media organizations for their coverage of the incident, drew national headlines. But it was President Donald Trumps tweets on Friday against libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) that put the spotlight on McMurtry, who is challenging the four-term incumbent for his seat in Congress.

Details: McMurtry, who launched his campaign in January, is challenging Massie in the June 23 Republican primary for Kentuckys 4th congressional district. In 2018, Massie won re-election with 62% of the vote.

Background: McMurtry, 57, grew up in Covington, Kentucky. After graduating from Covington Latin School and Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, he studied law at Salmon P. Chase College of Law, affiliated with Northern Kentucky University. He now works as an attorney focusing on mediating commercial disputes. In 2019, after 28 years of practicing law, McMurtry was selected among the top 50 Kentucky super lawyers. He also spent several years in Washington D.C. as a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee.

Stepping up: In a phone interview with Jewish Insider on Sunday, McMurtry said he was in Dallas, Texas, last fall visiting his daughter and grandchildren when the entire family caught a cold. So I spent too much time on social media and I saw things that Thomas Massie had posted that were, I thought, pretty upsetting, he recounted. I followed him for a long time and saw his questionable votes. And I said weve really had enough of this guy and his crazy votes we have to do something about it. I posted something on Facebook and people started to contact me to run for office. So I did some inquiries and polling and all that stuff and decided that we had a shot and I was going to try it.

Massies move: It was Massies push last Thursday for a recorded vote a move that forced a number of lawmakers to return to Washington amid the coronavirus crisis that upended the course of McMurtrys campaign. [Massie] seems to be generally an attention seeker on libertarian issues, and so we werent surprised to learn that he planned another stunt, McMurtry noted. But to be honest, the way he self-destructed was surprising I think to everyone. It doesnt seem to have any logic or reason other than just a pure adherence to libertarian principles, which are not the principles of the 4h district in Kentucky.

Trump factor: McMurtry told JI that Massies recent actions will push away the presidents supporters, estimating that Republicans in the district are over 90% pro-President Trump. They dont like to see what [Massie] did. And I think he shot himself in the foot. As for Trump, of course, we would welcome his endorsement, McMurtry said. In an attempt to get the presidents ear when he visited his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, Massie ran a TV ad airing on Fox News in South Florida branding McMurtry a Trump hater.

RJC boost: The Republican Jewish Coalition announced on Friday that it is backing McMurtry and will actively fundraise for his campaign, describing Massie as the only anti-Israel member of the House GOP caucus. This marks the first time the RJC is supporting a primary challenger to an incumbent. In January, the groups executive director, Matt Brooks, told Jewish Insider that the RJC will not support Massie along with three other Republican House members after they voted against the bipartisan Never Again Education Act, legislation to authorize new funding to help schools teach students about the Holocaust and antisemitism. McMurtry told JI he was thrilled and feels very honored to get the RJC endorsement, and we intend to make that endorsement pay off for the RJC by winning this race.

Massie stands alone on Israel: Massie was the only Republican to vote no on a House resolution (H.R. 246) last year condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In 2014, he was the only member of Congress from either party to oppose the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act. Later that year, Massie voted against sending emergency aid to Israel to boost the Iron Dome program during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. In 2016, Massie was again the only House member to oppose extending sanctions against Iran and was the only lawmaker to vote present on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

McMurtrys case: The Republican candidate stressed that support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship actually plays very well here in Kentucky and is of primary importance for voters. I know that the people here want their elected representatives to be strong supporters of Israel, McMurtry said. I share that support both personally and politically. McMurtry called Massies vote against the anti-BDS resolution pretty crazy and odd. He said he would have voted in favor of a resolution opposing and condemning the BDS movement, as well as in favor of a House resolution reaffirming U.S. support for the two-state solution.

Working across the aisle: I think what would be great if I got elected, especially for Israel, is that Ive negotiated so many deals among conflicted parties, McMurtry said, pointing to his mediation experience. I have handled cases as an attorney where Ive been an advocate and then a negotiator. So I do believe that I will be a very effective voice for Israel because of those skill sets. And that would include working with the Democrats to find compromise and mutuality on important issues.

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In a pandemic, Nobody thinks we should smoke more weed – The Boston Globe

Posted: at 6:24 am

You? she said, incredulous. Essential?

She started laughing and has been laughing pretty much ever since.

I think she has cabin fever, or maybe even a real fever.

Im no doctor, but I think the missus is a couple days shy of chasing me into the bathroom, chopping a hole in the door, then sticking her head through and shouting, Heres Johnny!

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But the opposite is true, too.

So I decided to go outside, sit in my car and call somebody.

And just who," my wife asked, "are you going to talk to?

Nobody, I replied, walking out the door.

Nobody lives in Keene, N.H., about 60 miles away from where were staying in Vermont. Last year, he legally changed his given name, Rich Paul, to, well, Nobody.

Nobody is part of the libertarian Free State movement. He thinks government is too big and pretty much useless, and believes people should smoke more weed, which, in the middle of a pandemic, sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Nobody didnt fare so well in the mayoral election last year.

I got about 2 percent of the vote, he said.

He saw the vote as tactical.

Clearly, he said, the good citizens of Keene would prefer I be governor.

So now hes challenging Governor Chris Sununu.

I talked to Nobody for an hour, and I must be crazy, because Im pretty sure he is and he made more sense than most people Ive talked to the last few weeks.

Nobody thinks Charlie Bakers decision to keep the liquor stores open while shutting down the recreational cannabis shops is logically and morally inconsistent, and even potentially dangerous, depriving people of a substance that reduces stress at a time of heightened anxiety.

I know alcoholics who stopped drinking because it was killing them and now they smoke weed, Nobody said. If you deprive them of marijuana, theyre going to start drinking again. Thats dumb.

Nobodys critics like to dismiss him by pointing out that he has a long criminal record.

He freely admits to his run-ins with the law, saying, I cant even count how many times Ive been arrested.

But he says most of his arrests were misdemeanors, and insists some others amounted to harassment, that law enforcements interest in him is based on a false belief that he supports potentially violent subversion. He says his most serious infraction was a setup.

I sold a pound of weed to a guy I used to buy ecstasy from, he said.

The guy was wearing a wire for the feds.

The most dangerous drug cartel in America is Big Pharma," said Nobody, "and the government is their muscle.

Hmm. I cant imagine why the government hates this guy.

Undaunted, Nobody has scheduled a rally at the state capital, on Aprils Fools Day, no less, challenging what he calls Sununus arbitrary ban on gatherings of 10 or more people. He is willing to take the risk of being arrested and even infected to make a point.

Im going to update my will to say dont give me a respirator if I get the virus, because I will have brought it on myself, he said. Frankly, if it werent for the governors order, I wouldnt go to Concord, Id just stay hunkered down in my house. Im more scared of the government than the virus.

Until April 1, hes sitting tight at his house in Keene, where the lights are on and Nobodys home.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.

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