Of Interest

California's AV Testing Rules Apply to Tesla's "FSD"

By Bryant Walker Smith on December 17, 2021 at 8:16 am

Five years to the day after I criticized Uber for testing its self-proclaimed "self-driving" vehicles on California roads without complying with the testing requirements of California's automated driving law, I find myself criticizing Tesla for testing its self-proclaimed "full self-driving" vehicles on California roads without complying with the testing requirements of California's automated driving law. Read more about California's AV Testing Rules Apply to Tesla's "FSD"

Tags:
Autonomous Driving
Thousands of Geofence Warrants Appear to Be Missing from a California DOJ Transparency Database

Date published:
November 3, 2021
The Markup
“When the providers are telling you one thing, and the government is telling you another, then something’s broken and it needs to be fixed,” said Albert Gidari, who served as consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and recently retired. He has also represented Google as a lawyer in the past. Read more about Thousands of Geofence Warrants Appear to Be Missing from a California DOJ Transparency Database
Massachusetts has a chance to clean up our national privacy disaster

Date published:
October 7, 2021
Boston Globe
It's understandable if your pessimistic about the state of our privacy these days. Between the slow but steady creep of facial recognition, surveillance-based advertising, and social media, we've never been more exposed. It feels as if everyday brings a new threat, whether it be companies putting spycams on sunglasses or using dubious AI to link your facial expressions to your employment prospects. Read more about Massachusetts has a chance to clean up our national privacy disaster
Privacy, Middleware, and Interoperability: Can Technical Solutions, Including Blockchain, Help Us Avoid Hard Tradeoffs?

By Daphne Keller on August 23, 2021 at 7:01 am

Interoperability and distributed content moderation models have tremendous promise. But they raise major questions about user privacy. Ultimately, they will likely require difficult tradeoffs between competing goals including competition, privacy, and improved speech environments. This post examines technical solutions, including ambitious blockchain-based ones, that can reduce -- but not eliminate -- those tradeoffs. Read more about Privacy, Middleware, and Interoperability: Can Technical Solutions, Including Blockchain, Help Us Avoid Hard Tradeoffs?
Tool Without A Handle: Tools For Vigilantes

By Chuck Cosson on August 4, 2021 at 9:17 pm

In this blog, I focus on principles to protect privacy when such considering publication of personal data or conclusions one can draw from it, where that data is sensitive, and revealing of personal failure. A principle that “the public should know of private wrongdoing” needs to be carefully balanced against whether that publication is needed for a public purpose, such as safety, or shedding light on institutional failures to act on the information, or where an individual persists in resisting accountability. I see none of those purposes in the recent publication of personal data concerning a Catholic Church official who engaged in same-sex relationships, notwithstanding doing so was violative of his vocational promises. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Tools For Vigilantes
This Week President Biden’s Executive Order on Big Tech

Date published:
July 17, 2021
The Markup
To understand more about what the executive order means for Big Tech and how the FTC is likely to act on it, I spoke this week with Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University School of Law and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, who has deeply researched the FTC’s authority, particularly as it relates to privacy. Read more about This Week President Biden’s Executive Order on Big Tech
Traffic cones confused a Waymo self-driving car. Then things got worse

Date published:
May 17, 2021
KCTV5
Read more about Traffic cones confused a Waymo self-driving car. Then things got worse
Bryant Walker Smith, who studies autonomous vehicles at the University of South Carolina, said he was surprised a command was never issued to halt the Waymo vehicle in place, so roadside assistance could take over.

"There wasn't great coordination among the in-vehicle system, this remote monitoring capacity of the operator on the line and the on-ground assistance," Smith said.
I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack

By Riana Pfefferkorn on May 12, 2021 at 6:25 pm

This blog post is based off of a talk I gave on May 12, 2021 at the Stanford Computer Science Department’s weekly lunch talk series on computer security topics. Full disclosure: I’ve done some consulting work for Signal, albeit not on anything like this issue. (I kinda doubt they’ll hire me again if they read this, though.) Read more about I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack
Broadband Industry Sues New York State For Promising $15 Broadband

Date published:
May 3, 2021
Motherboard
Read more about Broadband Industry Sues New York State For Promising $15 Broadband
The industry used similar arguments in its attempts to prevent states like California from passing net neutrality rules. But so far, the courts haven’t looked kindly on the industry’s arguments.
AI Creations: Legally Protected?

By Ryan E. Long on April 20, 2021 at 2:48 pm

Imagine you just purchased a painting from Sotheby’s called Portrait of Edmond Belamy (“Portrait”) for $432,500. Portrait was AI-generated. Your neighbor Jim takes a photo of the painting as you are bringing it inside. Jim puts Portrait on t-shirts for sale online.

What, if anything, can you do, provided you wanted to? What about the software company who owns the AI? Does it matter whether you live in the US or the EU? Read more about AI Creations: Legally Protected?

Of Interest

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