Press

"It has been almost two decades since Google started to dominate internet search the way Microsoft dominated software for personal computers a generation earlier.

Now computer scientists at Stanford University are warning about the consequences of a race to control what they believe will be the next key consumer technology market — virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.

"Sharing Ayyub’s story with the committee, University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron noted that the journalist awoke to find her  face had been superimposed on the body of a woman in porno in April 2018, less than 24 hours after an appearance on BBC and Al Jazeera in which she condemned Indian religious leaders who had advocated on behalf of defendants involved in an 8-year-old’s gang rape and murder.

"“There are a few phenomena that come together that make deepfakes particularly troubling when they’re provocative and destructive,” Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland who has written about the dangers of deepfakes, told the House Intelligence Committee. “The first is that we know that as human beings, video and audio is so visceral, we tend to believe what our eyes and ears are telling us.”"

""I think there is a lot of pressure on the data companies from a lot of different directions," says Omer Tene, vice president and chief knowledge officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. "Apple will continue to be the most aggressive proponent of privacy as it provides them a competitive advantage."

Yet, whether technology companies that provide services for free can wean themselves off of data remains to be seen, the EFF's Hoffman-Andrews says.

""A deepfake could cause a riot; it could tip an election; it could crash an IPO. And if it goes viral, [social media companies] are responsible," says Danielle Citron, a UMD law professor who has written extensively about deepfakes."

"Elizabeth E. Joh, who teaches policing and technology at the University of California at Davis School of Law, said she thinks legislation is needed to establish limits to law enforcement’s use of DNA.

“There’s very little in the way of rules in terms of what’s permitted and what isn’t,” she said. “It’s still relatively new, and the kind of cases that have thus far been solved are the kinds of cases I think most people want to have solved. But that doesn’t answer the question of what the limits should be on what the government can do.”"

"“It’s becoming harder to escape the reach of police using technology that didn’t exist before,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, the associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “And now we are in the position of trying to walk that back and stem the tide.”"

"“Apple was well known for usability before it was known for privacy,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society."

"“What the Russian government aims to do is take online services out of the loop -- eliminating an important backstop for human rights and the rule of law. The Russian government's demand also poses a cybersecurity risk for all users of these online services, regardless of whether they're the target of surveillance,’’ Mayer told RFE/RL.""