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NASA's SLS rocket is $6 billion over budget and six years behind schedule
NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket designed to take astronauts to the moon is $6 billion over budget and six years behind schedule.
Facebook fails its own audit over civil rights and hate speech decisions
Facebook has released a long-awaited civil rights audit that’s bound to ramp up pressure to change its policies. The report revealed that executive decisions caused “significant setbacks for civil rights” and that the site could become an “echo chamber” of extremism if it doesn’t take stronger measures.
Facebook will fight misinformation linked to the 2020 US census
Facebook isn't just limiting its anti-interference efforts to elections. The social network has published a second updated on its civil rights audit, and with it news that the company plans to treat the 2020 US census as if it were a vote. It will have a team dedicated to fighting misinformation surrounding the census, a policy to crack down on fake census-related stories and partnerships with non-partisan groups to foster participation. AI will help enforce the policy, Facebook said.
Samsung's US marketing lead quits following department investigation
Samsung's US marketing team is in the midst of turmoil, and that might include some high-profile casualties. Wall Street Journal sources claim that Samsung recently fired "several" workers in its American marketing division after an internal investigation into possible violations of policies through dealings with business partners. Not long after, Samsung's marketing chief Marc Mathieu (above) and VP of media and partnerships Jay Altschuler both left -- it's not clear that the events are connected, but the timing is at least raising eyebrows.
Facebook releases an update on its civil rights audit
In May, Facebook agreed to conduct a civil rights audit, and now the company has released an update of its progress. Headed by civil liberties leader Laura Murphy, the audit has so far engaged with dozens of civil rights organizations in order to identify which issues the company should focus on. And in her report, Murphy highlights some of the work that was done this year and what the audit will tackle in 2019.
US border officers don't always delete collected traveler data
Privacy advocates aren't just concerned about warrantless device searches at the border because of the potential for deliberate abuse -- it's that the officials might be reckless. And unfortunately, there's evidence this is the case in the US. Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General has released audit findings showing that Customs and Border Protection officers didn't properly follow data handling procedures in numerous instances, increasing the chances for data leaks and hurting accountability.
Audit backs Apple's denial of Chinese spy chips in servers
If there have been any Chinese spy chips on Super Micro servers, they haven't been easy to find. The company has told customers that an independent audit has found no evidence of malicious hardware on its current motherboards as well as those from the generation sold to Amazon and Apple (and thus the heart of the Bloomberg claims that sparked the concern). There was also no evidence of unapproved designs or rogue software, the auditors said.
Facebook reportedly agrees to share an update on its civil rights audit
The civil rights advocacy group of Color of Change released a statement today describing a meeting it had with Facebook leaders regarding a civil rights audit the organization has demanded from the social network since 2016. At the meeting, attended by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Color of Change President Rashad Robinson, the company agreed to publicly release an update on the audit by the end of the year. "Facebook, like much of Silicon Valley, desperately needs a cultural transformation," Robinson said in a statement. "Leaders must see that addressing the needs of Black users and employees, collaborating with civil rights groups to correct existing issues and rooting out the internal forces hostile to civil rights are essential for the company's future success."
Cambridge researcher claims no 'misuse' of data after Facebook ban
Yesterday, Facebook announced that it had banned the Cambridge University app myPersonality, which was collected user data for academic and research purposes. Facebook claimed it banned the app for two reasons: the creator refused to an audit and the researchers shared personal information with few protections in place. Now, Dr. David Stillwell at Cambridge University has provided a scathing statement about Facebook's actions to Engadget.
Facebook audit leads to the suspension of 400 apps
In May a report by New Scientist revealed that a Cambridge University-developed app called "myPersonality" had collected personal information from millions of Facebook users, and failed to protect it from misuse. At the time, Facebook said it had already suspended the app for passing data to others, and today said it was banned "for failing to agree to our request to audit and because it's clear that they shared information with researchers as well as companies with only limited protections in place." The researchers behind the project have posted an FAQ here, mentioning that their research has been used in dozens of peer-reviews papers and saying much of it focused on exposing privacy risks. The data is no longer shared, and in a statement, the university's Psychometric Centre said it had never collected info from user's friends.
Facebook is investigating its role in Myanmar violence
Facebook has hired an outside company to look into its role in spreading hate speech and enabling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, Vice News reports. The human rights audit is being conducted by San Francisco-based Business for Social Responsibility and was reportedly launched in recent months. A Facebook source confirmed the audit to Vice News.
MIT crypto system shares police data without wrecking investigations
Law enforcement routinely secures orders requiring that tech companies hand over data, but the targets of those requests don't always know if they've been under the microscope -- especially if there were never charges in the first place. MIT's CSAIL may have a way to hold officers more accountable for those decisions. Its researchers are developing a cryptography-based system that could help track these requests while still protecting investigations and police. AUDIT (Accountability of Unreleased Data for Improved Transparency) would require that law enforcers submit requests to a public ledger sometime after the fact using a "cryptographic commitment." The approach would ensure that police and courts send all the right documents in a way the public can see, but would keep the agencies' actions confidential.
FCC admits its comment system never suffered DDoS attack
If you didn't buy the FCC's claims that its comment system fell prone to a DDoS attack when it was soliciting net neutrality comments, investigators have just validated your suspicions. An imminent report from the agency's Inspector General has revealed that there's no evidence of such an attack. To put it another way, the comment system's problems were more likely due to large-scale opposition to the net neutrality repeal (helped by Last Week Tonight's John Oliver), not an untimely hacking campaign.
Facebook found 200 more apps that may have misused your data
Early results from Facebook's app audit are in. After examining "thousands" of apps to see if any had misused personal data, the social network has found 200 nefarious applications and suspended them. Names of the offending apps have not yet been released. The social network said that when it does find that an app has misused your data, it will notify users the same way it did if they were affected by Cambridge Analytica's data harvesting.
Facebook will conduct civil rights audit following bias allegations
Facebook has come under fire lately for accusations of racial and political bias, and it's determined to address both of those claims head-on. The social media giant has committed to independent investigations that will scrutinize both its civil rights record and its alleged anti-conservative political bias. Civil liberties leader Laura Murphy will lead a civil rights audit with input from groups like the Leadership Conference. Meanwhile, former Republican Senator Jon Kyl will run a conservative bias advisory partnership that will also see Facebook executives meeting with the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation.
Cambridge Analytica has commissioned a third-party audit
Mark Zuckerberg might be sorry that 50 million Facebook users' data ended up with the political firm Cambridge Analytica and will (at some point) head to Congress to explain what happened. The firm maintained that it deleted that information when Facebook requested it do so back in 2015, but it's unclear if that actually happened. Now Cambridge Analytica claims it's undertaking a third-party audit to verify that the data is gone.
Facebook enlists help to verify ad data after inaccurate reports
Facebook reported on multiple occasions late last year that it had been misreporting both ad video views and Instant Article stats. To help smooth things over with marketers, the social network explained today how it plans to be more transparent about advertising data going forward. First, the information that Facebook sends to its partners will be subject to an audit by the Media Rating Council (MRC) to verify its accuracy.
Evernote's new privacy rules may let its employees read your notes
Evernote set off a minor fracas on Twitter Tuesday when it announced an upcoming change to its privacy policy that would enable company employees to "exercise oversight of machine learning technologies applied to account content" in order to improve the service. The changes, which will take effect January 23rd, 2017, did not sit well with some of the service's users despite the company's explanation that it was only as oversight for the machine learning process.
Facebook finds more exaggerated ad data
After Facebook realized that it had been overstating video views for years, it conducted an internal review to search for more flaws messing with its ad data... and it's not happy with what it found. The social network reports that it found multiple problems with how it calculated or represented the info that marketers thrive on. It wasn't always counting end-to-end video playback properly, for example, since clip lengths would occasionally change when you started streaming. Facebook also over-reported how long people spent reading Instant Articles, and included more clicks and views than it should in some dashboards.
The TSA is failing spectacularly at cybersecurity
Five years of Department of Homeland Security audits have revealed, to the surprise of few and the dismay of all, that the TSA is as great at cybersecurity as it is at customer service. The final report from the DHS Office of Inspector General details serious persistent problems with TSA staff's handling of IT security protocols. These issues include servers running software with known vulnerabilities, no incident report process in place, and zero physical security protecting critical IT systems from unauthorized access. What we're talking about here are the very basics of IT security, and the TSA has been failing at these quite spectacularly for some time.
