Tag Archives: Internet & Networking Technology

Microsoft and Palantir partner to sell AI to government agencies

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Microsoft is teaming up with secretive data analytics company Palantir, which has been accused of (among other wretched acts) enabling the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate “as a domestic surveillance agency.” Bloomberg reports that Palantir will integrate its products with Microsoft’s government cloud tools, including the Azure OpenAI service, “in a bid to sell software” to US defense agencies. Oh, joy.

The pair will reportedly focus on products for US defense workers to handle logistics, contracting and action planning. But given the secretive nature of Palantir’s work, those generic and seemingly non-threatening terms don’t necessarily say much.

Palantir’s software has been used to track and suppress dissent. The company was founded by Peter Thiel, who supports and funds far-right causes and has a political philosophy his biographer described as “bordering on fascism.” In Thiel’s Stanford classes and his book Zero to One, the Silicon Valley billionaire gushed over how much better companies are run than governments because they have a single decision-maker. “A dictator, basically,” Thiel’s biographer told Time in 2021.

Thiel also wrote the words, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

In 2018, Palantir claimed in The New York Times that it doesn’t work with ICE’s deportation squad, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). This contradicted a report from The Intercept revealing a 2016 Homeland Security disclosure showing ERO used Palantir’s software to “gather information for both criminal and civil cases against immigrants.”

In 2020, Amnesty International warned about Palantir, “We could close our eyes and pretend that contrary to all the evidence, Palantir is a rights-respecting company or we can call this façade what it is: another company placing profit over people, no matter the human cost.”

Bloomberg reports that Palantir’s newest AI software requires a large language model. Now, in classified government environments, Palantir will combine its powers with those of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI, which includes GPT-4o, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, GPT-4, GPT-3.5 and more.

What could possibly go wrong?

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-and-palantir-partner-to-sell-ai-to-government-agencies-171748773.html?src=rss

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders call for an antitrust investigation into Venu Sports

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Venu Sports appears poised to offer a one-stop shop for streaming all kinds of athletic events. However, the extensive amount of sports content controlled by Disney (which owns ESPN), Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, has  raised questions about the upcoming streaming service. Three members of Congress have called on the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether Venu violates antitrust laws.

"If this JV [joint venture] is permitted to proceed, competitors would be forced to negotiate with Fox, Disney, and Warner Bros. for access to over half of the major sporting licensing rights while simultaneously competing against these companies to offer the best product to broadcast or stream these programs," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) wrote in an open letter. They also questioned whether Venu could lead to increased prices for consumers. (And the prices for Venu are already looking pretty steep, with a launch price of $43 a month.)

This group isn't the first to question this sports streaming venture. Shortly after the joint venture between the three companies was announced, FuboTV filed a lawsuit alleging that Venu would fall afoul of antitrust laws.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/senators-elizabeth-warren-and-bernie-sanders-call-for-an-antitrust-investigation-into-venu-sports-203458843.html?src=rss

X is reportedly closing its San Francisco office

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X will soon close its longtime San Francisco office and move employees to offices elsewhere in the Bay Area, according to an email from CEO Linda Yaccarino reported by The New York Times. Yaccarino’s note to employees comes several weeks after Elon Musk threatened to move X’s headquarters out of California and into Austin, Texas.

Yaccarino’s note, however, doesn’t seem to mention Texas. According to The New York Times, she told employees the closure will happen over the “next few weeks” and that employees will work out of “a shared engineering space in Palo Alto” that’s also used by xAI, as well as other “locations in San Jose.”

Twitter, and now X, has had a rocky relationship with its home base since Musk’s takeover of the company. Musk banned employees from working remotely shortly after taking over the company in 2022, and ordered many Twitter workers back to the office in the mid-Market neighborhood of San Francisco.

He later ran afoul of the city’s Department of Building Inspection for installing a giant flashing X on top of the building, and for reportedly converting office space into hotel rooms for employees to sleep in. The company’s landlord had also sued X over unpaid rent, The San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier this year. The lawsuit was later dismissed.

Despite Musk’s frequent complaints about San Francisco and its elected leaders, he had previously vowed to keep the company’s headquarters in the city. “Many have offered rich incentives for X (fka Twitter) to move its HQ out of San Francisco,” Musk tweeted last year.

“Moreover, the city is in a doom spiral with one company after another left or leaving. Therefore, they expect X will move too. We will not. You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend.”

But, even before Musk’s recent posts about moving to Austin, there were other signs X may be getting ready to leave after all. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in July that X’s landlord was looking to sublease much of the company’s 800,000 square-foot headquarters.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-reportedly-closing-its-san-francisco-office-203650428.html?src=rss

OpenAI vows to provide the US government early access to its next AI model

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OpenAI will give the US AI Safety Institute early access to its next model as part of its safety efforts, Sam Altman has revealed in a tweet. Apparently, the company has been working with the consortium "to push forward the science of AI evaluations." The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has formally established the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute earlier this year, though Vice President Kamala Harris announced it back in 2023 at the UK AI Safety Summit. Based on the NIST's description of the consortium, it's meant "to develop science-based and empirically backed guidelines and standards for AI measurement and policy, laying the foundation for AI safety across the world."

The company, along with DeepMind, similarly pledged to share AI models with the UK government last year. As TechCrunch notes, there have been growing concerns that OpenAI is making safety less of a priority as it seeks to develop more powerful AI models. There were speculations that the board decided to kick Sam Altman out of the company — he was very quickly reinstated — due to safety and security concerns. However, the company told staff members in an internal memo back then, that it was because of "a breakdown in communication."

In May this year, OpenAI admitted that it disbanded the Superalignment team it created to ensure that humanity remains safe as the company advances its work on generative artificial intelligence. Before that, OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, who was one of the team's leaders, left the company. Jan Leike, who was also one of the team's leaders, quit, as well. He said in a series of tweets that he had been disagreeing with OpenAI's leadership about the core priorities of the company for quite some time and that "safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products." OpenAI created a new safety group by the end of May, but it's led by board members that include Altman, prompting concerns about self-policing. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-vows-to-provide-the-us-government-early-access-to-its-next-ai-model-110017697.html?src=rss

Belgian researchers found a huge privacy hole in six dating apps

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TechCrunch reported that a group of researchers from the university KU Leuven in Belgium identified six popular dating apps that malicious users can use to pinpoint the near-exact location of other users. Dating apps including Hinge, Happn, Bumble, Grindr, Badoo and Hily all exhibited some form of “trilateration” that could expose users’ approximate locations, which prompted some of the apps to take action and tighten their security, according to the published paper.

The term “trilateration” refers to a three-point measurement used in GPS to determine the relative distance to a target. The six named apps fell into one of three categories of trilateration” including “exact distance trilateration” in which a target is accurate to “at least a 111m by 111m square (at the equator),” “round distance trilateration” or “oracle trilateration” in which distance filters are used to approximate a rounded area much like a Venn diagram.

Grindr is “susceptible to exact distance trilateration” while Happn falls under “rounded distance trilateration.” The remaining four fall under “oracle trilateration” despite the fact that Hinge and Hily hide the distances of its users, according to the paper.

Karel Dhondt, one of the researchers involved in the study, told TechCrunch that a user with malicious intent could locate another user up to “2 meters” away using oracle trilateration. This method involves the malicious user going to a rough estimate of the victim's location based on their profile and moving in increments until the victim is no longer in proximity along three different positions and triangulating the data to one spot. 

Bumble’s vice president of global communication Gabrielle Ferree told the website that they “swiftly resolved the issues outlined” with its distance filter last year. Hily co-founder and chief technology officer Dmytro Kononov said in a statement that an investigation revealed “a potential possibility for trilateration” but “exploiting this for attacks was impossible.”

Happn chief executive officer and president Karima Ben Adelmalek told TechCrunch they discussed trilateration with the Belgian researchers. He says that an additional layer of protection designed to prevent trilateration “was not taken into account in their analysis.”

Grindr’s chief privacy officer Kelly Peterson Miranda noted that users can disable their distance display from their profile. She also noted that “Grindr users are in control of what location information they provide.” Hinge did not respond with a comment.

Other dating apps have taken extra steps to ensure its users are speaking to actual people and not spam bots or fake accounts. Tinder started requiring users in February in the US, UK, Brazil and Mexico to upload a copy of an official driver’s license or passport along with a video selfie as part of a new advanced ID verification system.

Update, July 31, 7:55PM ET: The story was updated to remove the statement that Badoo did not respond to a request for comment. As Badoo is owned by Bumble, Bumble VP Gabrielle Ferree's statement covers both brands.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/belgian-researchers-found-a-huge-privacy-hole-in-six-dating-apps-223227855.html?src=rss

US Copyright Office calls for better legal protections against AI-generated deepfakes

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The US Copyright Office has published a report recommending new and improved protections against digital replicas. "We have concluded that a new law is needed," the department's report states. "The speed, precision, and scale of AI-created digital replicas calls for prompt federal action. Without a robust nationwide remedy, their unauthorized publication and distribution threaten substantial harm not only in the entertainment and political arenas, but also for private individuals."

The Copyright Office's assessment reveals several areas where current laws fall short of addressing digital replicas. It describes the state level as "a patchwork of protections, with the availability of a remedy dependent on where the affected individual lives or where the unauthorized use occurred." Likewise, "existing federal laws are too narrowly drawn to fully address the harm from today’s sophisticated digital replicas."

Among the report's recommendations are safe harbor provisions to encourage online service providers to quickly remove unauthorized digital replicas. It also notes that "everyone has a legitimate interest in controlling the use of their likenesses, and harms such as blackmail, bullying, defamation, and use in pornography are not suffered only by celebrities," meaning laws should cover all individuals and not just the famous ones.

The timing of this publication is fitting, considering that the Senate has been making notable moves this month to enact new legal structures around the use of digital replications and AI-generated copycats. Last week, the legislators passed the DEFIANCE Act to offer recourse for victims of sexual deepfakes. Today saw the introduction of the NO FAKES Act to more broadly allow any individual to sue for damages for unauthorized use of their voice or likeness.

Today's analysis is the first in several parts of the Copyright Office's investigation into AI. With plenty more questions to explore around the use of AI in art and communication, the agency’s ongoing findings should prove insightful. Hopefully legislators and courts alike will continue to take them seriously.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-copyright-office-calls-for-better-legal-protections-against-ai-generated-deepfakes-215259727.html?src=rss

Lawsuit alleges StubHub deceives customers into paying extra for tickets

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The Washington DC Superior Court has filed a lawsuit against ticket-seller StubHub that accuses the company of hiding all kinds of fees from consumers until the very last moment. The suit calls out the “deceptive practice of charging hidden junk fees” and refers to it as a “classic bait-and-switch scheme.”

Anyone who has purchased a ticket via StubHub, or many of its rivals, are probably intimately familiar with the sticker shock that arrives at check out. The added fees can boost the total cost of a ticket by up to 40 percent, the lawsuit alleges. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb says this is due to “a series of deceptive, manipulative, and unfair practices.”

These practices include the aforementioned bait-and-switch. The company allegedly advertises “deceptively low” ticket prices, adding extra charges after the consumer has clicked on multiple pages. Throughout this whole process, StubHub displays a countdown timer, urging users to act swiftly and, thereby, accept those added fees without really thinking about it. Schwalb calls this a “dark pattern” that creates a “false sense of urgency.” This is otherwise known as drip pricing.

The fees themselves are also said to be attributed to vague and cryptic policies, like “fulfillment and service.” These policies lack adequate explanation and the associated fees vary wildly, according to the suit. The lawsuit points out that StubHub doesn’t disclose how these fees are calculated or what they’re even for.

The complaint goes on to allege that StubHub has sold 4.9 million tickets and accrued over $118 million in hidden fees just in Washington DC by relying on the above methods. This lawsuit doesn’t crunch the numbers for other cities, like New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, though I have a hunch that those residents also attend ticketed events in large numbers.

“We are disappointed that the DC Attorney General is targeting StubHub when our user experience is consistent with the law, our competitors’ practices, and the broader e-commerce sector,” John Lawrence, StubHub’s deputy general counsel, wrote in a statement to The Verge.

To the point of being “consistent with the law,” Schwalb claims that StubHub has violated the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA). The aforementioned drip pricing strategy isn’t allowed, as the law requires merchants to provide factual information regarding consumer goods sold in the city. The AG has asked the court to financially penalize StubHub and for an injunction to stop the allegedly deceptive practices.

“Hidden fees in the ticketing industry have truly gotten out of control. The price that is advertised is the price that we should pay—full stop,” wrote National Consumers League CEO Sally Greenberg in a press release that accompanied the lawsuit.

This is just the latest attempt to dissuade ticket sellers from using junk fees to line their coffers. The federal government, under President Biden, has been trying to tamp down these practices since 2022, when Ticketmaster caused a straight-up fiasco by promising more Taylor Swift tickets than were actually available and adding plenty of junk fees. In 2023, the FTC proposed a rule to ban junk fees. There will be a decision issued on this by the end of the year.

The House also passed a bill back in May to force ticket sellers to display the actual prices at the start of the purchasing process and not at the very end. Finally, the DOJ took legal action against Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation earlier this year, accusing it of monopolistic practices that result in high ticket prices.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lawsuit-alleges-stubhub-deceives-customers-into-paying-extra-for-tickets-162722604.html?src=rss

Some Microsoft services, including Office, are suffering from an outage

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If you're having a little trouble with Microsoft Office or Teams today, you're not alone. The company has reported some Azure-related issues that are preventing some users from accessing certain services. The problems started at around 8AM on Tuesday.

Microsoft reported on a status page that "a subset of customers may experience issues connecting to Microsoft services globally." The company deployed several engineering teams to try and resolve the problem as swiftly as possible. "We've identified multiple workstreams and are working to mitigate impacted workstreams by performing failover operations," it said in a statement. "More details will be provided as they become available."

For what it's worth, there was a significant spike in outage reports made to Down Detector on Tuesday morning for both Microsoft and Microsoft 365. Here's hoping the issue is resolved soon so you can rejoin Teams calls you never wanted to be on in the first place. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/some-microsoft-services-including-office-are-suffering-from-an-outage-142757596.html?src=rss

DOJ says TikTok collected users’ views on issues like abortion, gun control and religion

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The Department of Justice on Friday night asked a federal court to reject TikTok’s bid to have the law that could ban it overturned, citing national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users’ views around sensitive topics. It comes in response to a petition filed in May by TikTok in an attempt to challenge the law that now requires its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or it will be banned in the US. President Biden signed the bill into law in April.

In one of the documents filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the DOJ says a search tool within Lark, the web-suite system the company’s employees use to communicate, “allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.” The DOJ also argues in the filings that TikTok could be used to subject US users to content manipulation, and that their sensitive information could end up stored on servers in China.

TikTok has repeatedly denied the accusations about it being a threat to national security and has called the efforts to ban it “unconstitutional.” In its latest statement responding to the DOJ filing, posted on X, TikTok said, “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doj-says-tiktok-collected-users-views-on-issues-like-abortion-gun-control-and-religion-201617503.html?src=rss

DOJ says TikTok collected users’ views on issues like abortion, gun control and religion

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The Department of Justice on Friday night asked a federal court to reject TikTok’s bid to have the law that could ban it overturned, citing national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users’ views around sensitive topics. It comes in response to a petition filed in May by TikTok in an attempt to challenge the law that now requires its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or it will be banned in the US. President Biden signed the bill into law in April.

In one of the documents filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the DOJ says a search tool within Lark, the web-suite system the company’s employees use to communicate, “allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.” The DOJ also argues in the filings that TikTok could be used to subject US users to content manipulation, and that their sensitive information could end up stored on servers in China.

TikTok has repeatedly denied the accusations about it being a threat to national security and has called the efforts to ban it “unconstitutional.” In its latest statement responding to the DOJ filing, posted on X, TikTok said, “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doj-says-tiktok-collected-users-views-on-issues-like-abortion-gun-control-and-religion-201617503.html?src=rss