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Project Counsel Media is part of The Project Counsel Group. We cover the areas of cyber security, digital technology, legal technology, media, and mobile technology.
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THE 4 JUNE 2021 WEEKEND "BONG" REPORT:
selected news from the eDiscovery and information governance communities, with additional contributions from our cyber security and digital media communities
This weekend's lead story:
Amazon is on a roll suggesting big changes to U.S. laws.
ï»żIt's a Master Class on how to manipulate regulators.
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This weekend's edition was curated and written by:
Gregory Bufithis
Founder/CEO
Project Counsel Media
assisted by:
Catarina Conti
Social Media Manager
Project Counsel Media
4 June 2021 (Brussels, Belgium) - In all of our eDiscovery work through the years we have always tried to go beyond the usual legal and technology news to provide a look at the trends and technologies that have accelerated the convergence of the discrete yet mutually inclusive domains we have covered for 20+ years: cybersecurity, digital media, and legal technology.
This year we enhanced our global technology coverage through our partnership with Jonathan Maas who started BONG! 10+ years ago and who graciously allowed us to combine forces. Joining that partnership is Rob Robinson (the brains behind the revered Complex Discovery blog) who is one of the eDiscovery world's premier technology marketers who has held senior leadership positions with multiple top-tier data and legal technology providers.
NOTE: If you are receiving this through a colleague and you have not subscribed, see the end of this post to learn how.
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OUR THANKS TO OUR PRINCIPAL CORPORATE SPONSOR HAYSTACKID:
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This week's lead story:
Amazon is on a roll suggesting big changes to U.S. laws.
ï»żIt's a Master Class on how to manipulate regulators.
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As most of my readers know, I produce two newsletters every weekend: BONG! for my information governance/legal technology community, and Typeset for my advertising/digital media community. Some of you receive both.
The newsletters often share a few articles but rarely the lead. This week they do because Amazon is a prime example of the convergence of the discrete yet mutually inclusive domains I have worked in and covered for 25+ years: cybersecurity, digital media, and legal technology. Amazon is also the subject of a panel I am on in a few weeks to explain how it overlaps those inclusive domains.
Amazon is on a roll, making suggesting on how U.S. laws can be/should be changed. This could be great for many Americans and for the country, or this could be mostly talk:
· Amazon has been loudly supporting a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour.
· The company mentioned (briefly) in a blog post in April that it was in favor of increasing the federal tax rate for corporations.
· Amazon wrote this week that it would be âactively supportingâ a proposed federal bill to legalize marijuana.
· Last year, the company said that it wanted Congress to write rules for the ethical use of facial recognition technology, including Amazonâs Rekognition.
Some of these policies could make a real difference in peopleâs lives. But my cynic's hat says Amazon simply wants credit with the public and the policymakers for supporting these laws, but that it wonât put in the concerted and sustained work required to have a real impact - well, except when it directly helps Amazon.
We know that companies lobby hard for or against laws that are good for their bottom lines. But when companies say that they support policies they believe can help everyone, do they devote the same money and muscle to those efforts? And should they?
Emily Stewart, writing for Voxâs Recode, recently asked similar questions of all businesses, including the technology giants, basically stating we should be suspicious of benevolent big business when a company weighs in on politics: look at its bottom line. And maybe we should hold the tech superstars to an even higher standard because of their power over our lives and their influence on policymakers and public perception.
Pressure from corporations canât hurt to nudge a Congress that is often gridlocked or slow to pass laws. Labor organizations have been pressing for a $15 minimum wage for years. Itâs possible that Amazonâs advocacy might be even more effective at rallying public support and changing the law. Ditto for Facebookâs relentless promotions about its support for revised U.S. internet regulations (but see more below).
These companies deserve credit for taking on big issues, but what matters is that they follow through to the end. As Stewart wrote, âVague gestures from corporations and executives are a way to smooth over real political and social issues, and to deflect deserved scrutiny.â
An episode from Amazonâs past also invites skepticism of its motivations in policy battles. For years, the company loudly proclaimed support for a national sales tax in the United States. Amazon knew that a national sales tax was most likely a non-starter in Congress. But Amazonâs position helped in its fight against state laws to collect sales taxes on online purchases.
A national sales tax never happened. About a decade ago Amazon began to reach compromises with states to apply sales taxes. By then, the company had benefited from years of price advantages over conventional retailers. That bit of history shows that what Amazon said was a principled policy position was little more than a strategy maneuver.
Here are some questions that American taxpayers can pose to tech companies who are speaking up for policy changes: How is the company pushing for this law? What specific policy suggestions does it have? How much money will the company spend on lobbying for it? Will the company commit to status reports on its policy advocacy and the results?
Amazonâs lobbying disclosures do indicate, without many specifics, that minimum wage issues are among the topics that the company has pressed with members of Congress. Jodi Seth, a spokeswoman for Amazon, points to the companyâs advertisements and opinion pieces about increasing the minimum wage, and said itâs one of the few issues that involves everyone on Amazonâs policy team.
Well, how about something radical: candor about a companiesâ motivations for proposed policy changes. and the public. For Amazon, why not be frank that an increase in the minimum wage might be good for many American workers and for Amazonâs business? The company may need to pay more to attract enough high-quality workers and keep them happy, and its competitors may not be able to afford higher wages.
Facebook and some other tech companies that are getting behind a national digital privacy protection law in the United States. Why? Simple, really. They want more lenient rules from Congress to usurp strict laws that some states have passed.
The same can be said for the tracking technology called third-party cookies (started in the mid-1990s). Third-party cookies are going to die, being beaten up by Apple and Google because "they are bad, violating YOUR privacy!" And the regulators shout "HURRAH!"
But missing from those statements? Advertisers, publishers ... and Apple and Google ... have developed new tracking methods. The alternatives they have concocted will define the next era of data snooping.
And, once again, several steps ahead of the regulators.
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Now, a few enlightened selections from the social media firehose last week as selected by our team and Jonathan Maas.
No real theme this week. A bit of a potpourri
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Changing requirements for a changing world? The European Data Protection Board Annual Report 2020
2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered how we live and work. Given the increasing presence of data-driven technologies in addressing the pandemic, the awareness of data protection rights among individuals and organisations has never been more critical. For more from Rob Robinson click here.
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How many sources can there be for an email collection? You might be surprised!
Email can be stored within various ways within an organisation and some organisations may be storing emails in multiple ways. Each source and form of email requires a different approach to forensically sound collection. Here are some of the forms and ways to access and collect email.
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10 tips for better ESI expert reports
Craig Ball: "A lawyer I admire asked me to talk to her colleague about expert reports. I haven't had that conversation yet, but the request got me thinking about the elements of a competent expert report, especially reports in my areas of computer forensics and digital evidence. I dashed off 10 things I thought contribute to the quality of the best expert reports. If these were rules, I'd have to concede I've learned their value by breaking a few of them. I've left out basic writing tips like 'use conversational language and simple declarative sentences'. There are lists of rules for good writing elsewhere and you should seek them out. Instead, here's my impromptu list of 10 tips for crafting better expert reports on technical issues in electronic discovery and computer forensics". For more from Craig click here.
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DeepSloth: Researchers find denial-of-service equivalent against machine learning systems
A new adversarial attack developed by scientists at the University of Maryland, College Park, can force machine learning systems to slow to a crawl, taxing servers and possibly causing critical failures in some applications. Presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), the technique neutralises optimisation techniques that speed up the operation of deep neural networks. More here.
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"Lack of role models" a key cause for slow tech adoption
All organisations take their cues from the top, even if they are not consciously aware of it. Law firms are also supremely pyramidal entities, in that they are organised by time served and also âsurvivalâ â at least among the fee earners. I.e. these days probably no more than 10% of each associate cohort make it to equity partner and then have any say in how a firm is run or whatâs important to the business as a whole. Many of those that do get through the law firmâs âtrial by fireâ have done so not by trying to change how things work, but by being very good lawyers, working incredibly hard, and having an ability to win the clientsâ trust. All of that is highly commendable â but it doesnât necessarily connect to legal tech adoption. More here.
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AI Tech is forcing governments to upgrade their laws, which is probably futile
We are living in a time of science fiction due to advances in AI technology. While we are still far from holographic interfaces and competent digital assistants that do not spy on users, today's technology was yesteryear's imaginings. Due to advancements in AI, such as facial recognition, world governments are forced to update laws in order to maintain relevancy says Inc42 in "How The World Is Updating Legislation In The Face Of Persistent AI Advances".
Thirteen U.S. states banned facial recognition technology for police use. The ban is based on implicit biases hardwired into the technology from non-diverse datasets that favor light-skinned people. Yet, police continue to use it on the sly.
Meanwhile the European Union continues to try and protect its citizens' privacy by restricting technology. The newest addition to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (article 22) which protects individuals' rights from automated decision making, including profiling. EU citizens are guaranteed human intervention when automation harms their rights and freedoms. But in the early innings EU citizens are finding a wide range of interpretations of what article 22 really says which will make it difficult to enforce.
Meanwhile, China continues to use facial recognition to monitor its people, including minority populations, and that technology is being exported across the world.
Side point: A drum I will continue to beat. The foundational toolkit of AI is programming with Linear Algebra, Statistics, and Differential Equations. It is rapidly being adopted all over STEM and business. In-the-trenches business managers who can learn it/must learn it will realize becoming literate in these tools is a surer path to success. And to my fellow tech writers: drop the AI marketing babble your paymasters feed you and get into the weeds and become literate, too.
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Years ago, when we were living in New York City, my wife worked for Versace. I became fascinated by the fashion industry. I attended numerous âhandbags at dawnâ events in New York City, and then London (the events were actually titled Intellectual Property and Fashion Economics, but informally called âhandbags at dawnâ) and were a 2-day conference with experts in fashion economics, fashion marketing and consumption, and copyright law. Later they would add an e-discovery component which I would blog about.
ecommerce retailers are struggling to find a system for managing the growing fashion taxonomy. For reference, fashion taxonomy is defined as the science of naming, describing, and classifying items into categories. And it affects every component of the customer experience, from search and discovery to product recommendations.
The problem has been a persistent one for decades. Statistical methods, manual methods, smart software methods --- none works particularly well. Statistics drift as the language changes. What's a slang word for sneakers; is it "kicks"? The idea is that an ecommerce site might not recognize this term unless a human entered it in a list of synonyms. Smart software might miss the nuances of pickle ball shoes that are wavy or nifty ice for a B. If a person cannot locate a product, will that person enter synonyms or just click away to another site? That's bad.
The article asserts:
it's also becoming increasingly difficult for customers to find what they're looking for, regardless of search intent.
The phrase "increasingly difficult" does not quite capture what's happening in online information access. Locating online information which is timely, accurate, and relevant is extraordinarily difficult. The write up, however, has a possible fix:
Tackling complex fashion taxonomy is a heavy task, but with artificial intelligence, retailers now have different approaches to try. Through text-based and visual search tools, retailers have the power to change the way customers experience their products, leading to higher engagement rates and more conversions. The future of artificial intelligence as a remedy to complex fashion taxonomies is bright â and you can expect to see more products in the market in the future.
But the purpose of the write up is to explain that YesPlz is the way to deliver a "user initiated search experience, combined with artificial intelligence and visual search".
Possibly, but I think the solutions which have rolled down the cash flow pipelines have not delivered. Language is a moving target and shoppers want the system to "know" what he or she wants without having to speak, type, or do anything. The big dog in ecommerce is Amazon. Bing and Google are working overtime to make their "shopping" search functions work better than the Bezos bulldozer's. Good luck. The problem is that despite the tricks, the cohorts, the user fingerprint, and the rest of the methods to divine what a shopper wants and will buy - its all clumsy. Bezos got it right. More about him later this month in my Amazon monograph.
Marketing talk is a heck of a lot easier than solving what is becoming a problem too big to resolve. I don't want a fashion item. I just want a belt which does not look stupid.
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XR advertising could be a consumer threat if left unchecked
Whether it's trying on lipstick or clothing online, using floor plan software to find out how furniture will fit in a new home or ordering something contactless using a cell phone, businesses are continually finding new ways to promote their products and services using extended reality (XR) technology. Investment in augmented and virtual reality - together known as mixed or extended reality - is expected to mushroom in the coming years: from $10 billion in 2019 to $62 billion in 2027, and from $8 billion in 2020 to $100 billion in 2024, respectively, according to Grand View Research, my best spent money for all manner of market research reports and market analysis briefs.
So are the opportunities for those advertisers who would use the technology to manipulate, deceive and even cause harm to consumers, say University of Michigan School of Information researchers. More here.
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How does one keep one's location private? Good question.
Google continued collecting location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings, made popular privacy settings harder to find, and even pressured LG and other phone makers into hiding settings precisely because users liked them, according to the documents.
The fix. Enter random locations in order to baffle the whiz kids. The write up explains:
The unsealed versions of the documents paint an even more detailed picture of how Google obscured its data collection techniques, confusing not just its users but also its own employees. Google uses a variety of avenues to collect user location data, according to the documents, including WiFi and even third-party apps not affiliated with Google, forcing users to share their data in order to use those apps or, in some cases, even connect their phones to WiFi.
Interesting. The question is, "Why?" My hunch is that geolocation is a darned useful item of data. Do a bit of sleuthing and check out the importance of geolocation and cross correlation on policeware and intelware solutions. Marketing finds the information useful as well. Does Google have a master plan? Sure, make money. Keep the data flowing for three reasons:
First, ever increasing revenues are important. Without cash flow, Google's tough-to-control costs could bring down the company. Geolocation data are valuable and provide a knitting needle to weave other items of information into a detailed just-for-you quilt.
Second, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook pose significant threats to the Google. Amazon is, well, doing its Bezos bulldozer thing. Apple is pushing its quasi privacy campaign to give "users" control (haha). And Facebook is unpredictable and trying to "out Google" Google in advertising and user engagement. These outfits may be monopolies, but monopolies have to compete so high value data become the weaponized drones of these business wars.
Third, Google's current approach seems to indicate its mostly unaware of how the company gathers data. The systems and methods were institutionalized years ago. What persists are the modules of code which just sort of mostly do their thing. Newbies use the components, and the data collection just functions. Why fix it if it isn't broken. That assumes that someone knows how to fiddle with legacy Google.
Net net: "Confuse the field. They'll never get it". So a note to all these data privacy "experts" on Linkedin and elsewhere flapping their credentials: if you don't get what is really happening with data/to data out there IRL, then get the hell out there and learn. Do your bloody homework. Stop regurgitating press releases and planted media stories.
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The cyberattacks on transportation systems in New York and Massachusetts
This week revelations of cyberattacks on transportation systems in New York and Massachusetts heightened concerns about the threat to U.S. businesses and essential services in a week hackers held hostage the worldâs largest meat processor this week. An attack on JBS SA, the worldâs biggest meat company by sales, upended U.S. meat supplies after it caused JBSâs plants to temporarily shut down. The attacks on the Massachusetts and New York transportation systems did not disrupt operations.
Next week I am moderating a panel "Beyond SolarWinds" at Digital Investigations Conference 2021 and we'll jump into these issues. More on that conference can be found here.
Most interesting is that on my panel will be Andy Jenkinson who, over six months ago, wrote to the NY Mayor's office to alert them to his research in the area of NYC and the plethora of sub-optimal websites. After an exchange of emails and a conference call ... crickets. Another (in a series) of nobody listening or taking action even after being provided actionable intelligence. Andy shared his thoughts on a Linkedin post which you can read by clicking here.
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MY MOMENT OF ZEN
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Something away-from-the-pedantic-stuff I find each week, either a video or photo.
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I like the difficult. The impossible? That takes thought and persistence: |
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ENDNOTE
Jonathan Maas started BONG! in 2011 and we've enhanced it with our global legal technology team. Where does the name come from? Jonathan explains:
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For those outside the UK (or in the UK but without televisions), BONG! is a reference to the main evening TV news in the UK, on which headlines are read out between strikes (bongs) of the now-silent Big Ben, the bell in the Elizabeth Tower (renamed from the Clock Tower in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee) at the Palace of Westminster. You can thank a particularly persistent pedant early on in the life of my BONG! for this rather precise explanation.
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