In The News

Covid-19 Data Suppression? Florida Today

Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon May 20, 2020
Any attempt to suppress reports of Covid-19 cases by jurisdictions hoping to protect their tourism industry is a nightmare for the world. Data transparency is key in containing the pandemic, especially as nations strive to reopen their economies. Florida removed control of a public dashboard on Covid19 data from the geographic information system manager who developed the website for the Florida...

Tolerance of Cellphone Monitoring: Washington Post

Kareem Fahim, Min Joo Kim and Steve Hendrix May 8, 2020
In a few months, tens of millions of people around the world in at least 27 countries went under surveillance from governments, private companies and researchers without consent in order to trace the spread and contain the Covid-19 virus. Some people tolerate surveillance, agreeing that such measures are necessary to avoid a nationwide lockdown. However, the measures provoke debate in Europe and...

Microsoft to Build Planetary Computer: CBR

Ed Targett April 19, 2020
Microsoft is launching a program, Planetary Computer, to aggregate environmental data – mapping trillions of data points to monitor the Earth’s biodiversity, water tables, forestry data, carbon and waste to provide a searchable dataset. “The move is the company’s latest major environmental push, after promising in January to become “carbon negative” by the end of this decade,” reports Ed Targett...

EU Proposes Big Tech Data-Sharing: Financial Times

Javier Espinoza, Madhumita Murgia and Richard Waters February 20, 2020
The European Commission wants the world’s top tech companies – Amazon, Facebook, Google and others to follow the lead of financial services firms by sharing data with small firms. The commission released a “European Strategy for Data,” and proposes compulsory data-sharing in areas with market failure. “The commission said that tech companies were able to build huge advantages by guarding their...

Money-Laundering by Video Games: Financial Times

Tim Bradshaw January 13, 2020
Valve, the developer of the popular video game “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” announced that players wouldn’t be allowed to trade the in-game currency that could be used for buying virtual knives, guns and skins. That was an abrupt action against the rising trend of money laundering by video games, in which criminals could cash in stolen credit cards or use the proceeds of crime for in-game...

Hitting Refresh on Privacy Policies: Brookings

Cameron Kerry and Caitlin Chin January 9, 2020
Technology and online applications have developed swiftly and many people still do not realize how much private information they release with every choice and click online. US legislators and policymakers express dissatisfaction with prrivate policies that regard issuance of notices, often lengthy and cryptic, as consent. A Brookings report highlights the problems with privacy policies: over-...

Ethical Minefield of Microchipping: Spiegel

Kristina Läsker October 28, 2019
Thousands of people in Sweden, Germany, the UK and the US have agreed to implant microchips embedded in glass tubes the size of a rice grain in their bodies. For travel conglomerate TUI staff volunteers in Stockholm, the chip allows them to open doors and other electronic locks and activate printers. Employees assume risks. TUI is based in Germany, where such a workplace plan is described as a “...