Notes from the Electronic Cottage 10/27/16

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Bots are in the news in a big way lately. Today, let’s take a look at two kinds – the kind that slowed the Internet down on Oct 21, 2106, and the kind that are trying to influence the 2016 presidential election.

If you like to look at the study mentioned today from the Project on Computational Propaganda, their site is at www.politicalbots.org

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 10/20/16

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Advances in automotive technology are pretty amazing. But what new policies are we going to have to institute to deal with some of those advances? Let’s start to think about some of them.
And if you are interested, here is the link to the new report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology on the massive police facial recognition databases that contain facial recognition information for half of the adults in the United States entitled The Perpetual Line-Up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition Technology in America. Go to www.perpetuallineup.org

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 10/13/16

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

For hundreds of years in America, we have believed in the “Marketplace of Ideas” as the best way to confront differing opinions and sort out the truth. And then came the web. There, we can find almost any opinion on any subject, and those opinions as assertions of truth are often pre-sorted by search engines and social media sites before they ever reach us. How can we evaluate the veracity of what we find on the web? Here are a few starter suggestions.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 10/6/16

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Well, it’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (staysafeonline.org/ncsam), a good time to reflect on the best ways to keep ourselves, and our personal data, safe in this age of almost weekly security breaches. While many of those breaches are the work of outside hackers, they are not the only danger to our digital security and safety. We would be also be wise to consider the almost 2000 year old question: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – “who will guard the guardians themselves?” Here’s why…

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