An anonymous reader quotes a report from PsychNewsDaily: Scientists from the University of Chicago have developed a new algorithm that can predict future crime a week in advance with about 90% accuracy, and within a range of about 1000 feet. It does so by learning patterns from public data on violent and property crimes. The tool was tested and validated using historical data from the City of Chicago around two broad categories of reported events: violent crimes (homicides, assaults, and batteries) and property crimes (burglaries, thefts, and motor vehicle thefts). These data were used because they were most likely to be reported to police in urban areas where there is historical distrust and lack of cooperation with law enforcement. Such crimes are also less prone to enforcement bias, unlike drug crimes, traffic stops, and other misdemeanor infractions.

The new model isolates crime by looking at the time and spatial coordinates of discrete events, and detecting patterns to predict future events. It divides the city into "spatial tiles" roughly 1,000 feet across, and predicts crime within these areas. Previous models relied more on traditional neighborhood or political boundaries, which are subject to bias. The model performed just as well with data from seven other U.S. cities: Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Francisco.

Lead author Ishanu Chattopadhyay is careful to note that the tool's accuracy does not mean it should be used to direct law enforcement policy; police departments, for example, should not use it to swarm neighborhoods proactively to prevent crime, Chattopadhyay said. Instead, it should be added to a toolbox of urban policies and policing strategies to address crime. "We created a digital twin of urban environments. If you feed it data from what happened in the past, it will tell you what's going to happen in the future," he said. "It's not magical; there are limitations, but we validated it and it works really well," Chattopadhyay added. "Now you can use this as a simulation tool to see what happens if crime goes up in one area of the city, or there is increased enforcement in another area. If you apply all these different variables, you can see how the systems evolve in response." The findings have been published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, is selling Immigrations and Customs Enforcement a suite of features used to track and identify cryptocurrency users, according to contract documents shared with The Intercept. From a report: In August 2021, Coinbase sold a single analytics software license to ICE for $29,000, followed by a software purchase potentially worth $1.36 million the next month, but details of exactly what capabilities would be offered to the agency's controversial Homeland Security Investigations division of were unclear. A new contract document obtained by Jack Poulson, director of the watchdog group Tech Inquiry, and shared with The Intercept, shows ICE now has access to a variety of forensic features provided through Coinbase Tracer, the company's intelligence-gathering tool (formerly known as Coinbase Analytics).

Coinbase Tracer allows clients, in both government and the private sector, to trace transactions through the blockchain, a distributed ledger of transactions integral to cryptocurrency use. While blockchain ledgers are typically public, the enormous volume of data stored therein can make following the money from spender to recipient beyond difficult, if not impossible, without the aid of software tools. Coinbase markets Tracer for use in both corporate compliance and law enforcement investigations, touting its ability to "investigate illicit activities including money laundering and terrorist financing" and "connect [cryptocurrency] addresses to real world entities."

Nkwe writes: Russians are searching for pirated Microsoft software online after the US tech giant halted sales in the country over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kommersant newspaper reported earlier this week. Russia-based web searches for pirated Microsoft software have surged by as much as 250% after the company suspended new sales on March 4, according to Kommersant. In June so far, there's been a 650% surge in searches for Excel downloads, the media outlet added. Microsoft said earlier this month it's significantly scaling down business in Russia, joining a long list of companies winding down businesses in the country amid sweeping sanctions over the war in Ukraine. The move hits Russia hard because the country relies on foreign software to power many of its manufacturing and engineering tech systems, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Russian government agencies, too, are switching from Microsoft's Windows to the Linux operating system, the Moscow Times reported last Friday. Developers of Russian systems based on the Linux open source operating system are also seeing more demand, Kommersant reported. Not all sectors are able to swap out their systems easily.

A leader of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said he has asked Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over China-related data security concerns. CNBC reports: The wildly popular short video app is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which faced U.S. scrutiny under President Donald Trump. Brendan Carr, one of the FCC's commissioners, shared via Twitter a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. The letter pointed to reports and other developments that made TikTok non-compliant with the two companies' app store policies.

"TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface. It is not just an app for sharing funny videos or meme. That's the sheep's clothing," he said in the letter. "At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data." Carr's letter, dated June 24 on FCC letterhead, said if the Apple and Alphabet do not remove TikTok from their app stores, they should provide statements to him by July 8. The statements should explain "the basis for your company's conclusion that the surreptitious access of private and sensitive U.S. user data by persons located in Beijing, coupled with TikTok's pattern of misleading representations and conduct, does not run afoul of any of your app store policies," he said. A TikTok spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in a statement: "We know we're among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data. That's why we hire experts in their fields, continually work to validate our security standards, and bring in reputable, independent third parties to test our defenses."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom does not seem like a happy man right now. After accusing two of his former colleagues [Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk] of facilitating Chinese spying, Dotcom says that a report is being produced to show that mass infringement is taking place on Mega, a company he co-founded. Surprisingly, he says it will include live pirate links to content posted by Mega users. [...] Turning his attention to former colleagues Ortmann and van der Kolk, last week Dotcom publicly blamed them for his exit from Mega, claiming they had "stolen" the company from him. How this dovetails with previous allegations related to his major falling out with former Mega CEO Tony Lentino, who also founded domain name registrar Instra, is unknown.

Local media reports suggest that Dotcom hasn't spoken to former friends Ortmann and van der Kolk for years but their recent deal to avoid extradition in the Megaupload case by pleading guilty to organized crime charges puts Dotcom in a tough spot. "My co-defendants who claimed to be innocent for 10+ years were offered a sweet exit deal for a false confession," he said last week. And he wasn't finished there. After a research team found that Mega was vulnerable to attacks that allow for a "full compromise of the confidentiality of user files", Ortmann himself responded via a security notification stating that the issues had been fixed. In response, Dotcom accused Ortmann and van der Kolk of creating "backdoors" in Mega so that the Chinese government could decrypt users' files. "Same shady guys who just made a deal with the US and NZ Govt to get out of the US extradition case by falsely accusing me," he added.

Whether this reference to the no-extradition-deal betrayed what was really on Dotcom's mind is up for debate but whatever the motivation, he's not letting it go. In a tweet posted yesterday, he again informed his 850K+ followers that the company he founded "is not safe" and people who think that their files are unreadable by Mega are wrong. Shortly after, Dotcom delivered another message, one even darker in tone. It targeted Mega, the company he co-founded and where his colleagues still work. It's possible to interpret the tweet in several ways but none seem beneficial to his former colleagues, Mega, or its users. "In addition to security vulnerabilities a comprehensive report about mass copyright infringement on Mega with millions of active links and channels is in the works," he said. "[P]erhaps the most worrying thing about this new complication in an escalating dispute is its potential to affect the minority of users that actually store infringing files on Mega," adds TorrentFreak. "Any detailed report of 'mass copyright infringement' will draw negative attention directly to them, especially if the report includes active hyperlinks as Dotcom suggests."

"Couple that with Dotcom's allegations that the content of user files can be read, any conclusion that this upcoming infringement report hasn't been thought through from a user perspective can be easily forgiven..."

The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided artificial-intelligence systems cannot patent inventions for the time being. The BBC reports: A recent IPO consultation found many experts doubted AI was currently able to invent without human assistance. Current law allowed humans to patent inventions made with AI assistance, the government said, despite "misperceptions" this was not the case. Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against Stephen Thaler, who had said his Dabus AI system should be recognized as the inventor in two patent applications, for: a food container [and] a flashing light. The judges sided, by a two-to-one majority, with the IPO, which had told him to list a real person as the inventor. "Only a person can have rights - a machine cannot," wrote Lady Justice Laing in her judgement. "A patent is a statutory right and it can only be granted to a person." But the IPO also said it would "need to understand how our IP system should protect AI-devised inventions in the future" and committed to advancing international discussions, with a view to keeping the UK competitive.

Many AI systems are trained on large amounts of data copied from the internet. And, on Tuesday, the IPO also announced plans to change copyright law to allow anyone with lawful access - rather than only those conducting non-commercial research, as now -- to do this, to "promote the use of AI technology, and wider 'data mining' techniques, for the public good." Rights holders will still be able to control and charge for access to their works but no longer charge extra for the ability to mine them.

In the consultation, the IPO noted the UK was one of only a handful of countries to protect computer-generated works with no human creator. The "author" of a "computer-generated work" is defined as "the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken," it says. And protection lasts for 50 years from when the work is made. Performing-arts workers' union Equity had called for copyright law to be changed to protect actors' livelihoods from AI content such as "deepfakes," generated from images of their face or voice. The IPO took this issue seriously, it said, but "at this stage, the impacts of AI technologies on performers remain unclear." "We will keep these issues under review," it added.

The company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club has sued conceptual artist Ryder Ripps for selling duplicates of its Bored Ape non-fungible tokens or NFTs. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in a California court this weekend, accuses Ripps of a "calculated, intentional, and willful" scheme to damage BAYC while promoting his own copycat work. Ripps and Yuga Labs have been at odds for months, in part because of Ripps' RR/BAYC NFT series. The series used BAYC images but connected them with a different crypto token and sold them for the equivalent of around $200 apiece, a bargain compared to the real thing, which currently sell for around $100,000 on the low end.

"This is no mere monkey business. It is a deliberate effort to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of consumers by sowing confusion about whether these RR/BAYC NFTs are in some way sponsored, affiliated, or connected to Yuga Labs' official Bored Ape Yacht Club," says the lawsuit. The suit accuses Ripps of false advertising and trademark infringement among other offenses. It asks for financial damages and a court order demanding he cease infringing on BAYC's work, including a ban on using "confusingly similar" domain names like apemarket.com.

Serhat Gumrukcu faces trial in a purported plot to kill an associate who could have exposed him and derailed a drug-development deal worth millions. From a report: Even as a teenager back in Turkey, Serhat Gumrukcu dazzled audiences. In a 2002 video, he opened one of his magic shows dancing with a cane that appeared to be levitating. He was introduced as a medical student and went by the stage name "Dr. No." A little more than a decade later, not long after Mr. Gumrukcu arrived in the U.S., he had his hand in multimillion-dollar oil and real-estate deals. Yet his best-known venture was in medicine. For a time, he thrilled investors with ideas for groundbreaking treatments and drew special notice from the government's top infectious-disease official, Anthony Fauci. In America, the magician had found a new, more lucrative audience.

Enochian Biosciences co-founded by Mr. Gumrukcu in 2018, paid more than $21 million to companies controlled by Mr. Gumrukcu and his husband for consulting, research and the licensing of potential drugs to treat influenza, hepatitis B, HIV and Covid-19, company financial filings show. "Dr. Gumrukcu is one of those rare geniuses that is not bound by scientific discipline or dogma. He sees connections and opportunities often missed," Enochian Vice Chairman Mark Dybul, now chief executive, said in a 2019 news release about Enochian's licensing of a hepatitis B drug from a company controlled by Mr. Gumrukcu. Mr. Gumrukcu's success as a biotech entrepreneur afforded the purchase last year of an $18.4 million office complex in North Hollywood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, and, earlier, a $5.5 million house in the Hollywood Hills.

Yet much of what people saw in Mr. Gumrukcu was an illusion he cast, misrepresenting himself and his credentials, according to state and federal authorities, court records, former colleagues and those who have sued and won judgments against him over fraudulent medical and financial dealings. Prosecutors now allege that Mr. Gumrukcu arranged the murder of a business associate, Gregory Davis, who threatened to expose him as a fraud. Such a revelation would have put at risk the 39-year-old entrepreneur's deal with Enochian, they said. Mr. Gumrukcu has been in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles since his arrest on May 24. A federal grand jury indicted him on murder conspiracy charges, an offense punishable by death.

India will give VPN providers and cloud service operators an additional three months to comply with new rules that require they maintain names and addresses of their customers and their IP addresses, delivering some relief to firms as many scramble to follow the new guidelines and others explore exiting the South Asian market. From a report: The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, the body appointed by the government to protect India's information infrastructure, said Monday evening it is extending the enforcement of the new rules to September 25. The rules, unveiled in late April, was set to go into effect Monday. Its announcement follows sharp criticism from VPN providers, many of which including Nord and ExpressVPN have announced their intentions to remove local servers in the country in recent weeks. [...] CERT's new directions require "virtual private server (VPS) providers, cloud service providers, VPN service providers, virtual asset service providers, virtual asset exchange providers, custodian wallet providers and government organisations" to store customers' names, email addresses, IP addresses, know-your-customer records and financial transactions for a period of five years.

Celebrity-endorsed cryptocurrency scams in the UK are on pace to almost double this year, Banco Santander SA's local unit said. From a report: "Case volumes" jumped 61% in the first quarter from the prior three months, Santander said in a statement on its website on Tuesday. The average value of the scams was $14,540, up 65% from a year earlier. Around $2.4 million was lost to such schemes in the quarter, according to the bank. "We're seeing a worrying rise in 'celebrity-endorsed' cryptocurrency scams, where familiar faces are being misused on social media in order to con people out of often life-changing sums of money," said Chris Ainsley, Santander UK's head of fraud risk management, said in the statement. Crypto scams are getting increased attention as regulators and politicians grapple with how to encourage technological innovation while at the same time protecting unsuspecting consumers. Santander said it expects the number of celebrity-endorsed crypto scams to rise 87% in 2022 based on the current rate of growth.

Less than a week after IBM was ordered in an age discrimination lawsuit to produce internal emails in which its former CEO and former SVP of human resources discuss reducing the number of older workers, the IT giant chose to settle the case for an undisclosed sum rather than proceed to trial next month. The Register reports: The order, issued on June 9, in Schenfeld v. IBM, describes Exhibit 10, which "contains emails that discuss the effort taken by IBM to increase the number of 'millennial' employees." Plaintiff Eugene Schenfeld, who worked as an IBM research scientist when current CEO Arvind Krishna ran IBM's research group, sued IBM for age discrimination in November, 2018. His claim is one of many that followed a March 2018 report by ProPublica and Mother Jones about a concerted effort to de-age IBM and a 2020 finding by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that IBM executives had directed managers to get rid of older workers to make room for younger ones.

"The emails contained within Exhibit 10 evidence an interest at the then CEO-level to change the profile of IBM employees so that it reflected a younger workforce," said New Jersey Superior Court Judge Alberto Rivas in his order. On June 14 the judge dismissed the case because IBM agreed to settle. That will prevent the messages in which former CEO Ginny Rometty and former HR SVP Diane Gherson are said to discuss what the judge described as "the push to increase the number of millennial employees and decrease the number of older employees" from being made public. "The facts of the matter have not changed: there was and is no systemic age discrimination at IBM and the data back that up," IBM's spokesperson said. "Further, with regards to the Schenfeld case, age played no role whatsoever in this individual's departure."

T-Mobile has just officially launched its new ad platform, known as T-Mobile Advertising Solutions. That innocuous name hides a rather sketchy business model -- it aggregates your mobile application usage and sells it to advertisers. Android Police reports: The specifics of the program will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the ebb and flow of browser tracking. T-Mobile uses network-level tools to track the apps that people use on their phones, and it then anonymizes and aggregates that data to lump you into various "personas," or "cohorts" as other platforms would call it. For example, if you regularly use Expensify and airline apps on your phone, T-Mobile could identify you as a business traveler for advertising purposes. This program has been in testing for the past year as "T-Mobile Marketing Solutions," according to The Verge, but it is now live with its new name.

There is some good news (but less of it for Android fans). T-Mobile does not currently collect app data on iOS users, fearing it could run afoul of Apple's privacy rules. But we Android users are fair game, apparently. However, you can opt-out of T-Mobile's program using its official "Magenta Marketing Platform Choices" app. Alternatively, the Digital Advertising Alliance offers an app that lets you opt-out of numerous trackers, including T-Mobile Advertising Solutions, which is listed under its old name of T-Mobile Marketing Solutions.

The Supreme Court declined Apple's bid for a hearing over two Qualcomm patents (US Patent No. 7,844,037 and US Patent No. 8,683,362) that were part of lawsuits filed in 2017, claiming infringement by Apple's iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. The Verge reports: Reuters points out that Apple and Qualcomm's 2019 settlement of a worldwide legal battle over patents largely ended the squabbling in favor of a six-year licensing agreement but allowed a case in front of the Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board to continue. There, Apple argued the two patents should be invalid, but the board ruled in Qualcomm's favor. Last April, the Federal Circuit court rejected Apple's request for an appeal based on the 2019 settlement covering thousands of patents, including those two. At the time, Apple argued that its royalty payments and risk of being sued again were reasons for a hearing.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court (pdf), Apple argued that Qualcomm might use the patents in a lawsuit again once the license expires in 2025 or in 2027 if it's extended. The Department of Justice under the Biden administration submitted an amicus brief rejecting those arguments in May and asked the Supreme Court to deny Apple's request. Now that it has, we'll probably have to wait until that license agreement eventually expires to know what will happen next.

This week Amazon announced that "Approximately 1,500 local Amazon employees will operate and work with innovative robotics technology" at a new fulfillment center that's a first of its kind for Central New York.

Amazon's press release says they've created 39,000 jobs in New York since 2010 — and "invested over $14 billion in the state of New York" — though they're counting what they paid workers as "investing" (as well as what they paid to build Amazon's infrastructure).

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In 2019, Onondaga County (New York) officials unanimously approved $71 million in tax breaks to support the development of a giant warehouse in the Town of Clay... "I am very excited to see this tremendous investment in Central New York coming to fruition," said U.S. Representative John Katko. "The new Fulfillment Center will be revolutionary for our region, creating over 1,500 jobs and making significant contributions to the local economy."

Driving home Katko's point, the press release added, "In April of 2021, Amazon furthered its commitment to invest in education programs that will drive future innovation in the communities it serves by donating $1.75 million to construct a new STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) high school in Onondaga County. Amazon's donation will fund robotics and computer science initiatives at the new school [presumably using Amazon-supported curriculum providers]." Unlike Amazon's Fulfillment Center, the new STEAM high school is unlikely to open before Fall 2023 at the earliest, as the $74-million-and-counting project (that Amazon is donating $1.75M towards) to repurpose a school building that has sat empty since 1975 has experienced delays and cost increases.
Amazon's press release notes the company also donated $150,000 to be "the presenting sponsor" for the three-day Syracuse Jazz Fest. And it also touts Amazon's support for these other central New York organizations (without indicating the amount contributed):

• Rescue Mission Alliance: Working to end homelessness and hunger in greater Syracuse.
• Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST): Supporting the "Be the Scientist" program for Syracuse-area public school students to visit the museum and learn about STEM careers and sponsor planetarium shows for area students.
• The Good Life Foundation, a nonprofit serving youth in downtown Syracuse
• DeWitt Rotary Club

Here's an announcement from lawfirm DiCello Levitt Gutzler. This week a U.S. District court "granted preliminary approval of a $90 million settlement" with Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, "to resolve a long-running class action accusing Facebook of tracking its subscribers' activities on non-Facebook websites — even while signed out of their Facebook accounts."

"The monetary component makes this the seventh-largest data privacy class action settlement ever to receive preliminary court approval."

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland quotes the announcement: Individuals who, between April 22, 2010, and September 25, 2011, inclusive, were Facebook users in the United States and visited non-Facebook websites that displayed the Facebook Like button, may be eligible for a payment from the settlement fund. Email notices from the claims administrator, Angeion, have started to go out, and will continue in batches through July 15, 2022. Recipients of an email notice should note an ID and confirmation code in the top left corner, which should be use in submitting their claim.

However, even those who do not receive an email notice are still permitted to file a claim, and the administrator will determine whether they are eligible.

The correct link to the class action lawsuit website is: fbinternettrackingsettlement.com/

The deadline to submit a claim is September 22, 2022.
Komando.com adds that "While Facebook has denied any wrongdoing, it chose to settle the matter outside of court before it went to trial..."

"It's impossible to tell how much you can get at this stage in the lawsuit, as the final payout will depend on the number of claims submitted and additional fees. All settlement class members will be paid in equal amounts."

America's Securities and Exchange Commission "is considering broad changes to curb the frenetic trading of stocks based on social media activity," reports Reuters: The proposed overhaul would be the biggest change to Wall Street's rules since 2005 and would affect nearly every corner of the market, from commission-free brokerages to market makers and exchanges. The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services on Friday called for the SEC, along with other regulators, to do more to protect the markets from similar events....

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee on Friday urged Congress to adopt legislation mandating the SEC study how its rules need to change to address new technological developments, such as digital engagement practices and social media-driven market activity.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is "the first full-scale battle in which traditional and cyberweapons have been used side by side," reports the New York Times. But the biggest surprise is that "many of the attacks were thwarted, or there was enough redundancy built into the Ukrainian networks that the efforts did little damage... more than two-thirds of them failed, echoing its poor performance on the physical battlefield."

Microsoft president Brad Smith says the ultimate result is Russia's attempted cyberatacks get underreported, according to the Times: [A study published by Microsoft Wednesday] indicated that Ukraine was well prepared to fend off cyberattacks, after having endured them for many years. That was at least in part because of a well-established system of warnings from private-sector companies, including Microsoft and Google, and preparations that included moving much of Ukraine's most important systems to the cloud, onto servers outside Ukraine....

In many instances, Russia coordinated its use of cyberweapons with conventional attacks, including taking down the computer network of a nuclear power plant before moving in its troops to take it over, Mr. Smith said. Microsoft officials declined to identify which plant Mr. Smith was referring to. While much of Russia's cyberactivity has focused on Ukraine, Microsoft has detected 128 network intrusions in 42 countries. Of the 29 percent of Russian attacks that have successfully penetrated a network, Microsoft concluded, only a quarter of those resulted in data being stolen. Outside Ukraine, Russia has concentrated its attacks on the United States, Poland and two aspiring members of NATO, Sweden and Finland...

But Microsoft, other technology companies and government officials have said that Russia has paired those infiltration attempts with a broad effort to deliver propaganda around the world. Microsoft tracked the growth in consumption of Russian propaganda in the United States in the first weeks of the year. It peaked at 82 percent right before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, with 60 million to 80 million monthly page views. That figure, Microsoft said, rivaled page views on the biggest traditional media sites in the United States. One example Mr. Smith cited was that of Russian propaganda inside Russia pushing its citizens to get vaccinated, while its English-language messaging spread anti-vaccine content. Microsoft also tracked the rise in Russian propaganda in Canada in the weeks before a trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates tried to shut down Ottawa, and that in New Zealand before protests there against public health measures meant to fight the pandemic.
Russians successfully "sabotaged a satellite communications network called Viasat in the opening days of the war," notes the Washington Post, "with the damage spilling over into other European countries. But Ukraine, working with private tech companies, Western intelligence and its own expert software engineers, has quickly fixed most of the damage..."

"The close partnerships that have emerged between U.S. technology companies and Western cybersecurity agencies is one of the unheralded stories of the war...." "Cyber responses must rely on greater public and private collaboration," argues Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, in a new study... published Wednesday on Microsoft's "lessons learned" from cyber conflict in Ukraine. A White House cyber official explains the new cooperative approach this way: "Where companies see destructive attacks, that has driven partnerships with the intelligence community and other government agencies to see how best we can share information to protect infrastructure around the world." The tech world's sympathies lie with the underdog, Ukraine. That applies to giant firms such as Microsoft and Google....

Ukraine's cybersecurity defense benefited from an early start. U.S. Cyber Command experts went to Ukraine months before the war started, according to its commander, Gen. Paul Nakasone. Microsoft and Google became involved even earlier. Microsoft began monitoring Russian phishing attacks against Ukrainian military networks in early 2021, and through the rest of last year observed increasingly aggressive hacks by six different attackers linked to Russia's three intelligence services, the GRU, SVR and FSB, according to a Microsoft report released in April. Microsoft has spent a total of $239 million on financial and technical assistance to Ukraine, a company official said....

Google, a part of Alphabet, has also helped Ukraine fend off threats. Back in 2014, prompted by Russia's use of DDOS ("distributed denial-of-service") malware in its seizure of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Google began what it called "Project Shield." Software protected news sites, human rights groups and election sites against crippling DDOS floods of junk internet messages. Today, Project Shield is used by 200 sites in Ukraine and 2,300 others in 140 countries around the world, according to Jared Cohen, the chief executive of Google's Jigsaw unit.

"China's ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known," reports the New York Times, after their Visual Investigations team with reporters in Asia "spent more than a year analyzing more than 100,000 government bidding documents." The Chinese government's goal is clear: designing a system to maximize what the state can find out about a person's identity, activities and social connections.... The Times analysis found that the police strategically chose locations to maximize the amount of data their facial recognition cameras could collect.... The police also wanted to install facial recognition cameras inside private spaces, like residential buildings, karaoke lounges and hotels. In the police's own words, the strategy to upgrade their video surveillance system was to achieve the ultimate goal of "controlling and managing people."

Authorities are using phone trackers to link people's digital lives to their physical movements. Devices known as Wi-Fi sniffers and IMSI catchers can glean information from phones in their vicinity, which allow the police to track a target's movements... In a 2017 bidding document from Beijing, the police wrote that they wanted the trackers to collect phone owners' usernames on popular Chinese social media apps.... As of today, all 31 of mainland China's provinces and regions use phone trackers.

DNA, iris scan samples and voice prints are being collected indiscriminately from people with no connection to crime. The police in China are starting to collect voice prints using sound recorders attached to their facial recognition cameras. In the southeast city of Zhongshan, the police wrote in a bidding document that they wanted devices that could record audio from at least a 300-foot radius around cameras. Software would then analyze the voice prints and add them to a database. Police boasted that when combined with facial analysis, they could help pinpoint suspects faster.
The Times also created a separate video summarizing the results of their investigation.

And their article notes estimates that more than half the world's 1 billion surveillance cameras are already in China — but there's more information to be gathered. One of China's largest surveillance contractors also pitched software that to the government displays a person's "movements, clothing, vehicles, mobile device information and social connections," according to the Times. "The Times investigation found that this product was already being used by Chinese police."

Thanks to Slashdot reader nray for sharing the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Gamer: Back in March, a wave of bizarre copyright strikes rocked the Destiny 2 community. Not only did it affect some of the game's biggest content creators, but also videos on Bungie's own YouTube channel. It turned out none of them had actually come from the developer but a "bad actor" impersonating two employees from the CSC, Bungie's IP protection agency of choice. Now, that person has allegedly been identified and Bungie's suing them for a whopping $7.6 million. Ouch.

Nicholas 'Lord Nazo' Minor is accused of fraudulently firing off 96 separate DMCA takedown notices throughout mid-March (thanks, TheGamePost). According to the lawsuit (PDF), Minor was issued legitimate copyright strikes in both December 2021 and March 2022 for uploading the OST for Destiny's The Taken King and The Witch Queen expansions. During that period, Minor is said to have created two separate email addresses impersonating CSC employees. He then used those email addresses to issue the false takedown notices.

The lawsuit goes on to say that during the whole kerfuffle, Minor was "taking part in the community discussion of 'Bungie's' takedowns, spreading disinformation" as well as trying to file a counterclaim with YouTube, saying the legitimate takedowns on his channel were included in the wave of fraudulent ones. Bungie claims that the situation caused "significant reputational and economic damage," with the publisher having to "devote significant internal resources to addressing it and helping its players restore their videos and channels." It claims its "entitled to damages and injunctive relief, including enhanced statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the works implicated in the Fraudulent Takedown Notice that willfully infringed Bungie's registered copyrights, totaling $7,650,000."

Bipartisan legislation to establish broad privacy rights for consumers won approval from a House subcommittee on Thursday, adding to its momentum. From a report: Lawmakers approved the bill, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, on a voice vote with no dissent. It now moves to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for a vote. The bill still faces a long and potentially difficult path, particularly in the Senate. Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), the committee chairman and a sponsor of the bill, termed it "a massive step forward."

"Every American knows it is long past time for Congress to protect their data privacy and security," he said. "The modern world demands it." Republicans also praised the legislation, while suggesting more changes might be needed. "This bill protects all Americans, regardless of ZIP Code, and provides certainty for businesses so they clearly understand their obligations," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), the committee's top Republican. She said the legislation also would strengthen national security by requiring companies such as TikTok -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance -- to specify when they are transferring and storing consumers' data in countries such as China.