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Britons are being put at risk of cyber crime by ‘outdated’ computer laws that thwart investigators

Jaime E. Love
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TELEMMGLPICT000232688595.jpeg

Britain’s computer users are at greater risk of cyber-attack because “outdated” laws mean investigators are required to ask criminals and rogue states permission to interrogate their systems.

Leaders of Britain’s multi-billion pound tech industry have today (Mon) written to Boris Johnson urging him to rewrite the 30-year-old computer misuse act to provide tech firms with legal cover to help GCHQ and other Government agencies counter cyber attacks.

They say the “outdated” law was designed to protect telephone exchanges when only one in 200 (0.5 per cent) of people and has now been overtaken by highly sophisticated cyber criminals who are running rings round investigators who have “one arm tied behind their backs.”

There are 4.6 million online crime incidents every year mainly related to fraud but also including malware, hacking and sophisticated attacks by organised crime or rogue nations.

They cite Section One of the act which prohibits the

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He was arrested because of a computer error. Now he wants to fix the system.

Jaime E. Love

When the Detroit Police Department called Robert Williams, he thought it was a prank. 

The voice on the other end of the line told Williams to turn himself in at the DPD’s Third Precinct. Why? The cop wouldn’t say.  

“I can’t turn myself in if you can’t tell me,” Williams recalls saying. “I said, ‘If you want me, you can come to my house and bring a warrant.'”

But it was late in his work day, and Williams was disturbed enough to head home, calling his wife, Melissa, as he drove. When she answered, the cops were already there. 

What Williams didn’t know on that day back in January is that he had been misidentified by the Detroit Police Department’s controversial facial recognition technology as a shoplifter who allegedly stole five watches from Midtown’s trendy Shinola store in October 2018, making him the first person known to have been arrested

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Has eGain (EGAN) Outpaced Other Computer and Technology Stocks This Year?

Jaime E. Love

Investors focused on the Computer and Technology space have likely heard of eGain (EGAN), but is the stock performing well in comparison to the rest of its sector peers? A quick glance at the company’s year-to-date performance in comparison to the rest of the Computer and Technology sector should help us answer this question.

eGain is one of 611 companies in the Computer and Technology group. The Computer and Technology group currently sits at #7 within the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank gauges the strength of our 16 individual sector groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups.

The Zacks Rank emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find stocks with improving earnings outlooks. This system has a long record of success, and these stocks tend to be on track to beat the market over the next one to three months. EGAN

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Wary of big tech’s bottom line, activists greet facial recognition pledges with skepticism

Jaime E. Love

Over the course of four days last week, three of America’s largest technology companies — IBM, Amazon and Microsoft — announced sweeping restrictions on their sale of facial recognition tools and called for federal regulation amid protests across the United States against police violence and racial profiling.

In terms of headlines, it was a symbolic shift for the industry. Researchers and civil liberties groups who have been calling for strict controls or outright bans on the technology for years are celebrating, although cautiously.

They doubt, however, that much has changed. The careful wording of the public pledges leaves plenty of room for oppressive uses of the technology, which exacerbate human biases and infringe on people’s constitutional freedoms, critics say.

“It shows that organizing and socially informed research works,” said Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute, which researches the social implications of artificial intelligence. “But do I

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Here’s why computer art will never replace human art

Jaime E. Love

In December 1964, over a single evening session in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, John Coltrane and his quartet recorded the entirety of A Love Supreme. This jazz album is considered Coltrane’s masterpiece – the culmination of his spiritual awakening – and sold a million copies. What it represents is all too human: a climb out of addiction, a devotional quest, a paean to God.

Five decades later and 50 miles downstate, over 12 hours this April and fueled by Monster energy drinks in a spare bedroom in Princeton, New Jersey, Ji-Sung Kim wrote an algorithm to teach a computer to teach itself to play jazz. Kim, a 20-year-old Princeton sophomore, was in a rush – he had a quiz the next morning. The resulting neural network project, called deepjazz, trended on GitHub, generated a buzz of excitement and skepticism from the Hacker News commentariat, got 100,000 listens

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