by Virgil Vaduva

Today Google proudly touted the release of Perspective, an AI-backed platform an API which will allow content publishers to in essence censor user input such as comments, notes and other similar data based on levels of “toxicity” as determined by their AI algorithm.  Marketed as an “anti-harassment tool” the API was released on Thursday by Jigsaw, a Google subsidiary and it was developed in cooperation with the New York Times, Wikipedia, The Economist and The Guardian.

Perspective was created by Jigsaw and Google’s Counter Abuse Technology team in a collaborative research project called Conversation-AI. Conversation AI product manager CJ Adams said, “We hope this is a moment where Conversation AI goes from being ‘this is interesting’ to a place where everyone can start engaging and leveraging these models to improve discussion.”

Adams said that until now, website managers only had a few options on how to manage content, such as up/down voting and black-listing key words but now, [Perspective] “gives them a new option: Take a bunch of collective intelligence—that will keep getting better over time—about what toxic comments people have said would make them leave, and use that information to help your community’s discussions.”

According to their documentation, Google and Jigsaw used content and comments from websites like New York Times and Wikipedia and then displayed the comments to groups of ten people, asking them to rate the “toxic level” of each comment.  This training process gave Google a large test sample they could use in training their machine-learning algorithm and start scoring and ranking real-life comments.

But is their methodology and process sound, and does it lead to a fair scoring, or is it in essence just another re-branded censorship platform that will end up being used to manipulate and censor online content found disagreeable by a majority of the population?

I ran a few tests myself on the Perspective website, which gives people the opportunity to type comments and determine their toxicity in real time.  The higher the score is, the more likely it is that your comment will be removed, blocked or censored by a website using Google’s platform.  I chose a few topics known to create controversial online exchanges and here are my results.

Hillary Clinton should have won the U.S. elections. (6%)

Donald Trump should have won the U.S. elections. (12%)

Hillary Clinton is going to help the United States recover and make America great again. (6%)

Donald Trump is going to help the United States recover and make America great again. (10%)

There is no racism in America. (39%)

White people often discriminate against blacks. (65%)

Black people often discriminate against whites. (63%)

Gun control is a great thing for America. (10%)

Gun control is a terrible thing for America. (42%)

America needs a tax cut. (13%)

America needs a tax increase. (4%)

There is no racism on America’s college campuses.(30%)

There is racism on America’s college campuses. (34%)

A gun is a great tool for single women to use in self defense. (20%)

A gun is not a great tool for single women to use in self defense. (18%)

Killing cops is morally wrong. (66%)

Killing cops is not morally wrong. (49%)

War is good for America. (11%)

War is not good for America. (18%)

After testing some controversial opinions and comparing various extremes, it’s easy to see that the Perspective platform can easily be used to censor controversial speech, whether that speech comes from the left or the right of the American political spectrum.  This evidence should be disturbing to anyone willing to experience slight discomfort reading “toxic” online comments while still maintaining some resemblance of balanced conversation.

Publishers willing to use Perspective can easily do so in an effort to manipulate the reader perception of weighted opinion on their websites; worse yet, advertisers will have even more limited knowledge about their audience and opinions held by users due to the fact that only opinions deemed appropriate by Perspective will be displayed to end users.

Content producers should remain extremely cautious about the Perspective platform. When users are no longer able to post comments like “Trump is an idiot” or “Hillary is a terrible human being,” they will create an environment empty of value, essentially a masturbatory pleasantry where everyone agrees with everyone, or so it may appear.

You too can test the Perspective platform and rank the toxicity of your own comments here: http://www.perspectiveapi.com/

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak.  He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

by Virgil Vaduva

For all the criticism Apple receives from users about its products, design or pricing, there is one thing that Apple should be commended for, namely the focus on security of their users’ data and implementation of encryption across all their mobile devices by default. In fact both Apple and Google now enable full device encryption by default on all devices running iOS version 8 or Android Marshmallow (version 6); this means that full disk encryption will be mandatory for all users.

This decision has broad implications from a security perspective: devices which are stolen or lost will be safe from malicious users which attempt to recover data from them via brute force attacks against a users’ password, causing the device to be “wiped out.”  Malicious users will also be unable to mount the encrypted volume of a device in order to read data from it.

Of course, the government has a problem with this.

The recent case of the San Bernardino shooting spree is what brings us here. One of the shooters’ iPhone (model 5c) was encrypted and the FBI is unable to brute force the password. And when the FBI cannot get it their way, they go to a judge and ask for a piece of paper that would force someone to help them out, in this case, Apple.

In a document titled “Order compelling Apple Inc to Assist Agents in Search,” a Federal magistrate ordered Apple to take several steps to undermine the security of the suspect’s iPhone.

SB Shooter Order Compelling Apple Asst iPhone

The steps demanded in the order including (1) bypassing the auto-erase feature, (2) allow the FBI to repeatedly submit passwords to unlock the device and (3) eliminate the delay introduced by using incorrect passwords.  If you don’t think that is bad enough, the FBI is even demanding a custom-built iOS release which has the three features specified above disabled, hard-coded with the phone’s UDID that can be loaded on the phone via the native Device Firmware Upgrade method, which would allow the FBI to continue brute-force attempts against the device.

This order is unprecedented and a blatant overreach (as usual) by the FBI investigators. Without any evidence that the phone contains any data useful to their investigation, the FBI is attempting to force a corporate entity to spend time and resources to build a custom operating system to subvert most of the security controls originally implemented in the OS.

The good news is that Apple said no. Yesterday,  Apple’s CEO Tim Cook wrote a public letter excoriating the FBI for their request and explaining how this is an unprecedented attack on the privacy of all mobile device users and also an attack on Apple’s ability to design and release secure software. In no uncertain terms, Cook said that Apple will oppose this order and the company will not comply with it:

While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

The future will tell how far the FBI is willing to go to pursue their schemes. Will they arrest Apple employees if they refuse to comply? Will they fine Apple?

And what dangerous precedent will this establish? If anything good will come out of it, I am hoping that it will force both Apple and Google to build even more secure devices, which will be impervious to such out of band attacks in the future, even with orders from Federal judges.

I wholly support Apple for their stance on privacy and security, and so should you.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

Here’s something that irks Chris Urmson: Sometimes people will get in self-driving cars, the spectacularly complex piece of technology he runs at Google and to which he has devoted most of his scientific career, and leave with a shrug.

Once, Urmson was riding in one of Google’s Lexus SUVs down a freeway. Several minutes in, his fellow passenger turned to him, nonplussed.

“That’s it?”

Urmson, recalling the story on Google’s Mountain View campus earlier this week, threw up his hands: “Do you have any idea how hard this is?!”

Soon, there may be many more blasé reactions to one of Google’s most audacious moonshots. On Friday, the Internet giant announced that the first autonomous vehicle it has manufactured — a squat two-seater, unveiled a year ago, with no steering wheel or brakes — will begin rolling out on public roads in northern California this summer. Urmson and his team have assembled 25 of the cars, which, for now, are just called “prototypes.” (Re/code has dubbed them “clown cars”; Google may be more partial to the “Koala car” nomenclature.) When they hit the roads, they will not exceed 25 miles per hour. And, due to current state regulations, they must be equipped with brakes, an accelerator pedal and a steering wheel.

But ultimately, Google wants to strip those out.

The company’s stated goal is shepherding fleets of vehicles that can drive with no need for human intervention, a bid to curtail the time wasted in traffic and aide those unable to drive. “At that point, the steering wheel and brake pedal just don’t add value,” Urmson said during the demonstration at the new Google X headquarters in Mountain View. “Over the last few years, we’ve been focused almost purely on tightening the technology. The big next step is bringing it into the community and seeing how it mixes with people.”

At its event to show off the car, Google mixed with people. Along with press, Google invited local community members and disability advocates onto its spacious, secure rooftop. Sergey Brin, the co-founder behind Google’s futuristic ventures, made an appearance. He reiterated Urmson’s point, arguing that for one target market of the technology — several blind community members were given lifts in the car — steering wheels aren’t the issue. “That doesn’t address the mission of access,” Brin said.

Google’s announcement comes on the tail of sharp criticism. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that Google’s Lexus vehicles were involved in three accidents since September, when California required autonomous vehicle testers to declare a permit.

Later that day, Google released (incidentally, by Google’s telling) the first glimpse at numbers on its self-driving car experiment: 11 accidents during the 1.7 million miles on the road since 2009. (That puts its incident rate at more than twice the national average of 0.3 damaging incidents per 100,000 miles.) Urmson detailed the accidents: Seven came from other cars rear-ending theirs, two were freeway side-swipes and one was a silly error from a Google test driver who was using the manual controls at the time. Google insists that the higher rate comes from thorough reporting, something most human drivers ignore.

When its homemade cars hit the pavement, Google will also launch a website for community feedback on the trials, and will begin posting regular progress reports, including miles driven, noteworthy trends and incidents.

“It sounds cliche, but safety is issue one, two and three,” Brin told the audience.

Google’s built-from-scratch car looks similar to its debut a year ago, when Re/code took it for an inaugural spin. It uses the same complex software and hardware — a jury-rigged, advanced network of swirling lasers, cameras and radar — as the existing Lexus fleet.

Over the last year, the cars have grown considerably smarter and more adept, said Dmitri Dolgov, who leads software for the self-driving cars. They can decipher a trash can from a pedestrian, and even pick up what a pedestrian’s hand motions mean.

Gradually, they’re also learning to handle unusual traffic situations. In Mountain View, Urmson showed earlier footage of Google’s Lexus at an intersection when a renegade cyclist crossed in front, running a red light. As the light turned, a truck to the Lexus’ left veered ahead, barely missing the cyclist. Google’s SUV saw it and stood still. (One car encountered something rarer still: A wheelchair-bound suburbanite chasing a duck; the car opted to stall.)

If anything, the car errs on the side of caution. At the Google X headquarters, Google offered rides to the select few community members and reporters. During my ride, the car easily handled the planned obstacle course. A gentle slowdown when a Googler suddenly walked in front. A smooth turn when another veered ahead on a bicycle. But when my car turned to face the unexpected gaggle of press surrounding Brin, it jolted to a halt. Then lurched ahead like a nervous 16-year-old. The car is not accustomed to large gatherings of people in open spaces, Dolgov explained.

Yet, it learned from the encounter. With each ride, the cars deposit the observed data and share it across the entire fleet.

Also, Google has learned more political savviness. The California DMV has awarded testing permits to Google and six other manufacturers, including Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Tesla. But industry observers said the company has advanced more aggressively in lobbying. In Nevada, which granted Google the state’s maiden self-driving license in 2012, Google was the driving force in the policy process, at the expense of rivals.

“The DMV and especially the state legislature, only listening to Google, wrote a law that was fine for Google but was really problematic for car manufacturers,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor and robotics specialist at the University of Washington campus.

On the Google X campus, Brin, outfitted in shorts and Crocs (but no Glass), offered some boilerplate executive-speak. (“We are still refining our business plan.” “The regulatory issues are non-trivial.”) But he also hinted at the ambition of the program. “We’ve had pretty good conversations with a number of states,” he said. “And, for that matter, a number of countries.”

Someone asked about his declaration, in 2012, that his self-driving cars would be ready for public use in five years. “That’s still right on track,” he said, before turning to his auto director. Urmson sheepishly corrected him — it’s closer to five years from now.

Brin, whose mathematics prowess built Google’s search engine, replied: “Well, I haven’t done the math.”

Published by Mark Bergen on recode.net