by Admin | Apr 23, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
(April 25th, 2016) Apple has released figures indicating that U.S. authorities asked for user data from Apple accounts 1,015 times during the second half of 2015.
The requests pertain to information on such services as iMessages, e-mails, photos and device backups.
That number was an increase from 971 during the 2015’s first half and 788 during the year-earlier period. The company said that it gave the government at least some data in 82 percent of the requests — an average percentage for a year for the company.
The number of users affected by such requests late 2015 was about the same as a year earlier.
by Admin | Apr 23, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
(April 25th, 2016) U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu called for a federal investigation of a gap in security that lets people get into others’ phones to record calls, texts and locations.
The Guardian reports that security flaws within the system that brokers connections, billing and transfers messages between cell phone networks – called Signaling System No 7 (SS7 – allow remote access to cell phone users’ data anywhere in the world regardless of the security system of their phones, using just their phone number.
Mr. Lieu said: “The applications for this vulnerability are seemingly limitless, from criminals monitoring individual targets to foreign entities conducting economic espionage on American companies to nation states monitoring U.S. government officials.”
Encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp are unaffected, The Guardian reported.
by Admin | Apr 23, 2016 | Event Updates
(April 25th, 2016) Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang has asked for Japan’s continued assistance in helping Vietnam deal with climate change, which has been linked to saline intrusion in the fresh water of coastal areas as well as to drought. He said that climate change is an urgent issue and needs long-term solutions.
He make the request in a meeting with Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Fukada Hiroshi in Hanoi on April 19.
The president also thanked Japan for its support for Vietnam’s economic development and proposed that the two nations further strengthen their ties.
He added that Vietnam, at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will send a high-level delegation headed by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to Japan to attend the G7 Summit in May 26-27, and is preparing to welcome a visit by a ministerial-level delegation from Japan to Vietnam later this year.
President Tran Dai Quang also expressed his hope that Japan will continue to support Vietnam as it seeks to protect its rights in the South China Sea in the face of Chinese expansionism.
by Admin | Apr 23, 2016 | Initiative
(April 25th, 2016) Ambassadors from Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization met last Wednesday for the first time in nearly two years, as continued Russian attacks on eastern Ukraine and saber-rattling in the Baltic maintained high military tensions between Russia and the NATO allies.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
The Wall Street Journal said that there were no agreements but that officials called the meeting constructive and substantive.
“We had a frank and serious discussion,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said after the meeting. “NATO allies and Russia hold very different views. But we have listened to what each other had to say.”
NATO officials emerged from the meeting with some hope that military-to-military communications between Moscow and the alliance could be revived to lessen the chance of armed confrontation.
The meeting followed a series of incidents in the Baltic Sea, most recently with the Russians buzzing a U.S. warship and a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane.
After the meeting, Alexander Grushko, the Russian ambassador to the alliance, complained about U.S. forces operating close to Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave that is home to a number of military bases.
by Admin | Apr 23, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
( April 25th, 2016) In a wide-ranging conversation on April 18 with Harvard Prof. Thomas Patterson of The Boston Global Forum, Yasuhisa Kawamura, Director-General for Press and Public Policy of the Japanese government, discussed Japan’s hopes and concerns as the G7 Summit nears. Japan will host the May 26-27 conference. Mr. Yasuhisa is the main spokesman for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The conversation was another in the series of online dialogues in the BGF-G7 Summit Initiative, in which the BGF is working with Japanese officials to craft proposals to be considered by the national leaders at the summit.
Professor Patterson led off by expressing sorrow about the death and suffering in Japan’s Kyushu region ravaged by recent earthquakes. Mr. Kawamura, in response, thanked the U.S. for offers of aid and discussed ongoing rescue efforts.
On the G7 Summit, Mr. Kawamura emphasized the “fundamental values’’ of democracy, human rights and free markets shared by the G7 members that will inform all their decisions.
He forecast that major themes of the conference will include how to address the growing use of force to, as he said, “change the status quo,’’ in reference to Russia’s seizure of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine; North Korean nuclear and missile saber-rattling, and Chinese military threats in the East Asia and South China Seas. Terrorism, which mostly now means Islamic terrorism, will, of course, be another big topic.
Mr. Kawamura particularly praised the increasing cooperation of Japan, South Korea and the United States in trying to protect northeast Asia from the North Korean regime. And in reference to that threat and to Chinese aggression, he cited efforts to increase the deterrence power of Japan, the United States and some other Pacific nations.
Not surprisingly, he said that other summit themes would include coordinating economic policies; climate change; addressing new global health dangers, presumably such as the Zika virus; advancing support for universal healthcare; improving the status of women, and pushing for environmentally sustainable economic development. The last item includes assisting developing nations to improve their physical infrastructure, long a priority of the Japanese government.
When asked to what extent improving cybersecurity, the BGF’s biggest theme in the BGF-G7 Initiative, will be discussed at the summit, Mr. Kawamura, said that summit planners are still working out final details of the agenda. But in any event, he said, Japan believes, with the BGF and the U.S., that “the rule of law’’ must be applied to cyberbehavior.
