by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
JTB Corp., Japan’s largest travel agency, has suffered a huge hack, perhaps by Chinese and/or North Korean government hackers. The government-backed company says that the hackers might have gotten the passport details and other personal information of almost 8 million customers.
The hack focused more attention on the risks for companies when they keep sensitive data on networks connected to the Internet.
Japanese firms and government agencies should consider isolating their networks, Vitaly Kamluk, principal security researcher at Russian-owned Kaspersky Lab in Singapore, told The Japan Times.
To read the whole Japan Times article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple Inc. is using new technology “to garner insight into user behavior, in an effort to keep pace with rivals’ insights without violating its privacy pledges.’’
The WSJ reports that “Apple’s short-term ambitions for the technology are limited. The company will use it to keep user data anonymous while analyzing how customers are using emojis or new slang expressions on the phone, or which search queries should pop up ‘deep links’ to apps rather than webpages. It will also improve the company’s Notes software.
“In the long term, however, differential privacy could help Apple keep up with competitors such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google that collect user data more aggressively and use it to improve offers such as image- and voice-recognition programs.’’
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | Initiative
(June 21st, 2016) Clive Crook writes that if the British vote on June 23 to leave the European Union, much of the blame can be put on Europe’s leaders for not doing enough to help “stay’’ backer Prime Minister David Cameron make his case.
Mr. Crook writes:
“Europe’s other leaders could and should have helped him. They should have recognized him as an ally — and in doing so would have strengthened the European project. Certainly … they recognize their interest in keeping Britain in. And they surely understand that Europe as a whole needs to change – that anti-EU sentiment is on the rise in many other countries.
“Yet they sent Cameron away from his vaunted renegotiation with too little. And the tone of their response was even more damaging than the lack of substance. The message came through loud and clear: It isn’t Britain’s place to tell Europe how to change.’’
To read Mr. Crook’s column, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | Initiative
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, said on June 16 that the United States and its allies have made gains against Islamic State but that the the group will change its tactics to make up for lost territory.
“To compensate for territorial losses, ISIL (Islamic State) will probably rely more on guerrilla tactics, including high-profile attacks outside territory it holds,” Mr. Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He also said that there are more ISIS fighters now than there were al-Qaida fighters at that terror group’s height.
For more information, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | Initiative
A 54-page report entitled “Taking Sides,’’ compiled by the Syria Campaign, an advocacy group opposed to the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, denounces the United Nations for allegedly taking the side of the Assad regime in the Syrian Civil War. It is signed by more than 50 Syrian civil-society organizations and uses interviews with current and former U.N. officials as well as Syrians in besieged areas and humanitarian workers.
The report says that the U.N. abandoned its neutrality by yielding to the demands of Assad’s regime, including letting it veto aid deliveries to rebel-held areas besieged by Assad’s forces.
The report accuses the UN of prioritizing its cooperation with the Syrian government “at all costs,” allowing the diversion of billions of dollars of international aid to one side of the conflict and thus killing civilians in besieged areas that have been denied access to food and medicine.
The report urges U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to set “red lines’’ for its humanitarian operations in Syria or withdraw its cooperation with the Assad government. The report’s writers assert that the organization’s failures have tarnished its legacy and let the regime use starvation as a weapon.
“There has been a systematic failure in the U.N.-led response,” said Roger Hearn, the former head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency office in Damascus, who ran the organization during the first year of the conflict, which started in 2011.
For more information, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 15, 2016 | News
Amidst fears about Islamist mass-murderers getting into the European Union via Turkey, that nation has missed a E.U. deadline that if Turkey had met it would have allowed its citizens visa-free travel through most of Europe.
E.U. leaders had conditionally promised the Turkish government that 79 million Turks would get access to Europe’s 26-country border-free Schengen travel zone by this month, as part of a controversial bargain on migration. But that depended on Turkey meeting 72 E.U. conditions on border security and fundamental human rights, including changes to increasingly authoritarian Turkey’s tough anti-terrorism laws.
Intensifying European worries is that Islamist terrorists can sometimes make their way from Syria and Iraq across Turkey and then into Europe.
Still, E.U. officials are expected to approve the opening of negotiations on one part of Turkish E.U. membership talks, which some people call a charade.
For the full story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 15, 2016 | Initiative
Belgian and French police are on the watch for the possibility that small groups of Islamist terrorists may have left Syria the aim of staging mass murders in the two European nations. But they still don’t know how serious the threat may be.
For more information, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 15, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
(June 21st, 2016) The Democratic National Committee has disclosed that Russian government hackers penetrated the DNC’s computer network to get into the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
DNC officials and security experts said that the intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also could read all e-mail and chat traffic, reported The Washington Post.
Russian spies have been hard at work targeting U.S. candidates, especially Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and political parties. But details on those cases were not available, The Post reported.
Inevitably, Russian government spokesman Dmitri Peskov denied the reports.
“I completely rule out a possibility that the [Russian] government or the government bodies have been involved in this.’’
Russian government hackers are considered the best in world at industrial espionage, intellectual-property theft and cyberwar (as against Ukraine and Estonia), followed by the Chinese. The theft of opposition research on Mr. Trump might be considered a bit ironic since he has lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin for his strong leadership style. Mr. Putin has become Russia’s de-facto dictator in recent years.
To read The Washington Post story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 12, 2016 | Initiative
Law-enforcement officials do not yet know the full story of what led Omar Mateen, 29, to, murder 50 people and injure dozens more at a club in Orlando, Fla., on June 12. The shooter was a Florida resident, a U.S. citizen and the son of immigrants from Afghanistan. Authorities said that Mateen had apparently expressed his support for the Islamic State.
“It has been reported that Mateen made calls to 911 this morning in which he stated his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State,” Ronald Hopper, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge on the case, told the news media.
As of Sunday, however, U.S. officials cautioned that hat they had no conclusive evidence of any direct link with the Islamic State or any other foreign extremist group.
But the mass murder intensified calls for the rapid and total destruction of the Islamic State and raised pleas again that America make it more difficult for unstable, criminal and otherwise dangerous people to so easily obtain massive firepower with which to kill and maim.
The Boston Global Forum expresses its sadness and outrage about this barbarism and extends its condolences to the families of those murdered.
