“A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that a man accused of murder is entitled to review proprietary genetic testing software to challenge evidence presented against him,” reports The Register. Long-time Slashdot reader couchslug shared their report: The maker of the software, Cybergenetics, has insisted in lower court proceedings that the program’s source code is a trade secret. The co-founder of…
Tag: criminal cases
America’s IRS Wants Cryptocurrency Exchanges Declared on Tax Forms
America’s dreaded tax-collecting agency is sending “a strong warning to millions of crypto holders who aren’t complying with the law that they must file required forms,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The front page of this year’s tax forms — just below “Name” and “Address” — will ask filers to declare whether they’ve received or exchanged any virtual currencies. The Journal…
Thailand Launches Its First Legal Action Against Facebook and Twitter
Reuters reports:
Thailand launched legal action on Thursday against tech giants Facebook and Twitter for ignoring requests to take down content, in its first such move against major internet firms… “Unless the companies send their representatives to negotiate, police can bring criminal cases against them,” the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, Puttipong Punnakanta, told reporters. “But if they do, and acknowledge…
Court Finds Algorithm Bias Studies Don’t Violate US Anti-Hacking Law
“A federal court in D.C. has ruled in a lawsuit against Attorney General William Barr that studies aimed at detecting discrimination in online algorithms don’t violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,” reports Engadget:
The government argued that the Act made it illegal to violate a site’s terms of service through some investigative methods (such as submitting false info for research), but…
Amazon’s Ring Doorbell Update Allows Opt Out of All Police Video Requests
Amazon’s Ring doorbell has rolled out a new update that lets users add and remove shared users on an account, restrict third-party access, view two-factor authentication settings, and (perhaps, most importantly) opt out of all video request notifications from law enforcement. Mashable reports: Uncovered in reporting by Motherboard and Gizmodo in 2019, the scale of Amazon’s Neighbor Portal program is much…
Twitter Tells Facial Recognition Trailblazer To Stop Using Site’s Photos
Kashmir Hill reporting for The New York Times: A mysterious company that has licensed its powerful facial recognition technology to hundreds of law enforcement agencies is facing attacks from Capitol Hill and from at least one Silicon Valley giant.
Twitter sent a letter this week to the small start-up company, Clearview AI, demanding that it stop taking photos and any other data…
Scientists Can Now Identify Someone From a Single Strand of Hair
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A new forensic technique could have criminals — and some prosecutors — tearing their hair out: Researchers have developed a method they say can identify a person from as little as 1 centimeter of a single strand of hair — and that is eight times more sensitive than similar protein analysis techniques. If the…