Short Takes – 4-13-23

U.S. intel agencies may change how they monitor social media, chatrooms after missing leaked U.S. documents for weeks. NBCNews.com article. Pull quote: “Ronald Marks, a former CIA officer and a visiting professor at George Mason University, said the pendulum has swung back and forth over the past two decades over how much intelligence should be shared across the government.”

FCC Officially Launches Its Space Bureau. NextGov.com article. Pull quote: “Kearney stated that the Space Innovation Agenda—under which the FCC is accelerating regulatory review processes, growing the size of the agency’s satellite division by 38%, developing new opportunities for satellite broadband services and modernizing spectrum— would also be a big focus for the Space Bureau “in terms of accelerating processes for application processing, facilitating innovative technologies and novel space activities, but also updating space safety rules.” No mention of space-communications cybersecurity issues.

LLMs and Phishing. Schneier.com blog post. Pull quote: “This is all an old story, though: It reminds us that many of the bad uses of AI are a reflection of humanity more than they are a reflection of AI technology itself. Scams are nothing new—simply intent and then action of one person tricking another for personal gain. And the use of others as minions to accomplish scams is sadly nothing new or uncommon: For example, organized crime in Asia currently kidnaps or indentures thousands in scam sweatshops. Is it better that organized crime will no longer see the need to exploit and physically abuse people to run their scam operations, or worse that they and many others will be able to scale up scams to an unprecedented level?”

AI Accountability Policy Request for Comment. Federal Register NTIA request for comments. Summary: “The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) hereby requests comments on Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) system accountability measures and policies. This request focuses on self-regulatory, regulatory, and other measures and policies that are designed to provide reliable evidence to external stakeholders—that is, to provide assurance—that AI systems are legal, effective, ethical, safe, and otherwise trustworthy. NTIA will rely on these comments, along with other public engagements on this topic, to draft and issue a report on AI accountability policy development, focusing especially on the AI assurance ecosystem.” Comment due date: June 12^th, 2023.

A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America. Vice.com article. Pull quote: “Swatting is when someone calls in a bogus threat in an attempt to direct law enforcement resources to a particular home, school, or other location. Often, swatting calls result in heavily armed police raiding an innocent victim’s home. At least one case has resulted in police killing the unsuspecting occupant.” A reader pointed me at this and commented that he hoped that chemical facilities are not being targeted.