WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

In May 2017 the Information Commissioner announced a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes. The investigation is one of the largest of its kind and is ongoing. This page will be updated as and when developments arise.

In May 2017 the Information Commissioner announced a formal investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes. The investigation is one of the largest of its kind and is ongoing. This page will be updated as and when developments arise.

We live in a data-driven world. Almost every transaction and interaction you have with most organisations involves you sharing personal data, such as your name, address and birth date. You share data online too, every time you visit a website, search for or buy something, use social media or send an email.

Many people, particularly older folks, proudly declare they avoid using the Web to manage various accounts tied to their personal and financial data — including everything from utilities and mobile phones to retirement benefits and online banking services. The reasoning behind this strategy is as simple as it is alluring: What’s not put online can’t be hacked. But increasingly, adherents to this mantra are finding out the hard way that if you don’t plant your flag online, fraudsters and identity thieves may do it for you.

• Railway police have begun using facial-recognition eyewear to catch criminals.
• In tests the glasses identified faces within 100 milliseconds.
• Seven people have been arrested for a range of previous crimes, and another 26 were banned from travel.
• China has been ramping up its use of facial-recognition technology as it moves toward a nationwide database that can recognize any citizen within three seconds.

KrebsOnSecurity has long warned readers to plant your own flag at the my Social Security online portal of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) — even if you are not yet drawing benefits from the agency — because identity thieves have been registering accounts in peoples’ names and siphoning retirement and/or disability funds.

Welcome to the world of mindfulness and wellness apps. In the past year or so, investors have backed more than 20 startups developing apps and tools aimed at promoting mindfulness, happiness, and other desirable mental states. To date, these companies have raised more than $150 million, according to Crunchbase data. Several of the largest rounds have been in recent months, with the vast majority of funding going to California-based startups.

Meet Todai Robot, an AI project that performed in the top 20 percent of students on the entrance exam for the University of Tokyo -- without actually understanding a thing. While it's not matriculating anytime soon, Todai Robot's success raises alarming questions for the future of human education. How can we help kids excel at the things that humans will always do better than AI?

Singularity University has been talking about purpose for some time now. They describe a focus that is audaciously big and aspirational, causing significant transformation to an Industry, community, or the planet. There is a clear “why” behind the work being done, something that unites and inspires action. They call this a Massive Transformative Purpose.

If someone had been secretly storing every single text, tweet, blog post, Instagram photo, and phone call you’d ever made, would they be able to recreate you?

In What’s In a Boarding Pass Barcode? A Lot, KrebsOnSecurity told the story of a reader whose friend posted a picture of a boarding pass on Facebook. The reader was able to use the airline’s Web site combined with data printed on the boarding pass to discover additional information about his friend. That data included details of future travel, the ability to alter or cancel upcoming flights, and a key component need to access the traveler’s frequent flyer account. 

More recently, security researcher Michal Špaček gave a talk at a conference in the Czech Republic in which he explained how a few details gleaned from a picture of a friend’s boarding pass posted online give him the ability to view passport information on his friend via the airline’s Web site, and to change the password for another friend’s United Airlines frequent flyer account.

Web merchants routinely leak data about purchases. And that can make it straightforward to link individuals with their Bitcoin purchases, say cybersecurity researchers. You can preserve your privacy as long as the pseudonym is not linked to you. But as soon as somebody makes the link to one of your anonymous books, the ruse is revealed. Your entire writing history under your pseudonym becomes public. Similarly, as soon as your personal details are linked to your Bitcoin address, your purchase history is revealed too.

Scientists developed a stretchable electronic sensor that looks like a temporary tattoo.

In the new study, the neural net learned what mouth shapes were linked to various sounds. The researchers took audio clips and dubbed them over the original sound files of a video. They next took mouth shapes that matched the new audio clips and grafted and blended them onto the video. Essentially, the researchers synthesized videos where Obama lip-synched words he said up to decades beforehand.

Anonymity, like security, has many layers. Observers have developed methods of piercing anonymity which involve differing levels of technology.

These are the steps you can take and the tools you'll need to remain anonymous and hidden online. Tor, VPN, burner emails, encryption, bitcoin, etc.

Researchers from the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab (FAIR) recently made an unexpected discovery while trying to improve chatbots. The bots — known as “dialog agents” — were creating their own language — well, kinda. Using machine learning algorithms, dialog agents were left to converse freely in an attempt to strengthen their conversational skills.

On today’s web it’s hard to set a (digital) foot online without it attracting dozens of trackers and log entries, as companies look to learn everything about you and sell that data on to advertisers. To hide you’ve got a few tools at your disposal, many of which we’ve talked about in the past, and all of which add up to a largely anonymous browsing experience. What we can’t do is promise 100 percent that you won’t be tracked—we’re not privy to the inner workings of the FBI or your employer’s IT system—but this is as much as you can do.

With the Supreme Court slated to rule next term on whether cellphone location data requires a search warrant, a new poll shows that a majority of U.S. adults support law enforcement accessing certain personal data for someone under investigation, but only if it's authorized by a warrant. Polling was conducted June 8 through June 12 among 2,200 U.S. adults. Morning Consult is the official polling partner of POLITICO, Vox, Fortune, and Bloomberg News.

The most anticipated slide deck of the year is here. Key takeaways:

• Global smartphone growth is slowing: Smartphone shipments grew 3 percent year over year last year, versus 10 percent the year before. This is in addition to continued slowing internet growth, which Meeker discussed last year.
• Voice is beginning to replace typing in online queries. Twenty percent of mobile queries were made via voice in 2016, while accuracy is now about 95 percent.
• In 10 years, Netflix went from 0 to more than 30 percent of home entertainment revenue in the U.S. This is happening while TV viewership continues to decline.
• Entrepreneurs are often fans of gaming, Meeker said, quoting Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg. Global interactive gaming is becoming mainstream, with 2.6 billion gamers in 2017 versus 100 million in 1995. Global gaming revenue is estimated to be around $100 billion in 2016, and China is now the top market for interactive gaming.
• China remains a fascinating market, with huge growth in mobile services and payments and services like on-demand bike sharing. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's China slides.)
• While internet growth is slowing globally, that’s not the case in India, the fastest growing large economy. The number of internet users in India grew more than 28 percent in 2016. That’s only 27 percent online penetration, which means there’s lots of room for internet usership to grow. Mobile internet usage is growing as the cost of bandwidth declines. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's India slides.)
• In the U.S. in 2016, 60 percent of the most highly valued tech companies were founded by first- or second-generation Americans and are responsible for 1.5 million employees. Those companies include tech titans Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook.
• Healthcare: Wearables are gaining adoption with about 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016. Leading tech brands are well-positioned in the digital health market, with 60 percent of consumers willing to share their health data with the likes of Google in 2016.

Instead of Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn owning your data, imagine a world in which you control the data about yourself and reveal only what is minimally necessary when required. It would be the web equivalent of proving to a bouncer only that you're older than 21, instead of also handing over your birthdate, address and whether you've elected to be an organ donor.

A study published today suggests your Apple Watch could help detect and track serious heart conditions. According to CNET, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco worked with the app Cardiogram on the Health eHeart study, gathering cardiovascular data from 6,158 people who used Apple Watches. They tested whether the watches were able to …

100 million rides and runs, 220 billion data points visualizing the best roads and trails worldwide.