One of the griftiest corners of late-stage capitalism is the “public safety” industry, in which military contractors realize they can expand their market by peddling overpriced garbage to schools, cities, public transit systems, hospitals, etc — which is how the “aggression detection” industry emerged, selling microphones whose “machine learning” backends are supposed to be able to detect “aggressive voices” (as well as gunshots) and alert cops or security guards.
Tag: snake oil
Grifty “information security” companies promised they could decrypt ransomware-locked computers, but they were just quietly paying the ransoms
Ransomware has been around since the late 1980s, but it got a massive shot in the arm when leaked NSA cyberweapons were merged with existing strains of ransomware, with new payment mechanisms that used cryptocurrencies, leading to multiple ransomware epidemics that locked up businesses, hospitals, schools, and more (and then there are the state-level cyberattacks that pretend to be ransomware).
Philadelphia city council candidate says his secret AI has discovered disqualifying fraud in the nominations of 30 out of 33 candidates
Devon Cade — a former bureaucrat who now describes himself as a “philanthropist” — has asked a court to disqualify 30 out of the 33 other Democrats standing in the primary for the city’s council elections on the grounds that the signatures on their nominating petitions were forged.
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Gofundme jumpstarts a golden era of snake oil as desperate people raise millions for quack homeopathy cancer “remedies”
In Patients’ crowdfunding campaigns for alternative cancer treatments, published by researchers from Simon Fraser University in The Lancet Oncology (Sci-Hub mirror) we learn that thanks to Gofundme, 13,000 people have raised $1.4 million to help 200 desperate cancer patients pay for ineffective homeopathic “treatments.”
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This dump of Iphone-cracking tools shows how keeping software defects secret makes everyone less secure
Last month, a hacker took 900GB of data from Cellebrite, an Israeli cyber-arms dealer that was revealed to be selling surveillance and hacking tools to Russia, the UAE, and Turkey.
Blackballed by machine learning: how algorithms can destroy your chances of getting a job
The Guardian’s published a long excerpt from Cathy O’Neil’s essential new book, Weapons of Math Destruction, in which O’Neil describes the way that shoddy machine-learning companies have come to dominate waged employment hiring, selling their dubious products to giant companies that use them to decide who can and can’t work.