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Check out all of SourceForge’s improvements. | Follow Slashdot on LinkedIn × 131981940 story Amazon Pauses Police Use of Facial Recognition Tech For a Year (reuters.com) 13 -- 13 Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @08:02PM from the put-on-hold dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon on Wednesday said it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software , reversing its long-time support of selling the technology to law enforcement. Civil liberties activists have voiced concern that facial recognition could lead to unjust arrests during demonstrations against police brutality, racial injustice and the death of George Floyd. Critics also have questioned the software's accuracy, pointing to a past study showing Amazon's "Rekognition" service struggled to identify the gender of individuals with darker skin tones. Amazon has taken issue with that research. The company, which sells cloud computing technology via its Amazon Web Services division, said in a statement it has pushed for regulations to ensure the software was used ethically. "We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested," Amazon said. The company said it would continue to permit use of its technology by customers Thorn and Marinus Analytics to help law enforcement find human trafficking victims. The decision follows IBM's announcement earlier this week that it was getting out of the facial recognition business entirely . It's also urging Congress to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism. 131978728 story Babylon Health Data Breach Allowed Users To View Other Patients' Video Consultations (bbc.com) 5 -- 5 Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @06:40PM from the perils-of-telehealth dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Babylon Health has acknowledged that its GP video appointment app has suffered a data breach . The firm was alerted to the problem after one of its users discovered he had been given access to dozens of video recordings of other patients' consultations. A follow-up check by Babylon revealed a small number of further UK users could also see others' sessions. The firm said it had since fixed the issue and notified regulators. Babylon allows its members to speak to a doctor, therapist or other health specialist via a smartphone video call and, when appropriate, sends an electronic prescription to a nearby pharmacy. It has more than 2.3 million registered users in the UK. "On the afternoon of Tuesday June 9 we identified and resolved an issue within two hours whereby one patient accessed the introduction of another patient's consultation recording," it said in statement. "Our investigation showed that three patients, who had booked and had appointments today, were incorrectly presented with, but did not view, recordings of other patients' consultations through a subsection of the user's profile within the Babylon app." 131978366 story Illegal Netflix, Amazon Streamers Cut Off After European Arrests (bloomberg.com) 31 -- 31 Posted by msmash on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @05:25PM from the crackdown dept. European police busted an illegal streaming ring that provided service to 2 million people and was so sophisticated that it had its own customer-service team. From a report: The criminal network operated for over five years and offered more than 40,000 channels, movies, documentaries and other content, according to European police coordination agency Europol. The scale of the operation shows how the big streaming platforms still struggle to deal with content theft as criminals find new ways to hack their anti-piracy systems. The group offered a technical assistance service and high standards of quality control, earning an estimated 15 million euros ($17 million) through PayPal payments, bank transfers and cryptocurrencies, the agency said. The threat to legal streaming may grow if Netflix, Walt Disney Co. and others gradually raise prices in coming years to capitalize on their fast-growing subscriber bases and viewers seek out cheaper, illegal alternatives. 131976542 story Android 11 Will Help You Rein In Zombie App Permissions (wired.com) 25 -- 25 Posted by msmash on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @01:30PM from the moving-forward dept. With 2.5 billion users worldwide, Google has a responsibility to make its Android operating system as secure as possible. But the company has at times struggled to adequately vet apps in the Google Play Store, allowing malicious programs through that thousands or millions of users go on to download. With Google's release of the Android 11 Beta on Wednesday, though, the company is taking steps to make it even more difficult for rogue apps to grab your data even when they do slip by . From a report: Google has worked for years to incrementally tighten Android security under the hood. And the release of Android 11 is particularly focused on expanding privacy improvements to give you more control over what your apps can access and giving more ways to distribute software updates across Android's fragmented and disjointed device population. Android 10 addressed some of this as well, requiring that app developers request permissions and then reaffirm user choices more often. Android 11 adds a feature that allows developer to request one-time permissions for things like the microphone, camera, or location as an alternative to all or nothing. You can share your location with a friend through a chat app once, for example, without granting indefinite location access, or having to remember to wade back into settings to revoke the permission later. "We can see that people are actually leveraging these features from Android 10 and thinking about their choices when they're giving apps access to permissions," says Charmaine D'Silva, an Android product manager who works on privacy. "So building on that this time we've added even more controls." Android 11 will also rein in apps that you don't use very often, automatically revoking permissions if you don't open it for a still undetermined period of time. If you start using the app again you can always reinstate its access, but the permission won't be lurking forgotten. Google plans to experiment with different cutoffs after 60-90 days, with the goal of eliminating stray permissions without breaking functionality. 131973116 story Amazon, Facebook and Google Turn To Deep Network of Political Allies To Battle Back Antitrust Probes (washingtonpost.com) 26 -- 26 Posted by msmash on Wednesday June 10, 2020 @10:50AM from the closer-look dept. Under the withering microscope of government watchdogs, tech giants including Amazon, Facebook and Google have funded a bevy of political groups that have helped push positive polling and engaged in other fingerprint-free tactics designed to deter regulators who are seeking to break up or penalize the industry. The approach reflects the growing threats they now face from the Justice Department and the country's top attorneys general, who have been investigating them on antitrust grounds. From a report: The Connected Commerce Council, for example, is a Washingto...