Radio interview: Online privacy tips in the wake of Snapchat and Target data breaches

Snapcheck.org allows Snapchat users to discover if their phone number was among those breached

January 2, 2014 — WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon was a guest on CBS KNX 1070 in Los Angeles this morning talking about the Snapchat data breach, the Target data breach, and what to do to prevent privacy snafus.

Dixon’s tips include:

Use a password app to keep track of passwords.
Always use different usernames and passwords — a common error is to rotate one password or username, or close variants of it.
If you use a debit card, run transactions through as credit.
If you are a Snapchat user, you can check Snapcheck.org to see if your phone number was breached. If you find yourself on the list, change your username and password immediately, and ensure you do not use the same username/password combination again.

You can hear the interview at http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/station/knx-1070/.

Posted January 2, 2014 in Consumer Tips, Data Breach, News, Press, and Media

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
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Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.