LLRX February 2024 Issue

Articles and Columns for February 2024

  • Scam Baiting: An Innovative Approach to Combating Online Fraud – The thesis of Kyra Strick’s instructive paper promotes a proactive approach to a rapidly increasing online security crisis. Strick states that in the dynamic landscape of cybersecurity, scam baiting has emerged as a captivating and unconventional approach to combating online fraud. Scam baiting is the practice of engaging with scammers to expose their tactics and disrupt their operations. It serves as an offensive and a defensive measure, safeguarding individuals from falling prey to scams, promoting data protection education, and empowering individuals to protect their digital security.
  • AI in Banking and Finance, February 29, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Four highlights from this post: How businesses are actually using generative AI; The Age of Uncertainty—and Opportunity: Work in the Age of AI; Financial Stability Board To Focus on Asset Tokenization and AI, Chair Says; and Bankers Will See AI Transform Three-Quarters of Day, Study Says.
  • Toward a durable, dictator-proof Washington Post – David H. Rothman’s timely, outside the box commentary addresses the growing wave of news outlets abruptly closing down their websites, laying off staff, and in some cases, eliminating access to their respective archives. Rothman proposes an alternative to “how do I charge them enough” to stem the tide of closures, an avenue he prompts billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, to consider. A good-sized trust or corporate equivalent would enable the Washington Post to be run as a sustainable enterprise in the public interest, rather than as a mere profit generator.
  • What Happens to Your Sensitive Data When a Data Broker Goes Bankrupt? – In 2021, a company specializing in collecting and selling location data called Near bragged that it was “The World’s Largest Dataset of People’s Behavior in the Real-World,” with data representing “1.6B people across 44 countries.” Last year the company went public with a valuation of $1 billion (via a SPAC). Seven months later it filed for bankruptcy and has agreed to sell the company. Jon Keegan highlights the ramifications to the public.
  • Publishing for Profit: Selecting the Best PublisherJerry Lawson offers his expert advise on how lawyers (and other ambitious people) can profit by publishing. One method is to begin by focusing on your desired result. What are the best publishers for you and your work product? Lawson offers a couple of ways to identify the potential publishers likely to provide the most benefit.
  • AI in Banking and Finance, February 15, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government reports, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Each entry includes the publication name, date published, article title and abstract. Six highlights from this post: SEC Chair: Existing financial law can be applied to AI regulatory debate; Generative AI financial scammers are getting very good at duping work email; The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Algorithms; How Learning About Harms Impacts the Optimal Rate of Artificial Intelligence Adoption; Fighting Financial Crime With AI Is Not A Trend—It’s A Necessity; and NIST establishes Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC).
  • Advocate, advise, and accompany – Jordan Furlong advocates the position that three essential roles – to advocate, to advise, and to accompany – will be of critical importance in the post-AI era and lawyers need to start preparing legal education, lawyer licensing, and law practices to adapt and modify their client engagement.
  • Violence Against Women and International Law – Updated February 2024 – Sabrina I. Pacifici is identifying and documenting pertinent sources for researchers on the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack and violence against women and girls. The guide was originally published on November 23, 2023 – link here, and had 8 pertinent sources on this topic comprising government reports, academic papers, reviews of UN/NGO programs, news, databases, analysis and commentary. Part 2 of this series, published December 31, 2023 – link here, expanded the original guide with more than a dozen new sources. This update comprises primary government sources and secondary news sources along with extensive video footage and eye witness testimony to facilitate accurate research about the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023. It includes links and abstracts to more than a dozen additional sources from interviews, reports, and ongoing investigations identifying critical facts about the planning and systemic use of violence against women and girls during, and subsequent to, the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks.
  • DOJ funding pipeline subsidizes questionable big data surveillance technologies – Professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson discusses how predictive policing has been shown to be an ineffective and biased policing tool. Yet, the Department of Justice has been funding the crime surveillance and analysis technology for years and continues to do so despite criticism from researchers, privacy advocates and members of Congress. Guthrie’s research reveals an entire ecosystem of how technology companies, police departments and academics benefit from the flow of federal dollars for these surveillance technologies.
  • Plagiarism Detection Tools Offer a False Sense of Accuracy – Investigative Reporter Tara García Mathewson discusses how the the tools that likely brought down Harvard president Claudine Gay are improperly used on students all the time.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 24, 2024Four highlights from this week: As AI Looms Large, FTC Says Big Tech Can’t Feed it Your Data Without Your Permission; Protect Yourself from Identity Thieves; Survey Finds Workers are Putting Businesses at Risk by Oversharing with GenAI Tools; and Meet the shady companies helping governments hack citizens’ phones.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 17, 2024Four highlights from this week: Inside the Underground Site Where ‘Neural Networks’ Churn Out Fake IDs; 5 Steps to Improve Your Security Posture in Microsoft Teams; Drone surveillance case in Michigan Supreme Court tests privacy rights; and ‘AI Washing’ Is a Risk Amid Wall Street’s Craze, SEC Chief Gesler Says.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 11, 2024Four highlights from this week: How to detect poisoned data in machine learning datasets; Using Google Search to Find Software Can Be Risky; UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges; and How U.S. health care providers deal with hundreds of data breaches every year.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 3, 2024Four highlights from this week: How to lock out your ex-partner from your smart home; Google is Still Failing to Protect Privacy of Abortion Seekers; Citibank fails to protect customers from fraud, N.Y. AG’s lawsuit contends; and Listening to LLM responses through leaked GPU local memory.

LLRX.com® – the free web journal on law, technology, knowledge discovery and research for Librarians, Lawyers, Researchers, Academics, and Journalists. Founded in 1996.

Subjects: KM

All Citations Should Include Hyperlinks (If Possible)

Amelia Landenberger explains that as a general principle, citations in scholarly works have two purposes: to prove that the point is supported by evidence, and to allow the reader to find the evidence that the author is citing to. The pain of citations comes from the requirement that these citations be made as brief as possible by painstakingly utilizing a series of standardized abbreviations. The requirement to abbreviate arises mainly from a historical limitation: the scarcity of paper and ink.

Subjects: KM, Legal Education, Legal Research

Review – Law Democratized: A Blueprint For Solving The Justice Crisis

Jerry Lawson rhetorically asks Is anyone in the country better qualified than Renee Knake Jefferson to write about access to justice? Professor of Law at the University of Houston, co-reporter for the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services, and designated by the American Bar Association as a “Legal Rebel,” she has long been a thought leader in the quest to make legal help available to all, regardless of resources. Her new book, Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis, does not disappoint.

Subjects: AI, Court Resources, Education, Ethics, Kodner and Cramer on the Case (Management), Legal Ethics, Legal Profession, Legal Research

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 23, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Eight highlights from this week: How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You; The Feds Can Film Your Front Porch for 68 Days Without a Warrant, Says Court; X Continues to Break as Fraudsters Use Deceptive Links to Scam; FDA and You; Artificial Intelligence and Medical Products: How CBER, CDER, CDRH, and OCP are Working Together; DOJ sues Apple in antitrust case, says it has illegal monopoly over smartphones; Data brokers admit they’re selling information on precise location, kids, and reproductive healthcare; X Continues to Break as Fraudsters Use Deceptive Links to Scam You; and Why you should stop using SMS.

Subjects: AI, Big Data, Business Research, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Financial System, Government Resources, Healthcare, Medical Research, Privacy, Social Media

Climate change is shifting the zones where plants grow

With the arrival of spring in North America, many people are gravitating to the gardening and landscaping section of home improvement stores, where displays are overstocked with eye-catching seed packs and benches are filled with potted annuals and perennials. But some plants that once thrived in your yard may not flourish there now. To understand why, Dr. Matt Kasson looks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent update of its plant hardiness zone map, which has long helped gardeners and growers figure out which plants are most likely to thrive in a given location.

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State

Kevin Novak begins his article with a reference to a report in The Wall Street Journal that caught his attention. Commercial data brokers are selling their third-party data to the government. If you’re an optimist, you would think this could be a good thing. Our intelligence agencies and the defense department may be able to identify patterns that could predict and prevent an unfortunate event – terrorism, for example. But honestly, how would you feel if all the conversations in your house that Siri and Alexa are silently listening in on are sold in the aggregate to the government…or something else?

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Computer Security, Congress, Cybercrime, Cyberlaw Legislation, Cybersecurity, Data Mining, Economy, Gadgets/Gizmos, Legal Research, Social Media

Keep Up With Claude 3: It Reads and Analyzes So You Don’t Have To!

Discover the power of Claude 3, the AI-powered news analyst that can help you stay on top of the news without spending hours sifting through articles and podcasts. Sarah Gotschall recently put Claude 3 to the test by asking it to analyze the controversy surrounding Fani Willis and her prosecution of Donald Trump, and the results were impressive – a comprehensive summary, detailed timeline, and categorized evidence, all in just a matter of minutes. Gotschall says Claude 3 is definitely worth checking out at just $20 a month for access to the most intelligent Opus model.

Subjects: AI, Legal Research

Trapped in Darkness: Women in Europe remain defenseless against gender-based violence

A new cross-border data investigation by the European Journalism Network reveals gaps in the registration of femicides in Europe and the ineffective protection of women against crimes of sexual, physical, psychological and economic violence over the last decade. Reporting by Janine Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios, and Kostas Zafeiropoulos.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Comparative/Foreign Law, Criminal Law, Legal Research

AI in Banking and Finance, March 17, 2024

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free [unpaywalled] versions. Five highlights from this post: How AI is reshaping banking; The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Algorithms; Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs; ChatGPT and Corporate Policies; and How Artificial Intelligence Could Start To Boost Crypto Crime: Chainalysis.

Subjects: AI in Banking and Finance, Cryptocurrency, Cybersecurity, International Legal Research, Legal Research, Legislative

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 16, 2024

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras; How Fraudsters Break Into Social Security Accounts and Steal Benefits; 10 free cybersecurity guides you might have missed; Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?; and Driving fast or braking hard? Your connected car may be telling your insurance company.

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Financial System, Government Resources, Healthcare, Privacy, Securities Law