Tech News

Researchers in China claim to be able to detect porn watching brain waves for the purpose of censorship. The helmet-like device can detect spikes in human brainwave patters when the watcher is presented with pornographic imagery.

In order to extend and automate the porn censorship that is already going on, Beijing Jiaotong University researchers developed the mind-reading helmet, which looks more like a shower cap covered in wires, to maximise the efficiency of it's current efforts. It's able to detect pornographic imagery with high accuracy, and is even able to filter through potentially detracting brain waves caused by emotional states, low energy levels, and random thoughts.

Researchers note that the technology worked almost every single time participants were presented with explicit imagery. However, it did trigger some false alarms leading to accuracy claims of 80%.

It's assumed that these will be tools to help porn appraisers do their jobs more effectively; rather than clicking through hundreds of images a day, assigning them either a pass or fail on the horny scale, they can be shown a bulk of images in quick succession, and the computer will use their brainwave data to do the rest.

Britain's cinemas are to introduce digital ID cards for adults and children as proof of age for entry to age restricted films.

The UK Cinema Association, which represents 90% of cinemas, will from Monday accept a digital ID app which confirms the age of an adult or child to box office staff based on a previously uploaded official ID document such as a passport.

The technology, developed by digital ID provider Yoti is part of a wider move towards digital IDs for adults and children where there are restrictions on age-related products.

The Home Office is trialling Yoti's AI facial photo checks that can estimate age and its apps at supermarket checkouts to prevent children buying alcohol. If successful, ministers will consider amending the law to allow digital age checks for alcohol sales. It is not allowed under current legislation.  About 3 million Brits have already downloaded the Yoti app.

To obtain the digital age ID app, the person has to prove identity with a document such as a passport then take a live picture to confirm. The information is stored in a government-grade database that Yoti  claims it does not have access to and which can be erased at any time by the individual. However it should be noted that similar systems used for online ID generally maintained a full database of usage supposedly for 'fraud prevention' auditing.

The digital ID card shows the verified photo of the individual and their age as over 18, 15 or 12. There is a hologram on the card that moves when the phone is tilted to prevent spoofing. However this suggests that phones will have to be handed over to cinema staff to check the hologram.

Apple is set to roll out a snooping feature that scans messages for nudity to UK iPhones.

The feature uses AI technology to scan incoming and outgoing messages.

For the moment it is otional and allows parents to turn on warnings for their children's iPhones. When enabled, all photos sent or received by the child using the Messages app will be scanned for nudity.

If nudity is found in photos received by a child with the setting turned on, the photo will be blurred, and the child will be warned that it may contain sensitive content and nudged towards resources from child safety groups. If nudity is found in photos sent by a child, similar protections kick in, and the child is encouraged not to send the images, and given an option to Message a Grown-Up.

All the scanning is carried out on-device, meaning that the images are analysed by the iPhone itself, and Apple never sees either the photos being analysed or the results of the analysis, it said.

As originally announced in summer 2021, the communication safety in Messages and the search warnings were part of a trio of features that proved extremely contentious, and Apple delayed the launch of all three while it negotiated with privacy and child safety groups.

Of course having implemented the feature as an option it won't be long before it becomes an option that can be turned on by law enforcement in the name of seeking out terrorists, racists, anti-vaxers etc

Scraping is a term used to describe the automated use of the html page data which is downloaded by a browser and then used to diplay a web page. Perhaps the most obvious example is to select a section of text on a web page and use copy and paste to insert the text into another place.

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals may have set an important precedent in the tech world. The court has essentially concluded that Data Scraping is not hacking. Hence, it might not be illegal to scrape data from websites, and social media platforms, unless there are defensive technologies in place.

After listening to the arguments in a case that involved Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and competitor hiQ Labs, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has concluded that scraping publicly available data does not constitute a federal crime. The case dates back to 2017 which LinkedIn had filed against hiQ Labs. The social media platform for professionals had objected to its data being scraped.

LinkedIn essentially wanted hiQ Labs to immediately cease scraping public data from the social networking site. During the first trial, the court sided with hiQ Labs, noting that LinkedIn couldn't invoke federal hacking laws to stop the practice. The court opinioned that hiQ Labs' behavior didn't seem to violate any laws, and hence, the company's actions could not be classified as a crime.

A defining feature of public websites is that their publicly available sections lack limitations on access; instead those sections are open to anyone with a web browser. In other words, applying the gates analogy to a computer hosting publicly available webpages, that computer has erected no gates to lift or lower in the first place. Simply put, had LinkedIn deployed mechanisms to prevent data from being scraped, hiQ Labs would have been in the wrong. However, since there were no restrictions, LinkedIn's insistence that hiQ Labs must cease its practice doesn't have any merit.