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第12回衆議院議員選挙区画定審議会

令和3年長野県茅野市において発生した土石流による被害に係る普通交付税（11月定例交付分）の繰上げ交付

「消費者保護ルールの在り方に関する検討会報告書2021（案）」に対する意見募集の結果及び「消費者保護ルールの在り方に関する検討会報告書2021」の公表並びに「携帯電話販売代理店に関する情報提供窓口」の設置

「接続料の算定等に関する研究会」第五次報告書の公表

ソフトバンク株式会社による携帯電話不正利用防止法違反に係る是正命令

地域コミュニティに関する研究会（第2回）

武田総務大臣閣議後記者会見の概要

情報通信審議会　電気通信事業政策部会　電気通信番号政策委員会（第30回）配付資料・議事録

許諾推定規定のガイドラインの策定に関する検討会（第4回）

情報通信審議会　情報通信技術分科会　IPネットワーク設備委員会（第69回）

　東京五輪のボランティアは楽しかった。だからこそ、後ろめたい気持ちで参加するのではなく、忌憚なく堪能できるタイミングで開催してほしかったと改めて思う。　ボランティアに応募したのは、一生に一度のイベントに興味があり、未知の世界の内側をのぞいて多くの人と交流したいと考えたからだ。コロナ禍での開催に不安は募ったが、逆に「こういう状況だからこそ運営の様子を間近で見ておくべきだ」との結論に至った。　私の役割は「移動サポート」。要するに運転手で、外国を中心とする関係団体の役員クラスが無料..

Aid agencies, humanitarian organisations and other international actors operating within Afghanistan, as well as private sector vendors who supply and service digital identity, are urgently called to safeguard digital identity and biometric databases created in Afghanistan.

This post has been updated to provide additional context about patents and patent applications, which are indications of an entity’s interest in a particular product but not proof that the product is currently in development or available for use. You can read more about the role of patents in this series in our post, “The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Patents Aren't Products (Yet)”

No matter how many rights are taken away from people in prison, no matter how brutally they are treated, the prison industrial complex hasn’t stopped concocting new ways to extract money from prisoners and their families. Securus, in one of their newest patents, granted February of 2021, has imagined a new tool for doing just that: using a tablet issued to individual inmates to allow them to make video calls, access information about their case, and give them the opportunity to pay money for temporary access to video games. 

Just because you are in prison doesn’t mean you get a pardon from microtransactions and the insatiable maw of capitalism.

Importantly, patents often precede the actual development or deployment of a technology. Though applications may demonstrate an interest in advancing a particular technology, these intentions don’t always progress beyond the proposal, and many inventions that are described in patent applications don't wind up being built. What we can glean from a patent application is that the company is thinking about the technology and that it might be coming down the pipeline.

In this case, the tablet being dreamed up would be useful for more than just extracting money from prisoners. Securus proposes that it can also be used as a biometric surveillance device. According to the patent: 

“the monitoring system may be configured to collect sensor information from the resident communications device in order to detect unsafe conditions during a gaming session. For instance, the monitoring system may collect sensor information from the resident communications device indicating a level of stress or agitation by the resident during game play. One or more gyroscope sensors included within the resident communications device may be used to detect unsafe handling of the resident communications device. Heart rate and blood pressure information detected by sensors worn by the resident may be transmitted via RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to the resident communications device.”

If the sensors and biometrics in such a handheld device could be used as an indicator of a prisoner’s mood, it’s possible that those observations could be used for other prisoner evaluations. We could imagine a scenario in which a prisoner’s excitement or anger while playing a  game is misused by the system to determine that the prisoner is uncooperative or a recidivism risk. Perhaps prisons may even use this data in parole hearings or when deciding to give punishments/rewards to prisoners. If Securus, or any company, were to develop a gaming device with such mood monitoring, your “gamer moment” in the digital world could be used as more cause for more punishments in the real one.

Following the publication of this post, Aventiv, the parent company of Securus, provided a statement to EFF that said it is “committed to protecting the civil liberties of all those who use our products” and that the company is “reviewing all open patents to certify that they align with our transformation efforts.”

Global Tel-Link

The gaming world is also potentially lucrative ground for another prison telecommunication company, Global Tel-Link, which has filed a patent for a virtual reality (VR) service for prison inmates. It would, according to their own description, allow the prisoner to, “for a brief time, imagine himself outside or away from the controlled environment.”  

According to the patent, Global Tel-Link envisions this prison VR system as supplementing, or entirely replacing, in-person visits so that inmates could interact with friends and family in a controlled and monitored virtual environment. We imagine Global Tel-Link would presumably charge for this service in the same way it charges for all of its other prison  communications products.

But prison inmates aren’t the only ones subject to monitoring and technological “assistance” from Global Tel-Link. The company has also filed a patent for Augmented Reality to assist and surveil the prison guards: essentially “Google Glass: Prison Edition.”

An image from the patent, Global Tel-Link’s AR device patent

According to the patent, Global Tel-Link’s AR device worn by guards would have myriad functions. It would be able to perform facial recognition on inmates and display vital details such as their name and history. It also purports to display the location of any rogue radio frequency signals that could indicate contraband cell phones. Further, it reportedly has object detection powers, and can highlight any dangerous or contraband objects such as weapons or open doors which should be closed. 

The patent is particularly troubling because AR already has many potential privacy problems created by their always-on cameras and other monitoring devices. AR systems’ civil liberties problems would be heightened if they are used in prisons, given that incarcerated individuals already have much less privacy and autonomy than people in public.

The patent also describes how the AR devices could be used to track prison guards. Global Tel-Link states: “In some situations, activities of guards lack monitoring, giving some staff/guards the opportunity to get involved in importation of contraband goods into the controlled environment.” 

Who watches the watchers? Apparently Global Tel-Link does. The company declined to comment for this post.

GTL’s proposed system described in the patent could also monitor whether prison guards are staying on task. According to the patent, the AR system “stores ... a set of criteria defining whether a monitored activity is determined as ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal.’ For example, the set of criteria includes the time range to complete an assignment, the designed path for an assignment, the dwelling time at one location, the heart rate range, the regular presence locations of inmates, etc.”

We are skeptical about the ability of Global Tel-Link to fit so many advanced technologies into a wearable device, especially at a price that will be comfortable to the owners of public and private prisons. However, if the company is able to build its patent, the result would be that prison guards would join incarcerated people under the omnipresent eye of the panopticon.

Demonstrations Planned at Apple Stores in San Francisco, Boston, Portland, and Atlanta

San Francisco—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activists will lead a protest on Monday, September 13, at 6 pm PT, demanding Apple drop its planned iPhone surveillance software program, which will endanger the privacy and security of its customers and open a backdoor to increased surveillance around the world.

Demonstrators from EFF and Fight For the Future (FFTF) will rally in front of Apple’s flagship store to send a message to the iPhone giant that the program, a shocking about-face for users who have relied on the company’s leadership in privacy and security, must be cancelled.

To make sure that Apple gets the message that encryption is simply too important to give up on, EFF will also be sending it straight to Apple's headquarters—by flying an aerial banner over the campus during their September 14 iPhone launch event.

“Users want the devices they have purchased to work for them—not to spy on them for others,” said Joe Mullin, a policy analyst on EFF’s activism team who will speak at Monday’s protest. “Delaying the program is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. Apple needs to take the next step to protect its users and abandon the program.”

Protests at Apple Stores, organized by EFF, FFTF, and OpenMedia, are planned in Boston, Portland, Atlanta, and other cities. A map of the locations can be found at https://www.nospyphone.com/#map.

EFF and partners have delivered petitions with 60,000 signatures telling Apple not to scan customers’ phones. In addition, EFF joined the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and more than 90 other organizations in sending a letter urging Apple CEO Tim Cook to stop the company’s plans to weaken privacy and security on Apple’s iPhones and other products.

The iPhone surveillance software will continuously scan user photos to compare them to a secret government-created database of child abuse images. The parental notification scanner uses on-device machine learning to scan messages, then informs a third party, which breaks the promise of end-to-end encryption. Apple’s new surveillance infrastructure will be all too easy for governments to redirect to greater surveillance and censorship.

What:
Don’t Scan Our Phones Protest

Speaker:
EFF Policy Analyst Joe Mullin

Where:
Apple Store
300 Post Street
San Francisco CA 94108

When:
Monday, September 13
6 pm PT

For more about Apple's program:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life

Contact:  JoeMullinPolicy Analystjoe@eff.org

headless 曰く、昨年 6 月 14 日に上海発台北行きチャイナエアライン 202 便のエアバス A330 型機で発生したインシデントについて、台湾国家運輸安全調査委員会 (TTSB) が最終報告書を公開している (ニュースリリース、 報告書: PDF、 The Register の記事、 The Aviation Herald の記事)。 このインシデントでは A330 が台北松山空港の滑走路に接地した直後、3 台のフライトコントロールプライマリコンピューター (FCPC) がほぼ同時に停止している。これによりグラウンドスポイラーや逆推力装置、オートブレーキがすべて使用できなくなった。問題を認識した機長がマニュアルブレーキを適用。3 秒後には副機長にもマニュアルブレーキを要請して 2 人でブレーキペダルをフルに踏み込み、機体は滑走路終端の 30 フィート手前で停止したとのこと。 FCPC が 3 台ほぼ同時に停止した理由として、TTSB ではコマンド / モニター系統の非同期性が非常に大きくなったことを挙げている。接地時には機体の水平制御が飛行用から地上用に切り替わって非同期性が大きくなるが、これにパイロットのペダル操作が加わって 2 系統の差が閾値を超えてしまったと考えられるという。その結果、FCPC1 が最初に停止し、制御の移動した FCPC2 と FCPC3 も次々に停止したとみられる。エアバスではこの問題に対処するソフトウェア改善を行っている。

すべて読む | セキュリティセクション | セキュリティ | ソフトウェア | バグ | 交通 |

関連ストーリー：
北米でリコール対象となった20ブランドの除湿器、すべて同じメーカー製 2021年08月10日
エチオピア航空のパイロット、目的地と間違えて開港前の新空港に着陸 2021年04月07日
米大統領専用機を運用する空軍基地、マウス耳の帽子をかぶった男性が5時間にわたってうろつく 2021年03月14日
Tesla、Tesla車で意図しない急加速が発生したという調査請求は虚偽だと反論 2020年01月24日
ボーイング737 NGで特定の滑走路へ計器進入する際にのみ発生する問題が確認される 2020年01月11日
航空機の操縦士、体調不良の原因は？ 2016年03月02日

headless 曰く、昨年 6 月 14 日に上海発台北行きチャイナエアライン 202 便のエアバス A330 型機で発生したインシデントについて、台湾国家運輸安全調査委員会 (TTSB) が最終報告書を公開している (ニュースリリース、 報告書: PDF、 The Register の記事、 The Aviation Herald の記事)。 このインシデントでは A330 が台北松山空港の滑走路に接地した直後、3 台のフライトコントロールプライマリコンピューター (FCPC) がほぼ同時に停止している。これによりグラウンドスポイラーや逆推力装置、オートブレーキがすべて使用できなくなった。問題を認識した機長がマニュアルブレーキを適用。3 秒後には副機長にもマニュアルブレーキを要請して 2 人でブレーキペダルをフルに踏み込み、機体は滑走路終端の 30 フィート手前で停止したとのこと。 FCPC が 3 台ほぼ同時に停止した理由として、TTSB ではコマンド / モニター系統の非同期性が非常に大きくなったことを挙げている。接地時には機体の水平制御が飛行用から地上用に切り替わって非同期性が大きくなるが、これにパイロットのペダル操作が加わって 2 系統の差が閾値を超えてしまったと考えられるという。その結果、FCPC1 が最初に停止し、制御の移動した FCPC2 と FCPC3 も次々に停止したとみられる。エアバスではこの問題に対処するソフトウェア改善を行っている。

すべて読む | セキュリティセクション | セキュリティ | ソフトウェア | バグ | 交通 |

関連ストーリー：
北米でリコール対象となった20ブランドの除湿器、すべて同じメーカー製 2021年08月10日
エチオピア航空のパイロット、目的地と間違えて開港前の新空港に着陸 2021年04月07日
米大統領専用機を運用する空軍基地、マウス耳の帽子をかぶった男性が5時間にわたってうろつく 2021年03月14日
Tesla、Tesla車で意図しない急加速が発生したという調査請求は虚偽だと反論 2020年01月24日
ボーイング737 NGで特定の滑走路へ計器進入する際にのみ発生する問題が確認される 2020年01月11日
航空機の操縦士、体調不良の原因は？ 2016年03月02日