Tuesday, July 31, 2018
New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.”
from Feed: All Latest https://ift.tt/2uVOdZU
from Feed: All Latest https://ift.tt/2uVOdZU
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Unknown
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
No comments
Whether you're looking for a discounted 4K TV or an affordable Apple Watch, we have deals for you.
from Feed: All Latest https://ift.tt/2OmcfFw
from Feed: All Latest https://ift.tt/2OmcfFw
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
The first look at the ride-hail company’s newest line of business, courtesy of the ‘gram.
from Feed: All Latest https://ift.tt/2uXLOhb
from Feed: All Latest https://ift.tt/2uXLOhb
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- BBC WORLD NEWS
- No comments
Not everyone sticks to the standard out-of-office reply - we take a look at the more unusual ones.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2M4q3D2
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2M4q3D2
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- FINANCIAL NEWS
- No comments
from Stock Market News https://ift.tt/2vlnpBz
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- BBC WORLD NEWS
- No comments
Journalist Mannir Dan Ali considers the Nigerian president's chances of re-election after the loss of key allies.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2AppbHX
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2AppbHX
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- FINANCIAL NEWS
- No comments
from Stock Market News https://ift.tt/2K6JucF
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- BBC WORLD NEWS
- No comments
Thousands of tweets document racism in German schools, housing and jobs.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OrUK6N
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OrUK6N
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- STOCK MARKET NEWS
- No comments
Hi everyone! I am looking for a good Forex broker who allows crypto deposits and trading as well. Can you please provide me your suggestions.
from Aussie Stock Forums https://ift.tt/2AqPnl9
from Aussie Stock Forums https://ift.tt/2AqPnl9
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- STOCK MARKET NEWS
- No comments
In Warren Buffett’s 1965 partnership letter, he gave us a glimpse on how to think about capital allocation:
“The question always is, “How much do I put in number one (ranked by expectation of relative performance) and how much do I put in number eight?” This depends to a great degree on the wideness of the spread between the mathematical expectation of number one versus number eight. It also depends upon the probability that number one could turn in a really poor...
An Effective Capital Allocator
from Aussie Stock Forums https://ift.tt/2mYogEN
“The question always is, “How much do I put in number one (ranked by expectation of relative performance) and how much do I put in number eight?” This depends to a great degree on the wideness of the spread between the mathematical expectation of number one versus number eight. It also depends upon the probability that number one could turn in a really poor...
An Effective Capital Allocator
from Aussie Stock Forums https://ift.tt/2mYogEN
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- STOCK MARKET NEWS
- No comments
Just interested to hear some perspectives for CBA at the present time?
I recently bought 100 shares at $74.30 and was attracted by the dividend growth. But since buying it, I am concerned with headwinds such as the possible mortgage crisis with a potential rates increase. Further, their future capital growth increases.
I have a long hold strategy with my shares, but this is my first bank purchase.
Thoughts?
from Aussie Stock Forums https://ift.tt/2As2GSs
I recently bought 100 shares at $74.30 and was attracted by the dividend growth. But since buying it, I am concerned with headwinds such as the possible mortgage crisis with a potential rates increase. Further, their future capital growth increases.
I have a long hold strategy with my shares, but this is my first bank purchase.
Thoughts?
from Aussie Stock Forums https://ift.tt/2As2GSs
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
Is Hailey Baldwin going to be a bridezilla? We've got details on if she's going to let Justin Bieber handle their wedding plans and what she'd like to happen on their big day.
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2v3Dahf
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- FASHION NEWS
- No comments
Second-quarter sales rose by 15 percent to 1.05 billion euros driven by footwear, slowing from a 21 percent jump in the first quarter.
from The Business of Fashion https://ift.tt/2uQ9iVH
from The Business of Fashion https://ift.tt/2uQ9iVH
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
The start of something new! In the season 8 premiere, Josiah Duggar enters into courtship with family friend Lauren Swanson-- and you'll never guess the sweet way he asked her!
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2v4osql
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
Selena Gomez is coming to terms with her ex Justin Bieber's shocking engagement to Hailey Baldwin and she's ready for them to say 'I do' in the near future. Find out why she hopes they're ready to walk down the aisle sooner rather than later.
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2K8TO3S
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
It's not a matter of if but when Alex Rodriguez proposes to girlfriend Jennifer Lopez. We've got details on how he planning for the perfect time to pop the question.
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2LBIFOx
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
In an unprecedented move, complete control has been handed over from 'Vogue' Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour to Beyonce for the magazine's legendary September cover, and she's already switching things up.
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2LOQKi8
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
Brandy once again caused major speculation that she was pregnant when she appeared on the July 30 episode of 'Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood' in big loose clothing and it's sparked a huge uproar on Twitter.
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2NWcKFa
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- OTHER NEWS
- No comments
Jenelle Evans claims she's being courted by Netflix and if MTV doesn't rehire her husband David for next season, she'll leave 'Teen Mom 2' forever. Get all the details, here!
from Hollywood Life https://ift.tt/2M2rp0V
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
After the revelation that MoviePass borrowed $5 million to keep its service up and running last week, things aren’t looking good.
MoviePass subscribers, myself included, were met on Monday with a blank screen where their choice of screening should be. Navigating around dozens of theaters only shows a message that “There are no more screenings at this theater today.”
Twitter noticed too, and people are starting to sound the death knell for the beleaguered monthly movie subscription service. Some MoviePass theaters that offer e-ticketing still appear to have available showings according to Twitter users, but that doesn’t appear to be true across the board.
Plenty of companies fail, but few flail so publicly before doing so. MoviePass has dragged its subscribers on for its own apparent financial rollercoaster ride, switching pricing schemes around with bizarre frequency, adding surprise fees and suffering repeated outages.
On Monday, stock for MoviePass parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY) plunged by a rather bleak 60 percent.
Competing services from Sinemia and AMC are moving into the space with seemingly less doomed business models, so for frequent moviegoers, that’s something to watch. Unfortunately, jumping ship from MoviePass is easier said than done, as many users have reported problems cancelling the service. (For the record, I just tried to cancel my subscription through the Android app and my own cancellation would not go through.)
Given the service’s unreliability and apparently shady cancellation practices, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear the FTC and other consumer protection groups getting involved.
Is this the end? Has MoviePass burned through its last stack of cash? Is it just a really popular day at the movies? The company hasn’t tweeted or provided any official updates yet, but if this isn’t the end, then it’s certainly near.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2v2ob7n
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
Uber is shuttering its self-driving trucks unit, a beleaguered program borne out of the company’s controversial multi-million acquisition of Otto nearly two years ago.
The company said Monday that Uber Advanced Technologies Group will stop development of self-driving trucks and instead focus its efforts on self-driving cars.
“We recently took the important step of returning to public roads in Pittsburgh, and as we look to continue that momentum, we believe having our entire team’s energy and expertise focused on this effort is the best path forward,” Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group, said in an emailed statement.
Uber Freight, a business unit that helps truck drivers connect with shipping companies, is unaffected by this decision. Uber Freight, which launched in May 2017, is designed for vetted and approved drivers, who can use it to find nearby available loads and see destination info, distance required and payment upfront. If the drivers like what they see, they can tap to book.
Uber Freight, which started in three regions, is now available throughout the continental U.S. And it is considered a viable and promising business (and revenue opportunity) within the company. The business unit has expanded threefold in the past 15 months and has offices in San Francisco and Chicago.
“Rather than having two groups working side by side, focused on different vehicle platforms, I want us instead collaborating as one team, according to an email reviewed by TechCrunch that was sent by Meyhofer to employees. “I know we’re all super proud of what the Trucks team has accomplished, and we continue to see the incredible promise of self-driving technology applied to moving freight across the country. But we believe delivering on self-driving for passenger applications first, and then bringing it to freight applications down the line, is the best path forward. For now, we need the focus of one team, with one clear objective.”
Uber’s self-driving trucks unit is based in San Francisco, while the team dedicated to self-driving cars is located in Pittsburgh. Uber says it will pivot employees focused on self-driving trucks to other work that supports its ongoing development of self-driving technology. If there isn’t a comparable role, Uber will offer relocation to Pittsburgh or a separation package to support the transition.
Uber ATG is going to continue to investigate approaches to highway driving using the car platform, and is going to keep its relationship with truck manufacturers intact. The company may return to self-driving trucks, but only after it has developed the foundation of the self-driving system.
Uber ATG will continue its in-house development of light detection and ranging radar known as LiDAR. This technology, which would later be at the heart of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D maps of the world around the car.
Uber’s self-driving truck efforts have been plagued by controversy since its beginning. Uber bought Otto, the self-driving trucks startup founded by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski and three others, including Lior Ron, who was head of product at Google Maps, in August 2016 for $680 million. (Later reports suggest the actual payout might have been as low as $220 million.)
As part of the acquisition, Levandowski became head of Uber’s self-driving car research.
Two months later, the company enjoyed a moment of glory that received a lot of media attention: a self-driving truck that drove 120 highway miles along a route in Colorado with a trailer full of Budweiser.
But the buzz around the size of the Otto deal and its self-driving truck run in Colorado would soon be replaced with a different, more unwelcoming kind of attention.
Nine months after the acquisition, Uber was embroiled in a trade secrets lawsuit with Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet. Waymo accused Levandowski of hatching a plan to use trade secrets related to Waymo’s in-house development of LiDAR tech and use it to kickstart Otto and ultimately, Uber’s own self-driving technology program.
The lawsuit, filed against Otto and its parent company Uber in February 2017, alleged patent infringement and stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit made a number of allegations specifically against Levandowski, including that he downloaded more than 14,000 confidential and proprietary files shortly before his resignation. Waymo contended that Otto and Uber were using key parts of its self-driving technology, specifically related to LiDAR.
Uber would later fire Levandowski. However, the polarizing star engineer isn’t out of the self-driving trucks game just yet. TechCrunch uncovered that Levandowski was behind Kache.ai, a self-driving trucks company that is still in stealth mode.
The case did go to trial in February 2018. Before a jury could weigh in, the two parties reached a settlement agreement. Uber agreed to not incorporate Waymo’s confidential information into their hardware and software. Uber also agreed to pay a financial settlement that includes 0.34 percent of Uber equity, per its Series G-1 round $72 billion valuation. In other words, Waymo got about $244.8 million in Uber equity.
Uber ATG has had other existential struggles in recent months. The unit has suffered a number of departures. The other three Otto founders left, including Don Burnette, who, with Paz Eshel, formerly of Battery Ventures, in April founded an autonomous vehicle company called Kodiak Robotics.
In March, and just six weeks after settling with Waymo, an Uber self-driving test vehicle was involved in a tragic fatal accident in Tempe, Ariz. Uber halted all of its autonomous vehicle operations March 19, the day after one of its vehicles struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in the Phoenix suburb. Uber was testing its self-driving vehicles on public roads in Tempe, Ariz., where the accident occurred, as well as in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.
Uber’s decision to shut down its self-driving trucks operation comes just a week after the company put its autonomous vehicles back on Pittsburgh’s city streets. For now, Uber’s modified self-driving Volvo XC90 vehicles will only be driven manually by humans and under a new set of safety standards that includes real-time monitoring of its test drivers and efforts to beef up simulation.
This manual-first rollout is a step toward Uber’s ultimate goal to relaunch its autonomous vehicle testing program in Pittsburgh.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2M2ATcM
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
As the economy has chugged along, so have retail sales, which last year capped their strongest year since 2014. Online sales have been especially brisk, growing 16 percent between 2016 and 2017 alone, according to the U.S. Commerce Department, which estimates that consumers spent $453.5 billion online last year.
Of course, with every booming market comes supporting cast members that benefit. Such is the case with eight-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based Optoro, which itself just rang up $75 million in new funding. A logistics company, Optoro’s software helps retailers — both online and off — more easily re-sell inventory that has been returned by customers.
That’s a big number. The overall amount of merchandise returned as a percent of total sales last year was 10 percent in 2017, according to the National Retail Federation. In dollars, that’s $351 billion.
Right now, that includes sales from big box retailers and many other “legacy” companies that allow shoppers to buy items — and return them — in their stores. But as online sales rise, so do online returns. Indeed, Optoro co-founder and CEO Tobin Moore tells the WSJ that the “return rate from e-commerce sales is two to three times the return rate of brick-and-mortar” and “sometimes higher in fashion and apparel.” And with most retailers also paying for shipping on returns — after all, a happy customer is a repeat customer — it’s a major logistics cost for these online brands.
Little wonder that Optoro, which uses data analytics and multi-channel online marketing to determine the best path for each item (ostensibly maximizing recovery and reducing environmental waste in the process) is a hit with a growing base of customers.
A growing number of investors is getting behind the company, too. Optoro’s newest round was led by Franklin Templeton Investments, but the company has now raised at least $200 million altogether, including from Revolution Growth, Generation Investment Management, Grotech Ventures and even the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2LKS4T7
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
Google is injecting a little Chrome into its VR platform, bringing the web browser to Daydream headsets, the company announced today. It’s been a long time coming considering the depths of Google’s WebVR experimentation on desktop and mobile Chrome.
The Mountain View tech giant announced it was working on this quite a while ago, back at I/O 2017.
Google has been moving pretty slowly with any big Daydream updates lately, all while Facebook’s Oculus has driven heavy news to its mobile platform thanks to new standalone hardware. Daydream rolled out its own positionally-tracked headset with Lenovo earlier this summer but a major lack of content has been the system’s biggest issue. Bringing the web to Daydream could help correct this, and directing more mobile developer attention to WebVR might be a positive move for Google as it looks to make content discovery more simple.
Last year, the company made it so that you could open WebVR content in mobile Chrome on your phone and then drop it into a Cardboard headset and check out the content, with this you’ll be able to launch inside VR, explore inside VR and then move onto something else.
Loading desktop webpages inside a VR headset doesn’t necessarily seem earth-shatteringly disruptive but there are some optimizations Google has ensured that some non-WebVR content gets special treatment including a “cinema mode” that drops videos into a special environment to keep your eyes on the content. You’ll also get incognito mode, voice search and access to your saved bookmarks.
The browser is available for Lenovo’s Mirage Solo as well as Google’s own Daydream View headset and you’ll gain access after updating Chrome on Android.
The web is largely still an untested wilderness for virtual reality that nobody is racing to conquer given headset volume is still pretty low and a lot of wind has been sucked out of VR’s sails lately. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that the web enables for virtual social environments especially and though most major powers are drawing attention to their own platforms, a platform like Chrome arriving on Daydream could start to spark some developer imagination for what’s possible.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2vh83y9
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
Google is promoting its top lawyer, Kent Walker, into a global policy position, CNBC reports. Walker, Google SVP and general counsel, has already been a public voice in the company’s recent privacy tangles, but will move into a formal role as senior vice president of global affairs, overseeing Google’s policy, trust and safety, corporate philanthropy and legal teams.
Last year, Walker joined Richard Salgado, Google’s Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security, to head to Capitol Hill for the first round of reckoning on big tech’s failure to mitigate political disinformation campaigns during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Since then, Walker has commented publicly on Google’s policies around political ad transparency and extremist content on YouTube, among other policy issues facing the company. With social platforms at an ethical crossroads globally and tech chafing at its newly forced compliance with international privacy laws, any public-facing global policy role will be very much in the spotlight in 2018 and beyond.
Google hired Walker away from eBay in 2006, where he served as the company’s deputy general counsel. Prior to his time at eBay (and AOL, prior to that), Walker was an assistant U.S. attorney with the Department of Justice.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2LzoOiU
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
Gripping something with your hand is one of the first things you learn to do as an infant, but it’s far from a simple task, and only gets more complex and variable as you grow up. This complexity makes it difficult for machines to teach themselves to do, but researchers at Elon Musk and Sam Altman-backed OpenAI have created a system that not only holds and manipulates objects much like a human does, but developed these behaviors all on its own.
Many robots and robotic hands are already proficient at certain grips or movements — a robot in a factory can wield a bolt gun even more dexterously than a person. But the software that lets that robot do that task so well is likely to be hand-written and extremely specific to the application. You couldn’t for example, give it a pencil and ask it to write. Even something on the same production line, like welding, would require a whole new system.
Yet for a human, picking up an apple isn’t so different from pickup up a cup. There are differences, but our brains automatically fill in the gaps and we can improvise a new grip, hold an unfamiliar object securely and so on. This is one area where robots lag severely behind their human models. And furthermore, you can’t just train a bot to do what a human does — you’d have to provide millions of examples to adequately show what a human would do with thousands of given objects.
The solution, OpenAI’s researchers felt, was not to use human data at all. Instead, they let the computer try and fail over and over in a simulation, slowly learning how to move its fingers so that the object in its grasp moves as desired.
The system, which they call Dactyl, was provided only with the positions of its fingers and three camera views of the object in-hand — but remember, when it was being trained, all this data is simulated, taking place in a virtual environment. There, the computer doesn’t have to work in real time — it can try a thousand different ways of gripping an object in a few seconds, analyzing the results and feeding that data forward into the next try. (The hand itself is a Shadow Dexterous Hand, which is also more complex than most robotic hands.)
In addition to different objects and poses the system needed to learn, there were other randomized parameters, like the amount of friction the fingertips had, the colors and lighting of the scene and more. You can’t simulate every aspect of reality (yet), but you can make sure that your system doesn’t only work in a blue room, on cubes with special markings on them.
They threw a lot of power at the problem: 6144 CPUs and 8 GPUs, “collecting about one hundred years of experience in 50 hours.” And then they put the system to work in the real world for the first time — and it demonstrated some surprisingly human-like behaviors.
The things we do with our hands without even noticing, like turning an apple around to check for bruises or passing a mug of coffee to a friend, use lots of tiny tricks to stabilize or move the object. Dactyl recreated several of them, for example holding the object with a thumb and single finger while using the rest to spin to the desired orientation.
What’s great about this system is not just the naturalness of its movements and that they were arrived at independently by trial and error, but that it isn’t tied to any particular shape or type of object. Just like a human, Dactyl can grip and manipulate just about anything you put in its hand, within reason of course.
This flexibility is called generalization, and it’s important for robots that must interact with the real world. It’s impossible to hand-code separate behaviors for every object and situation in the world, but a robot that can adapt and fill in the gaps while relying on a set of core understandings can get by.
As with OpenAI’s other work, the paper describing the results is freely available, as are some of the tools they used to create and test Dactyl.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2mTTVqD
- Tuesday, July 31, 2018
- Unknown
- TECHNOLOGY NEWS
- No comments
A meaty first report by the UK parliamentary committee that’s been running an inquiry into online disinformation since fall 2017, including scrutinizing how people’s personal information was harvested from social media services like Facebook and used for voter profiling and the targeting of campaign ads — and whose chair, Damian Collins — is a member of the UK’s governing Conservative Party, contains one curious omission.
Among the many issues the report raises are privacy concerns related to a campaign app developed by a company called uCampaign — which, much like the scandal-hit (and now seemingly defunct) Cambridge Analytica, worked for both the Ted Cruz for President and the Donald J Trump for President campaigns — although in its case it developed apps for campaigns to distribute to supporters to gamify digital campaigning via a tool which makes it easy for them to ‘socialize’ (i.e. share with contacts) campaign messaging and materials.
The committee makes a passing reference to uCampaign in a section of its report which deals with “data targeting” and the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal, specifically — where it writes [emphasis ours]:
There have been data privacy concerns raised about another campaign tool used, but not developed, by AIQ [Aggregate IQ: Aka, a Canadian data firm which worked for Cambridge Analytica and which remains under investigation by privacy watchdogs in the UK, Canada and British Columbia]. A company called uCampaign has a mobile App that employs gamification strategy to political campaigns. Users can win points for campaign activity, like sending text messages and emails to their contacts and friends. The App was used in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and by Vote Leave during the Brexit Referendum.
The developer of the uCampaign app, Vladyslav Seryakov, is an Eastern Ukrainian military veteran who trained in computer programming at two elite Soviet universities in the late 1980s. The main investor in uCampaign is the American hedge fund magnate Sean Fieler, who is a close associate of the billionaire backer of SCL and Cambridge Analytica, Robert Mercer. An article published by Business Insider on 7 November 2016 states: “If users download the App and agree to share their address books, including phone numbers and emails, the App then shoots the data [to] a third-party vendor, which looks for matches to existing voter file information that could give clues as to what may motivate that specific voter. Thomas Peters, whose company uCampaign created Trump’s app, said the App is “going absolutely granular”, and will—with permission—send different A/B tested messages to users’ contacts based on existing information.”
What’s curious is that Collins’ Conservative Party also has a campaign app built by — you guessed it! — uCampaign, which the party launched in September 2017.
While there is nothing on the iOS and Android app store listings for the Conservative Campaigner app to identify uCampaign as its developer, if you go directly to uCampaign’s website the company lists the UK Conservative Party as one of it’s clients — alongside other rightwing political parties and organizations such as the (pro-gun) National Rife Association; the (anti-abortion) SBA List; and indeed the UK’s Vote Leave (Brexit) campaign, (the latter) as the DCMS report highlights.
uCampaign’s involvement as the developer of the Conservative Campaigner app was also confirmed to us (in June) by the (now former) deputy director & head of digital strategy for The Conservative Party, Anthony Hind, who — according to his LinkedIn profile — also headed up the party’s online marketing, between mid 2015 and, well, the middle of this month.
But while, in his initial response to us, Hind readily confirmed he was personally involved in the procurement of uCampaign as the developer of the Conservative Campaigner app, he failed to respond to any of our subsequent questions — including when we raised specific concerns about the privacy policy that the app had been using, prior to May 23 (just before the EU’s new GDPR data protection framework came into force on May 25 — a time when many apps updated their privacy polices as a compliance precaution related to the new data protection standard).
Since May 23 the privacy policy for the Conservative Campaigner app has pointed to the Conservative Party’s own privacy policy. However prior to May 23 the privacy policy was a literal (branded) copy-paste of uCampaign’s own privacy policy. (We know because we were tipped to it by a source — and verified this for ourselves.)
Here’s a screengrab of the exchange we had with Hind over LinkedIn — including his sole reply:
What looks rather awkward for the Conservative Party — and indeed for Collins, as DCMS committee chair, given the valid “privacy concerns” his report has raised around the use (and misuse/abuse) of data for political targeting — is that uCampaign’s privacy policy has, shall we say, a verrrrry ‘liberal’ attitude to sharing the personal data of app users (and indeed of any of their contacts it would have been able to harvest from their devices).
Here’s a taster of the data-sharing permissions this U.S. company affords itself over its clients’ users’ data [emphasis ours] — according to its own privacy policy:
CAMPAIGNS YOU SUPPORT AND ALIGNED ORGANIZATIONS
We will share your Personal Information with third party campaigns selected by you via the Platform. In addition, we may share your Personal Information with other organizations, groups, causes, campaigns, political organizations, and our clients that we believe have similar viewpoints, principles or objectives as us.
UCAMPAIGN FRIENDS
We may share your Personal Information with other users of the Platform, for example if they connect their address book to our services, or if they invite you to use our services via the Platform.
BUSINESS TRANSFERS
We may share your Personal Information with other entities affiliated with us for internal reasons, primarily for business and operational purposes. uCampaign, or any of its assets, including the Platform, may be sold, or other transactions may occur in which your Personal Information is one of the business assets of the transaction. In such case, your Personal Information may be transferred.
To spell it out, the Conservative Party paid for a campaign app that could, according to the privacy policy it had in place prior to May 23, have shared supporters’ personal data with organizations that uCampaign’s owners — who the DCMS committee states have close links to “the billionaire backer of SCL and Cambridge Analytica, Robert Mercer” — view as ideologically affiliated with their objectives, whatsoever those entities might be.
Funnily enough, the Conservative Party appears to have tried to scrub out some of its own public links to uCampaign — such as changing link for the developer website on the app listing page for the Conservative Campaigner app to the Conservative Party’s own website (whereas before it linked through to uCampaign’s own website).
As the veteran UK satirical magazine Private Eye might well say — just fancy that!
One of the listed “features” of the Conservative Campaigner app urges Tory supporters to: “Invite your friends to join you on the app!”. If any did, their friends’ data would have been sucked up by uCampaign too to further causes of its choosing.
The version of the Campaigner app listed on Google Play is reported to have 1,000+ installs (iOS does not offer any download ranges for apps) — which, while not in itself a very large number, could represent exponentially larger amounts of personal data should users’ contacts have been synced with the app where they would have been harvested by uCampaign.
We did flag the link between uCampaign and the Conservative Campaigner app directly to the DCMS committee’s press office — ahead of the publication of its report, on June 12, when we wrote:
The matter of concern here is that the Conservative party could itself be an unwitting a source of targeting data for rival political organizations, via an app that appears to offer almost no limits on what can be done with personal data.Prior to the last update of the Conservative Campaigner app the privacy policy was simply the boilerplate uCampaign T&Cs — which allow the developer to share app users personal info (and phone book contacts) with “other organizations, groups, causes, campaigns, political organizations, and our clients that we believe have similar viewpoints, principles or objectives as us”.That’s incredibly wide-ranging.So every user’s phone book contacts (potentially hundreds of individuals per user) could have been passed to multiple unidentified organizations without people’s knowledge or consent. (Other uCampaign apps have been built for the NRA, and for anti-abortion organizations, for example.)uCampaign‘s T&Cs are here: https://ucampaignapp.com/privacy.html Even the current T&Cs allow for sharing with US suppliers.Given the committee’s very public concerns about access to people’s data for political targeting purposes I am keen to know whether Mr Collins has any concerns about the use of uCampaign‘s app infrastructure by the Conservative party?And also whether he is concerned about the lack of a robust data protection policy by his own party to ensure that valuable membership data is not simply passed around to unknown and unconnected entities — perhaps abroad, perhaps not — with zero regard for or accountability to the individuals in question.
Unfortunately this email (and a follow up) to the DCMS committee, asking for a response from Collins to our privacy concerns, went unanswered.
It’s also worth noting that the Conservative Party’s own privacy policy (which it’s now using for its Campaigner app) is pretty generous vis-a-vis the permissions it’s granting itself over sharing supporters’ data — including stating that it shares data with:
- The wider Conservative Party
- Business associates and professional advisers
- Suppliers
- Service providers
- Financial organisations – such as credit card payment providers
- Political organisations
- Elected representatives
- Regulatory bodies
- Market researchers
- Healthcare and welfare organisations
- Law enforcement agencies
The UK’s data watchdog recently found fault with pretty much all of the UK political parties’ when it comes to handling of voter data — saying it had sent warning letters to 11 political parties and also issued notices compelling them to agree to audits of their data protection practices.
Safe to say, it’s not just private companies that have been sticking their hand in the personal data cookie jar in recent years — the political establishment is facing plenty of awkward questions as regulators unpick where and how data has been flowing.
This is also not the only awkward story re: data privacy concerns related to a Tory political app. Earlier this year the then-minister in charge of the digital brief, Matt Hancock, launched a self-promotional, self-branded app intended for his constituents to keep up with news about Matt Hancock MP.
However the developers of the app (Disciple Media) initially uploaded the wrong privacy policy — and were forced to issue an amended version which did not grant the minister such non-specific and oddly toned rights to users’ data — such as that the app “may disclose your personal information to the Publisher, the Publisher’s management company, agent, rights image company, the Publisher’s record label or publisher (as applicable) and any other third parties, for use in conjunction with additional user promotions or offers they may run from time to time or in relation to the sale of other goods and services”.
Of course the Matt Hancock App was a PR initiative of (and funded by) an individual Conservative MP — rather than a formal campaign tool paid for by the Conservative Party and intended for use by hundreds (or even thousands) of Party activists for use during election campaigns.
So while there are two issues of Tory-related privacy concern here, only one loops back to the Conservative Party political organization itself.
from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2LOH2MJ
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
