[31819] in RISKS Forum
Risks Digest 31.50
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (RISKS List Owner)
Sat Dec 14 03:10:03 2019
if/when finally machines become "as intelligent as human".
So the answer to the question "When will AI reach human intelligence?", for
a visitor of the early 20th century (actually, anyone over 50 years old) is
"they already have"; for a current observer, as Martin Ward notes, it will
always be "twenty years from now".
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Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 12:17:06 -0500 (EST)
From: Kelly Bert Manning <bo774@freenet.carleton.ca>
Subject: Re: DMVs profit by selling PII
I have seen Seattle TV stations saying that Washington state mails an
automated notice to the registered owner every time that vehicle
registration data is provided to a third party. That would make disclosure
more transparent than bulk transfer of data without notice and would give
voters what they need to influence legislators, or not if they feel that it
is no big deal.
In the late 1980s I discovered that the British Columbia Assessment
Authority was peddling the names of every home in BC, along with the names
of the 2 previous owners, with zero legislative or regulatory authority. The
only authority in the Assessment Act for 3rd party disclosure was when a
charge against the property existed, and expired when the lien or mortgage
was paid off.
I complained to the BC Ombudsman, as it was called then. They produced a
report:
https://www.bcombudsperson.ca/documents/access-information-and-privacy
The Social Credit (~USA Republican) was in power and drafted Bill 12 to
increase Public Sector Privacy Protection, but got voted out of power and
withered away to nonexistence after reporters used BC Online to retrieve
details about SoCred BC Premier Vander Zalm still being a corporate board
member and about land dealings of the company. I was the Technical Architect
for the dial up (1988) version of BC Online, but my employer found me other
work when I raised Privacy concerns while putting the Technical Proof of
Concept demo together. BC Online exploded to over 10,000 paying customers by
the end of the first year of operation. Banks, Realtors, car & boat dealers,
lawyers, News Rooms. It was all public record data, but much easier to
retrieve 24x7 with a computer than by checking paper files in a land office
in person during government office hours. It also dealt with concerns such
as pages being removed during inspection by the public.
The NDP (~ UK Labour) watered down Bill 12 to draft Bill 50, which was
proclaimed as BC's Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. It has a black
letter law prohibition on extracting PII for soliciting, yet the BC
Assessment Authority kept peddling PII on optical disks, which Realtors used
for sending junk mail. The arrival of personally addressed real estate
solicitations at our non published home address continued until it went to a
full scale inquiry. I was invited to make a submission to the Inquiry. My
name appears in the Thanks next to David Loukidelis, who later became BC's
second Information and Privacy Commissioner.
https://www.oipc.bc.ca/investigation-reports/1258
Shortly the BC Assessment Authority Director who had been stone walling my
concerns for a decade disappeared from the BC Public Service. Perhaps his
last meeting with his boss went something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r_L5Z7yLTU
He applied to the BC Cabinet for an Applies Despite exemption to the FOIPP
Act, but was turned down and kept on peddling PII. Did he not understand the
N or the O? That was a pity. It is better when you can be persuasive and
change thinking. Settling for only changing who is doing a job, or simply
their behaviour, is a last resort.
A Victoria BC municipal web interface showing the owner name and assessed
value of every Victoria property, no questions asked, was quickly shut down
by an OIPC BC Order.
That was not the end of the arrival of personally addressed solicitations
using prohibited extracts from BC government records at our non published
address, but that is another story.
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Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:11:11 -0800
From: RISKS-request@csl.sri.com
Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 31.50
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