The Technology 202: House Democrats Want Answers From Facebook On Privacy Of 'closed' Health Groups
The Technology 202: House Democrats Want Answers From Facebook On Privacy Of 'closed' Health Groups
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Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in San Jose on Oct. 11, 2017. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
House Democrats are pressing Facebook on the privacy protections it has in place for people who share sensitive health information in forums for group discussion on the site.
House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday asking him for a staff briefing about whether Facebook is “misleading” users about the nature of “closed groups.” These groups are listed publicly but only allow invited or approved social media users to see discussions inside the forum.
The lawmakers are concerned about health information people may have shared in closed groups that are labeled as “anonymous” — implying a certain level of privacy in spaces devoted to discussing deeply personal issues, such as substance abuse or sexual assault.
“Despite the indications that the groups were private and anonymous, people and companies who should not have been admitted to these groups gained access to them and to lists of group members,” the lawmakers wrote. “People used the member lists and other information from these groups to target and harass members of the groups.” Pallone and Schakowsky, who chairs the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, also said that insurance companies that gain access to this data could use it in making decisions about offerings.
So much of the privacy debate focuses on what data the companies seek to collect from users. But these lawmakers are spotlighting just how much sensitive data — including medical details — social media companies have on their platforms that's freely offered up by users themselves. Determining the right kind of protection for this kind of data could be a particularly tough challenge for lawmakers as they work toward crafting privacy legislation this Congress.
Meg Marshall, an executive at health information technology company Cerner, said:
In the letter, lawmakers signaled that Facebook needs to be more transparent with users, especially about who can access deeply personal information they post online.
"Labeling these groups as closed or anonymous potentially misled Facebook users into joining these groups and revealing more personal information than they otherwise would have," the lawmakers wrote. "And Facebook may have failed to properly notify group members that their personal health information may have been accessed by health insurance companies and online bullies, among others.”
Pallone and Schakowsky sent the letter to Facebook in response to a complaint filed to the Federal Trade Commission, which was first published this week. The complaint, initially filed in December, says Facebook "deceptively sollicited" patients to use its Groups feature to discuss health issues. The security researcher and health advocates who filed the complaint say Facebook has marketed this product as a "personal health record."
The privacy concerns surrounding Facebook's health-related Groups first got attention over the summer, when CNBC reported Facebook closed a loophole that allowed third parties to discover the names of members in closed groups. Before the change, the leader of a private group for women with BRCA, a gene mutation that indicates a higher likelihood of breast cancer, discovered that marketers had been using a web extension to siphon off group members' names and other personal information. Facebook said at the time that the change was not a result of that group's complaints.
Facebook defended itself Tuesday night, making the case that users know what they're signing up for when they join groups.
"Facebook is not an anonymous platform; real-name identity is at the center of the experience and always has been," the company said in a statement. "It's intentionally clear to people that when they join any group on Facebook, other members of that group can see that they are a part of that community, and can see the posts they choose to share with that community. There is value in being able to know who you’re having a conversation with in a group, and we look forward to briefing the committee on this.”
The issue of storing sensitive data could only become bigger as Big Tech eyes business opportunities in health and wellness. Companies such as Amazon and Google are increasingly investing in services ranging from a digital pharmacy to fitness tracking. But as the companies face a wide range of questions about their existing privacy practices, these new services could open a Pandora's Box of new issues.
Facebook itself was exploring a broader push into healthcare, and it even pursued data-sharing partnerships with top medical groups and hospitals, according to a report last year from CNBC. However it backed off those plans last year in the fallout of other privacy controversies, saying that it needed to "focus on other important work, including doing a better job of protecting people's data and being clearer with them about how that data is used in our products and services."
Facebook is facing mounting scrutiny for a range of privacy controversies. Currently the company is in early negotiations with the FTC for a multi-billion dollar fine following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a poltical consultancy collected sensitive data about Facebook users without their consent. Any settlement the company reaches will likely come with a new order that could require the company to submit to more regular privacy checkups.
You are reading The Technology 202, our guide to the intersection of technology and politics. Not a regular subscriber?
BITS, NIBBLES AND BYTES
In this May 7, 2018, file photo Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella looks on during a video as he delivers the keynote address at Build, the company's annual conference for software developers in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
BITS: Microsoft has identified another Russian government-affiliated operation targeting think tanks that have been critical of Russia, according to my colleagues Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg. It's the second such finding the company has made in the last six months.
“The 'spear-phishing' attacks — in which hackers send out phony emails intended to trick people into visiting websites that look authentic but in fact enable them to infiltrate their victims’ corporate computer systems — were tied to the APT28 hacking group, a unit of Russian military intelligence that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," my colleagues wrote. "The group targeted more than 100 European employees of the German Marshall Fund, the Aspen Institute Germany, and the German Council on Foreign Relations, influential groups that focus on transatlantic policy issues.”
The attacks took place over the last three months of 2018, and they come ahead of Europe's parliamentary elections in May. “The attacks we’ve seen recently, coupled with others we discussed last year, suggest an ongoing effort to target democratic organizations,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “They validate the warnings from European leaders about the threat level we should expect to see in Europe this year.”
The YouTube app on an iPad in Baltimore on March 20, 2018. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
NIBBLES: YouTube is updating its penalties for creators who breach the platform's Community Guidelines, TechCrunch's Sarah Perez reported. The company wants to make its strike system more transparent and consistent for content that violates the platform's rules such as graphic content or threats. “With today’s changes, all strikes will now carry the same punishment: a temporary ban from YouTube activity, with the length of time increasing with the strikes,” TechCrunch reported.
YouTube also said that starting on Feb. 25, it will issue a one-time warning when a creator posts content that runs afoul of its rules for the first time, as Perez noted. The warning will not carry any penalty but the content will have to be removed. The company said in a blog post that the warning aims to give creators an opportunity to learn more about the rules. “This is to make sure everyone takes the time to learn about our Community Guidelines, and then can quickly get back to creating great content and engaging with their audience in a way that complies with our rules,” YouTube said.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey in Las Vegas on Jan. 9. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
BYTES: Twitter said it is expanding an initiative to make political advertising more transparent on its platform in the European Union, India and Australia, the Hill's Emily Birnbaum reported. Advertisers who want to publish political ads on Twitter in those countries will have to first go through a certification process — the changes are set to take effect on March 11. Twitter also said that people will be able to look up information about ads that endorse a candidate or a political party.
“The tools will allow users to browse the billing information, demographic targeting and ad spending details behind each political advertisement,” the Hill reported. “It will also require political advertisers to prove that they are not a foreign entity seeking to interfere in regional elections.”
The company has also assembled a team to help protect the integrity of the E.U. election that is set to be held in May, Karen White, director of public policy for Europe at Twitter, said in a blog post. “Using our proprietary-built internal tools, the team will proactively protect the integrity of regional trends, support partner escalations, and identify potential threats from malicious actors,” White said.
From White:
PRIVATE CLOUD
Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, in Shenzhen, China, on Jan. 15. (Vincent Yu/AP)
— Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, denied in an interview on “CBS This Morning” that the company shares information with Chinese authorities, according to The Washington Post's Hamza Shaban. “Asked whether his company’s hardware has built-in vulnerabilities to enable government spying, perhaps without his knowledge, he said, ‘It is not possible because across our entire organization we have stressed once and again that we will never do that,’” Hamza reported.
— More technology news from the private sector:
On Tuesday, a Google spokesperson told Business Insider it had made an "error."
Business Insider
If it feels like there is a steady stream of fresh outrage over consumer-brand gaffes, it may be because companies have become more adept at managing controversy than at pre-empting it.
The Wall Street Journal
What if stemming the tide of misinformation on YouTube means punishing some of its biggest stars?
The New York Times
PUBLIC CLOUD
A child and a woman wait outside a school entrance mounted with surveillance cameras and barricades in Peyzawat, in western China's Xinjiang region, on Aug. 31, 2018. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
-- A database that was left unprotected online revealed the extent of China's efforts to monitor its own population via facial recognition technology in the western region of Xinjiang, the Associated Press's Yanan Wang and Dake Kang reported. Victor Gevers, a Dutch cybersecurity researcher, found that the exposed database contained information including names, birth dates and places of employment on more than 2.5 million people in the region. “The database Gevers found appears to have been recording people’s movements tracked by facial recognition technology, he said, logging more than 6.7 million coordinates in a span of 24 hours,” the AP reported.
— Cisco said in a report that U.S. policies have given the United States a strong position in the race to dominate 5G wireless networks, The Post's Brian Fung reported. The development of 5G is expected to make download speeds faster and help boost new technology including self-driving vehicles. “The U.S. has made a good start in changing policies to support the deployment of 5G, and as we look around the rest of the world, policy changes of the type we’ve seen here in the U.S. have not yet happened,” said Mary Brown, senior director of government affairs at Cisco, according to my colleague. “We do expect that’s going to be changing over the next 12 to 18 months, and so the race to 5G is very real.”
— President Trump signed a policy directive laying out a plan to create a Space Force, The Post's Dan Lamothe reported. The document directs the Defense Department to come up with legislation for Congress that would establish the Space Force within the Air Force Department. “The move appears to mark a rhetorical and political compromise: While the Trump administration will continue to call the new service the Space Force, it will more closely resemble a previous proposal on Capitol Hill for a smaller Space Corps that does not have a new, separate service secretary appointed by the president,” Dan wrote.
— More technology news from the public sector:
Facebook is not currently in EU regulators’ crosshairs but it may well be in future because of the crucial role played by data, Europe’s antitrust chief said on Tuesday.
Reuters
Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill this month that would require phone, cable and internet providers to include all charges in advertised prices.
MarketWatch
New Zealand's government is considering a plan to tax multinational tech corporations at a higher rate, citing a disparity between the taxes paid by New Zealanders and large corporations such as Facebook and Google.
The Hill
FAST FWD
Google employees march during a walkout on Nov. 1, 2018, in San Francisco. (Eric Risberg/AP)
— A digital advocacy group wants to support employees of tech companies who seek to speak out against “unethical tech,” the Guardian's Sam Levin reported. The group Fight for the Future launched a campaign that features ads on social media that are directed at tech workers. “A new website, SpeakOut.Tech, encourages workers to safely leak information and organize their colleagues and includes a video ad that the group is promoting by using the micro-targeting ad features of Facebook and Google,” according to the Guardian.
The SpeakOut.Tech website says workers should ask themselves whether the products that they are working on could potentially cause harm to people. “Does the product you’re building have the ability to unfairly target communities of color, endanger families seeking asylum, or expose survivors of abuse?” says a message on the site.
— More news about tech workforce and culture:
Netflix Inc said on Tuesday it is creating a production hub with two studios in Toronto that is expected to create 1,850 jobs per year.
Reuters
#TRENDING
— Tech news generating buzz around the Web:
Consumer Tech
Exclusive: A new study finds bugs in five of the most-popular password managers. So how is it safe to keep all your eggs in one basket?
Geoffrey Fowler
Question tweets have proliferated on Twitter, interesting brands and setting off a backlash.
The Daily Beast
@MENTIONS
— Natalie Gillam McLaughlin is joining TechNet, a network of tech executives, as director of communications, according to a news release from the group.
404 ERROR
— News about tech incidents and blunders:
Politics
Stone has said the now-deleted photo he posted of Judge Amy Berman Jackson with crosshairs next to her head was not intended as a threat.
Reis Thebault, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Rachel Weiner
BURN RATE
— Today in funding news:
Google today announced its intention to acquire Alooma, a company that allows enterprises to combine all of their data sources into services like Google’s BigQuery, Amazon’s Redshift, Snowflake and Azure.
TechCrunch
Amazon.com Inc’s Chinese joint venture is in talks about a merger with local e-commerce firm Kaola, which sells imported products in the Asian country, business magazine Caijing reported on Tuesday.
Reuters
CHECK-INS
Coming soon:
WIRED IN
Trump wishes Bernie Sanders “well” in 2020 run:
The controversies of Karl Lagerfeld on and off the catwalk:
Why are people up in arms over “Green Book”?
Ctrl + N
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in San Jose on Oct. 11, 2017. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
House Democrats are pressing Facebook on the privacy protections it has in place for people who share sensitive health information in forums for group discussion on the site.
House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday asking him for a staff briefing about whether Facebook is “misleading” users about the nature of “closed groups.” These groups are listed publicly but only allow invited or approved social media users to see discussions inside the forum.
The lawmakers are concerned about health information people may have shared in closed groups that are labeled as “anonymous” — implying a certain level of privacy in spaces devoted to discussing deeply personal issues, such as substance abuse or sexual assault.
“Despite the indications that the groups were private and anonymous, people and companies who should not have been admitted to these groups gained access to them and to lists of group members,” the lawmakers wrote. “People used the member lists and other information from these groups to target and harass members of the groups.” Pallone and Schakowsky, who chairs the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, also said that insurance companies that gain access to this data could use it in making decisions about offerings.
So much of the privacy debate focuses on what data the companies seek to collect from users. But these lawmakers are spotlighting just how much sensitive data — including medical details — social media companies have on their platforms that's freely offered up by users themselves. Determining the right kind of protection for this kind of data could be a particularly tough challenge for lawmakers as they work toward crafting privacy legislation this Congress.
Meg Marshall, an executive at health information technology company Cerner, said:
In the letter, lawmakers signaled that Facebook needs to be more transparent with users, especially about who can access deeply personal information they post online.
"Labeling these groups as closed or anonymous potentially misled Facebook users into joining these groups and revealing more personal information than they otherwise would have," the lawmakers wrote. "And Facebook may have failed to properly notify group members that their personal health information may have been accessed by health insurance companies and online bullies, among others.”
Pallone and Schakowsky sent the letter to Facebook in response to a complaint filed to the Federal Trade Commission, which was first published this week. The complaint, initially filed in December, says Facebook "deceptively sollicited" patients to use its Groups feature to discuss health issues. The security researcher and health advocates who filed the complaint say Facebook has marketed this product as a "personal health record."
The privacy concerns surrounding Facebook's health-related Groups first got attention over the summer, when CNBC reported Facebook closed a loophole that allowed third parties to discover the names of members in closed groups. Before the change, the leader of a private group for women with BRCA, a gene mutation that indicates a higher likelihood of breast cancer, discovered that marketers had been using a web extension to siphon off group members' names and other personal information. Facebook said at the time that the change was not a result of that group's complaints.
Facebook defended itself Tuesday night, making the case that users know what they're signing up for when they join groups.
"Facebook is not an anonymous platform; real-name identity is at the center of the experience and always has been," the company said in a statement. "It's intentionally clear to people that when they join any group on Facebook, other members of that group can see that they are a part of that community, and can see the posts they choose to share with that community. There is value in being able to know who you’re having a conversation with in a group, and we look forward to briefing the committee on this.”
The issue of storing sensitive data could only become bigger as Big Tech eyes business opportunities in health and wellness. Companies such as Amazon and Google are increasingly investing in services ranging from a digital pharmacy to fitness tracking. But as the companies face a wide range of questions about their existing privacy practices, these new services could open a Pandora's Box of new issues.
Facebook itself was exploring a broader push into healthcare, and it even pursued data-sharing partnerships with top medical groups and hospitals, according to a report last year from CNBC. However it backed off those plans last year in the fallout of other privacy controversies, saying that it needed to "focus on other important work, including doing a better job of protecting people's data and being clearer with them about how that data is used in our products and services."
Facebook is facing mounting scrutiny for a range of privacy controversies. Currently the company is in early negotiations with the FTC for a multi-billion dollar fine following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a poltical consultancy collected sensitive data about Facebook users without their consent. Any settlement the company reaches will likely come with a new order that could require the company to submit to more regular privacy checkups.
You are reading The Technology 202, our guide to the intersection of technology and politics. Not a regular subscriber?
BITS, NIBBLES AND BYTES
In this May 7, 2018, file photo Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella looks on during a video as he delivers the keynote address at Build, the company's annual conference for software developers in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
BITS: Microsoft has identified another Russian government-affiliated operation targeting think tanks that have been critical of Russia, according to my colleagues Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg. It's the second such finding the company has made in the last six months.
“The 'spear-phishing' attacks — in which hackers send out phony emails intended to trick people into visiting websites that look authentic but in fact enable them to infiltrate their victims’ corporate computer systems — were tied to the APT28 hacking group, a unit of Russian military intelligence that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," my colleagues wrote. "The group targeted more than 100 European employees of the German Marshall Fund, the Aspen Institute Germany, and the German Council on Foreign Relations, influential groups that focus on transatlantic policy issues.”
The attacks took place over the last three months of 2018, and they come ahead of Europe's parliamentary elections in May. “The attacks we’ve seen recently, coupled with others we discussed last year, suggest an ongoing effort to target democratic organizations,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “They validate the warnings from European leaders about the threat level we should expect to see in Europe this year.”
The YouTube app on an iPad in Baltimore on March 20, 2018. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
NIBBLES: YouTube is updating its penalties for creators who breach the platform's Community Guidelines, TechCrunch's Sarah Perez reported. The company wants to make its strike system more transparent and consistent for content that violates the platform's rules such as graphic content or threats. “With today’s changes, all strikes will now carry the same punishment: a temporary ban from YouTube activity, with the length of time increasing with the strikes,” TechCrunch reported.
YouTube also said that starting on Feb. 25, it will issue a one-time warning when a creator posts content that runs afoul of its rules for the first time, as Perez noted. The warning will not carry any penalty but the content will have to be removed. The company said in a blog post that the warning aims to give creators an opportunity to learn more about the rules. “This is to make sure everyone takes the time to learn about our Community Guidelines, and then can quickly get back to creating great content and engaging with their audience in a way that complies with our rules,” YouTube said.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey in Las Vegas on Jan. 9. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
BYTES: Twitter said it is expanding an initiative to make political advertising more transparent on its platform in the European Union, India and Australia, the Hill's Emily Birnbaum reported. Advertisers who want to publish political ads on Twitter in those countries will have to first go through a certification process — the changes are set to take effect on March 11. Twitter also said that people will be able to look up information about ads that endorse a candidate or a political party.
“The tools will allow users to browse the billing information, demographic targeting and ad spending details behind each political advertisement,” the Hill reported. “It will also require political advertisers to prove that they are not a foreign entity seeking to interfere in regional elections.”
The company has also assembled a team to help protect the integrity of the E.U. election that is set to be held in May, Karen White, director of public policy for Europe at Twitter, said in a blog post. “Using our proprietary-built internal tools, the team will proactively protect the integrity of regional trends, support partner escalations, and identify potential threats from malicious actors,” White said.
From White:
PRIVATE CLOUD
Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, in Shenzhen, China, on Jan. 15. (Vincent Yu/AP)
— Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, denied in an interview on “CBS This Morning” that the company shares information with Chinese authorities, according to The Washington Post's Hamza Shaban. “Asked whether his company’s hardware has built-in vulnerabilities to enable government spying, perhaps without his knowledge, he said, ‘It is not possible because across our entire organization we have stressed once and again that we will never do that,’” Hamza reported.
— More technology news from the private sector:
On Tuesday, a Google spokesperson told Business Insider it had made an "error."
Business Insider
If it feels like there is a steady stream of fresh outrage over consumer-brand gaffes, it may be because companies have become more adept at managing controversy than at pre-empting it.
The Wall Street Journal
What if stemming the tide of misinformation on YouTube means punishing some of its biggest stars?
The New York Times
PUBLIC CLOUD
A child and a woman wait outside a school entrance mounted with surveillance cameras and barricades in Peyzawat, in western China's Xinjiang region, on Aug. 31, 2018. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
-- A database that was left unprotected online revealed the extent of China's efforts to monitor its own population via facial recognition technology in the western region of Xinjiang, the Associated Press's Yanan Wang and Dake Kang reported. Victor Gevers, a Dutch cybersecurity researcher, found that the exposed database contained information including names, birth dates and places of employment on more than 2.5 million people in the region. “The database Gevers found appears to have been recording people’s movements tracked by facial recognition technology, he said, logging more than 6.7 million coordinates in a span of 24 hours,” the AP reported.
— Cisco said in a report that U.S. policies have given the United States a strong position in the race to dominate 5G wireless networks, The Post's Brian Fung reported. The development of 5G is expected to make download speeds faster and help boost new technology including self-driving vehicles. “The U.S. has made a good start in changing policies to support the deployment of 5G, and as we look around the rest of the world, policy changes of the type we’ve seen here in the U.S. have not yet happened,” said Mary Brown, senior director of government affairs at Cisco, according to my colleague. “We do expect that’s going to be changing over the next 12 to 18 months, and so the race to 5G is very real.”
— President Trump signed a policy directive laying out a plan to create a Space Force, The Post's Dan Lamothe reported. The document directs the Defense Department to come up with legislation for Congress that would establish the Space Force within the Air Force Department. “The move appears to mark a rhetorical and political compromise: While the Trump administration will continue to call the new service the Space Force, it will more closely resemble a previous proposal on Capitol Hill for a smaller Space Corps that does not have a new, separate service secretary appointed by the president,” Dan wrote.
— More technology news from the public sector:
Facebook is not currently in EU regulators’ crosshairs but it may well be in future because of the crucial role played by data, Europe’s antitrust chief said on Tuesday.
Reuters
Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill this month that would require phone, cable and internet providers to include all charges in advertised prices.
MarketWatch
New Zealand's government is considering a plan to tax multinational tech corporations at a higher rate, citing a disparity between the taxes paid by New Zealanders and large corporations such as Facebook and Google.
The Hill
FAST FWD
Google employees march during a walkout on Nov. 1, 2018, in San Francisco. (Eric Risberg/AP)
— A digital advocacy group wants to support employees of tech companies who seek to speak out against “unethical tech,” the Guardian's Sam Levin reported. The group Fight for the Future launched a campaign that features ads on social media that are directed at tech workers. “A new website, SpeakOut.Tech, encourages workers to safely leak information and organize their colleagues and includes a video ad that the group is promoting by using the micro-targeting ad features of Facebook and Google,” according to the Guardian.
The SpeakOut.Tech website says workers should ask themselves whether the products that they are working on could potentially cause harm to people. “Does the product you’re building have the ability to unfairly target communities of color, endanger families seeking asylum, or expose survivors of abuse?” says a message on the site.
— More news about tech workforce and culture:
Netflix Inc said on Tuesday it is creating a production hub with two studios in Toronto that is expected to create 1,850 jobs per year.
Reuters
#TRENDING
— Tech news generating buzz around the Web:
Consumer Tech
Exclusive: A new study finds bugs in five of the most-popular password managers. So how is it safe to keep all your eggs in one basket?
Geoffrey Fowler
Question tweets have proliferated on Twitter, interesting brands and setting off a backlash.
The Daily Beast
@MENTIONS
— Natalie Gillam McLaughlin is joining TechNet, a network of tech executives, as director of communications, according to a news release from the group.
404 ERROR
— News about tech incidents and blunders:
Politics
Stone has said the now-deleted photo he posted of Judge Amy Berman Jackson with crosshairs next to her head was not intended as a threat.
Reis Thebault, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Rachel Weiner
BURN RATE
— Today in funding news:
Google today announced its intention to acquire Alooma, a company that allows enterprises to combine all of their data sources into services like Google’s BigQuery, Amazon’s Redshift, Snowflake and Azure.
TechCrunch
Amazon.com Inc’s Chinese joint venture is in talks about a merger with local e-commerce firm Kaola, which sells imported products in the Asian country, business magazine Caijing reported on Tuesday.
Reuters
CHECK-INS
Coming soon:
WIRED IN
Trump wishes Bernie Sanders “well” in 2020 run:
The controversies of Karl Lagerfeld on and off the catwalk:
Why are people up in arms over “Green Book”?
Dr. Yelena Yesha: Pushing Technology Boundaries To Solve The World's Biggest Problems (Part II)
Dr. Yelena Yesha, UMBCDr. Yelena Yesha enhanced by CogWorld
Dr. Yelena Yesha is a Distinguished University Professor in the Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Her curriculum vitae stretches over a mile, detailing her accomplishments in technology in the last 25 years. Her triumphs with NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), IBM, her leadership in the recent launch of the NSF Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA) at UMBC, plus her personal pursuits in developing solutions in healthcare, and now the recent launch of her blockchain company Softhread, are glimpses into the life of a leader intent on changing the world. I met with Dr. Yelena Yesha to learn about the woman and her journey that chronicles the events that have led to her influence today.
This is a Part II of a two-part series. Part I follows Dr. Yelena Yesha’s journey as a youngster in Ukraine to her life and academic pursuits in Canada and the US.
Beyond academia...
Dr. Yesha realized that university wouldn’t be sufficient to realize her dreams. She wanted to build products. She remembers her early passion to pursue innovations in computer-based diagnosis. She would soon be invited to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the U.S. Department of Commerce and NASA to give lectures.
I started to consult for NIST and was one of the first people involved in electronic commerce. We were working there on the concept of global marketplaces for small and medium enterprises. Our division was creating an environment where small businesses in the U.S. would be able to compete effectively with large corporations. My role was to look at the architecture and database issues and determine the opportunities.
Dr. Yesha was offered and accepted the directorship of the Center for Applied Information Technology (CAIT) at NIST in charge of the procurement design for electronic commerce systems across all federal agencies. She was only 31 years old.
At that time, Dr. Yesha was still an assistant professor, with a road to tenure. Her intent was to return to secure her tenure.
I was just offered this position in the federal government with the highest technical grade. I wanted to go on leave to do this. It was unusual to leave while you were on tenure track. However, I was adamant I’d get tenure and I promised to bring back more prestige and new opportunities to the university.
Dr. Yesha was granted leave, and assumed her role as the director of CAIT, designing architecture for all the federal agencies to procure products and services through e-commerce.
Dr. Yesha’s meaningful contribution to electronic commerce at a time when it was transformative put her in a position of influence. She represented the U.S. at the G7 Summit, leading the development of resources and co-authored books on Electronic Commerce to train the next generation of scientists, and to determine the impacts on policy, governance, and compliance. Dr. Yesha received funding from the European Union and NSF to build a Master of Science in Electronic Commerce Program across Europe. The electronic commerce courses were run online through IBM, Rutgers, Dalhousie, Toronto and 12 business schools in Europe, and became an important component of the electronic commerce curriculums during the internet boom, 1997-2001. She simultaneously led the development of programs to re-educate the American workforce and train K-12 teachers in the use of internet technology. At this time Dr. Yesha was 32 and received early tenure at UMBC.
Sometime later, Yelena was offered and accepted the directorship of the NASA Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS):
The candidates I competed with were all men – and were much more well known at the time. I was gaining increased prominence for my work at NIST and NASA, however my contenders were already shining stars. I was eventually selected for the position and this was, by far, my most demanding role, and the male-dominated environment at NASA during this time made it even more challenging. At the center, I inherited approximately 28 active projects, and managed a large number of Ph.D. level scientists including astrophysicists. We were equipped with the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world, attached to the largest unclassified data archive in the world.
In 5 years at NASA, Dr. Yesha was able to build successes overseeing:
the development of Beowulf, a computer system that revolutionized high-performance parallel computing, a system used in almost every university and research lab worldwide
the development of major components of the Linux operating system, which were later commercialized by Red Hat
the development of the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) to provide satellite internet hybrid communication links between countries to exchange documents to support international treaties and laws
the development of technology that was used to repair the Hubble Space Telescope
IBM calls...
Jacob Slonim was the founder of the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at IBM Toronto Lab. He learned of Dr. Yesha’s work on electronic commerce and invited her to come to IBM, coaxing her to participate in research on electronic commerce and database. Dr. Yesha began to make her mark at IBM by participating in the development of DB2, a scalable relational database system able to run on a number of authoritative operating systems like Linux, Windows, etc. Dr. Yesha’s influence prompted commercial adoption by NASA. She also contributed to other notable projects like Eclipse, an IT integrated development environment (IDE), which is now the most widely used Java IDE; In 2000 Dr. Yesha co-edited (with Weidong Kou) the very first IBM Press book, “Electronic Commerce Technology Trends: Challenges and Opportunities”.
The Multicore revolution began in 2007. Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President of IBM at the time, gave UMBC the mandate of benchmarking and evangelizing the technology, with Dr. Yesha as the Principal Investigator. By 2009, through UMBC, Dr. Yesha and Dr. Milt Halem together founded the National Science Foundation Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research (CHMPR), a 15-year award that promoted a consortium including universities, industry, and government to work on programs of national significance that have commercial value.
Some of CHMPR accomplishments Dr. Yesha oversaw include:
gridding and calculating the first decadal global surface temperatures based on satellite data for 2001-2010
being the first to demonstrate, during the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, the use of social media data (about tarballs) for improving tarball landfall prediction by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) operational model
Dr. Yesha recounts her passion when she first came to Canada: using information technology to address major healthcare challenges.
I had a significant role in designing the operating room of the future, building surgical simulations to train the next generation of surgeons. Funding that I received from several agencies enabled me to do this work. This is what I wanted to do all my life... Now I can.
Dr. Yesha, not one to limit her opportunities, was asked by a colleague to bridge the gap between computer science and medical research in a way that hadn’t yet been achieved. In 2004, Dr. Yesha began working on personalized medicine to determine new ways the clinical decision support systems could enable more patient-centric solutions. Using machine learning, Dr. Yesha and her collaborators were able to tease out specific features pertinent to individual diseases while mitigating any confusion of interactions among several diseases, and, in the process, improve the accuracy of diagnosis.
Once this was completed, the team focused on relevant treatment for patient-specific indications. By combining the patient’s clinical records and diagnosis with his/her genomic information, the team used machine learning to bring an internet feed directly to the physician, which included search results for the most recent and relevant clinical findings and articles from publications in medical journals and CAS, etc.,
The importance of AI for medical innovation is on the rise… We started working on the ability to combine clinical and genetic records. By combining computer science and medicine, we will be able to build a clinical decision support system that produces a holistic view of the patient, fusing clinical and genetic information and using the power of real-time computing to empower the physician at the point of care… This would free up the doctor to focus on quality patient care from better information.
Overhauling the future of data analytics...
Dr. Yesha realized what the industry wanted:
Big Data is too broad a term. So I proposed the development of a new center to capture more actionable knowledge from Big Data in real time: the Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA). The current Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research is now in year 10. I decided to phase it out it and start CARTA.
In early 2018, CARTA competed for and won a 15-year NSF funding. Its vision is to enable real-time analytics leveraged by smart data. The real value to the industry will be the “automated ingestion and simultaneous analytics” of Big Datasets, in particular for cyberspace, healthcare, IoT and self-learning. Dr. Yelena’s belief is that the future society will be enabled by 3 technologies:
Three transformative technologies will revolutionize the way we use, teach, consume and enable computing capabilities: 1) Quantum Computing 2) AI and 3) Blockchain. These technologies are here to stay and will enable significant changes to society. Quantum computing as a platform will change the way developers program computers, while undoubtedly dramatically improving performance. This will require new training for programmers and effective users of the platform. For industry, the leap forward will be evident. As well, AI, at a mass market level, will make its biggest impact in robotics. Blockchain will have an influence in reforming many aspects of computing. And the prime ROI will be achieved in the supply chain, Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity. Most blockchain solutions will require customization based on domain expertise. This gap has motivated us to come up with a unique solution.
Spearheading new technologies through commercialization is a natural passage that Dr. Yesha has undertaken with vigor. In June 2018, Dr. Yesha launched her new startup called SofThread, commercializing a permissioned blockchain technology with the purpose of solving some of its challenges today.
There is enormous demand for blockchain tech for the supply chain. In the future, blockchain will gain traction very quickly. There is expressed interest in our solution and we are currently testing with a few use cases. Marrying this technology with the speed of Quantum and insights from AI is an eventuality. The results will be profound.
Happily, Dr. Yesha feels excited about her current pursuits. With all the technology that has been brought to bear, Dr. Yesha has a view of the future:
The next five years will revolutionize the way we do business. We will need to teach computing for the next generation using Quantum with AI called Accelerated AI. From my experience, computer vision and machine learning have proven to be effective but we are still in the process of studying and truly understanding cognitive science.
Dr. Yelena Yesha’s success came from her tenacious spirit, despite the challenges she faced, and it persists throughout her academic and industry career. She has never relented and is determined to tackle some of the biggest challenges to enable progress in government, in healthcare, and for humanity.
Dr. Yelena Yesha, UMBCDr. Yelena Yesha enhanced by CogWorld
Dr. Yelena Yesha is a Distinguished University Professor in the Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Her curriculum vitae stretches over a mile, detailing her accomplishments in technology in the last 25 years. Her triumphs with NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), IBM, her leadership in the recent launch of the NSF Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA) at UMBC, plus her personal pursuits in developing solutions in healthcare, and now the recent launch of her blockchain company Softhread, are glimpses into the life of a leader intent on changing the world. I met with Dr. Yelena Yesha to learn about the woman and her journey that chronicles the events that have led to her influence today.
This is a Part II of a two-part series. Part I follows Dr. Yelena Yesha’s journey as a youngster in Ukraine to her life and academic pursuits in Canada and the US.
Beyond academia...
Dr. Yesha realized that university wouldn’t be sufficient to realize her dreams. She wanted to build products. She remembers her early passion to pursue innovations in computer-based diagnosis. She would soon be invited to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the U.S. Department of Commerce and NASA to give lectures.
I started to consult for NIST and was one of the first people involved in electronic commerce. We were working there on the concept of global marketplaces for small and medium enterprises. Our division was creating an environment where small businesses in the U.S. would be able to compete effectively with large corporations. My role was to look at the architecture and database issues and determine the opportunities.
Dr. Yesha was offered and accepted the directorship of the Center for Applied Information Technology (CAIT) at NIST in charge of the procurement design for electronic commerce systems across all federal agencies. She was only 31 years old.
At that time, Dr. Yesha was still an assistant professor, with a road to tenure. Her intent was to return to secure her tenure.
I was just offered this position in the federal government with the highest technical grade. I wanted to go on leave to do this. It was unusual to leave while you were on tenure track. However, I was adamant I’d get tenure and I promised to bring back more prestige and new opportunities to the university.
Dr. Yesha was granted leave, and assumed her role as the director of CAIT, designing architecture for all the federal agencies to procure products and services through e-commerce.
Dr. Yesha’s meaningful contribution to electronic commerce at a time when it was transformative put her in a position of influence. She represented the U.S. at the G7 Summit, leading the development of resources and co-authored books on Electronic Commerce to train the next generation of scientists, and to determine the impacts on policy, governance, and compliance. Dr. Yesha received funding from the European Union and NSF to build a Master of Science in Electronic Commerce Program across Europe. The electronic commerce courses were run online through IBM, Rutgers, Dalhousie, Toronto and 12 business schools in Europe, and became an important component of the electronic commerce curriculums during the internet boom, 1997-2001. She simultaneously led the development of programs to re-educate the American workforce and train K-12 teachers in the use of internet technology. At this time Dr. Yesha was 32 and received early tenure at UMBC.
Sometime later, Yelena was offered and accepted the directorship of the NASA Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS):
The candidates I competed with were all men – and were much more well known at the time. I was gaining increased prominence for my work at NIST and NASA, however my contenders were already shining stars. I was eventually selected for the position and this was, by far, my most demanding role, and the male-dominated environment at NASA during this time made it even more challenging. At the center, I inherited approximately 28 active projects, and managed a large number of Ph.D. level scientists including astrophysicists. We were equipped with the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world, attached to the largest unclassified data archive in the world.
In 5 years at NASA, Dr. Yesha was able to build successes overseeing:
Jacob Slonim was the founder of the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at IBM Toronto Lab. He learned of Dr. Yesha’s work on electronic commerce and invited her to come to IBM, coaxing her to participate in research on electronic commerce and database. Dr. Yesha began to make her mark at IBM by participating in the development of DB2, a scalable relational database system able to run on a number of authoritative operating systems like Linux, Windows, etc. Dr. Yesha’s influence prompted commercial adoption by NASA. She also contributed to other notable projects like Eclipse, an IT integrated development environment (IDE), which is now the most widely used Java IDE; In 2000 Dr. Yesha co-edited (with Weidong Kou) the very first IBM Press book, “Electronic Commerce Technology Trends: Challenges and Opportunities”.
The Multicore revolution began in 2007. Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President of IBM at the time, gave UMBC the mandate of benchmarking and evangelizing the technology, with Dr. Yesha as the Principal Investigator. By 2009, through UMBC, Dr. Yesha and Dr. Milt Halem together founded the National Science Foundation Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research (CHMPR), a 15-year award that promoted a consortium including universities, industry, and government to work on programs of national significance that have commercial value.
Some of CHMPR accomplishments Dr. Yesha oversaw include:
Dr. Yesha recounts her passion when she first came to Canada: using information technology to address major healthcare challenges.
I had a significant role in designing the operating room of the future, building surgical simulations to train the next generation of surgeons. Funding that I received from several agencies enabled me to do this work. This is what I wanted to do all my life... Now I can.
Dr. Yesha, not one to limit her opportunities, was asked by a colleague to bridge the gap between computer science and medical research in a way that hadn’t yet been achieved. In 2004, Dr. Yesha began working on personalized medicine to determine new ways the clinical decision support systems could enable more patient-centric solutions. Using machine learning, Dr. Yesha and her collaborators were able to tease out specific features pertinent to individual diseases while mitigating any confusion of interactions among several diseases, and, in the process, improve the accuracy of diagnosis.
Once this was completed, the team focused on relevant treatment for patient-specific indications. By combining the patient’s clinical records and diagnosis with his/her genomic information, the team used machine learning to bring an internet feed directly to the physician, which included search results for the most recent and relevant clinical findings and articles from publications in medical journals and CAS, etc.,
The importance of AI for medical innovation is on the rise… We started working on the ability to combine clinical and genetic records. By combining computer science and medicine, we will be able to build a clinical decision support system that produces a holistic view of the patient, fusing clinical and genetic information and using the power of real-time computing to empower the physician at the point of care… This would free up the doctor to focus on quality patient care from better information.
Overhauling the future of data analytics...
Dr. Yesha realized what the industry wanted:
Big Data is too broad a term. So I proposed the development of a new center to capture more actionable knowledge from Big Data in real time: the Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA). The current Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research is now in year 10. I decided to phase it out it and start CARTA.
In early 2018, CARTA competed for and won a 15-year NSF funding. Its vision is to enable real-time analytics leveraged by smart data. The real value to the industry will be the “automated ingestion and simultaneous analytics” of Big Datasets, in particular for cyberspace, healthcare, IoT and self-learning. Dr. Yelena’s belief is that the future society will be enabled by 3 technologies:
Three transformative technologies will revolutionize the way we use, teach, consume and enable computing capabilities: 1) Quantum Computing 2) AI and 3) Blockchain. These technologies are here to stay and will enable significant changes to society. Quantum computing as a platform will change the way developers program computers, while undoubtedly dramatically improving performance. This will require new training for programmers and effective users of the platform. For industry, the leap forward will be evident. As well, AI, at a mass market level, will make its biggest impact in robotics. Blockchain will have an influence in reforming many aspects of computing. And the prime ROI will be achieved in the supply chain, Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity. Most blockchain solutions will require customization based on domain expertise. This gap has motivated us to come up with a unique solution.
Spearheading new technologies through commercialization is a natural passage that Dr. Yesha has undertaken with vigor. In June 2018, Dr. Yesha launched her new startup called SofThread, commercializing a permissioned blockchain technology with the purpose of solving some of its challenges today.
There is enormous demand for blockchain tech for the supply chain. In the future, blockchain will gain traction very quickly. There is expressed interest in our solution and we are currently testing with a few use cases. Marrying this technology with the speed of Quantum and insights from AI is an eventuality. The results will be profound.
Happily, Dr. Yesha feels excited about her current pursuits. With all the technology that has been brought to bear, Dr. Yesha has a view of the future:
The next five years will revolutionize the way we do business. We will need to teach computing for the next generation using Quantum with AI called Accelerated AI. From my experience, computer vision and machine learning have proven to be effective but we are still in the process of studying and truly understanding cognitive science.
Dr. Yelena Yesha’s success came from her tenacious spirit, despite the challenges she faced, and it persists throughout her academic and industry career. She has never relented and is determined to tackle some of the biggest challenges to enable progress in government, in healthcare, and for humanity.
Paul Farnsworth Joins DHI Group, Inc. As Chief Technology Officer
NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DHI Group, Inc. DHX, +0.00% ("DHI" or "The Company) announced today that it has hired Paul Farnsworth as its new Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Farnsworth will oversee DHI's engineering organization and execute a technology strategy that aligns the Company's software development and infrastructure operations with its product roadmap. Mr. Farnsworth's primary responsibility will be to enhance and scale the technology infrastructure which supports DHI's three brands – Dice, ClearanceJobs and eFinancialCareers. Mr. Farnsworth will join DHI's executive team and report directly to CEO Art Zeile.
"Technology is the driving force behind everything we do at DHI. Having a technical innovator like Paul who understands the importance of scaling platforms to support our strategic goals is critical to delivering superior value to our clients and, in turn, shareholders," said Art Zeile, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Prior to joining DHI, Mr. Farnsworth was the Chief Technology Officer at Reed Group, where he was responsible for the company's technology operations including software delivery, end user support and vendor strategy. He previously served as Senior Vice President of Level 3 Communications and has served on multiple advisory boards in all stages from startups, to growth companies to global enterprises.
"DHI feels like a perfect fit for my background of modernizing technology platforms to meet the business goals of an organization, which furthers innovation and is foundational to delivering results for customers," said Paul Farnsworth. "I'm looking forward to working at a Company which has a demonstrated history of championing the technology industry and technology professionals like myself all over the world."
Investor Contact Arbor Advisory Group 212-448-4181 ir@dhigroupinc.com
Media Contact Rachel Ceccarelli Director of Corporate Communications 212-448-8288 media@dhigroupinc.com
About DHI Group, Inc. DHI Group, Inc. DHX, +0.00% is a leading provider of data, insights and employment connections through our specialized services for technology professionals and other select online communities. Our mission is to empower tech professionals and organizations to compete and win through expert insights and relevant employment connections. Employers and recruiters use our websites and services to source, hire and connect with the most qualified and highly-skilled tech professionals, while professionals use our websites and services to find ideal employment opportunities, relevant job advice and tailored career-related data. For over 25 years, we have built our Company on providing employers and professionals with career connections, news, tools and information. Today, we serve multiple markets located throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paul-farnsworth-joins-dhi-group-inc-as-chief-technology-officer-300798371.html
SOURCE DHI Group, Inc.
Copyright (C) 2019 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
NEW YORK, Feb. 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DHI Group, Inc. DHX, +0.00% ("DHI" or "The Company) announced today that it has hired Paul Farnsworth as its new Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Farnsworth will oversee DHI's engineering organization and execute a technology strategy that aligns the Company's software development and infrastructure operations with its product roadmap. Mr. Farnsworth's primary responsibility will be to enhance and scale the technology infrastructure which supports DHI's three brands – Dice, ClearanceJobs and eFinancialCareers. Mr. Farnsworth will join DHI's executive team and report directly to CEO Art Zeile.
"Technology is the driving force behind everything we do at DHI. Having a technical innovator like Paul who understands the importance of scaling platforms to support our strategic goals is critical to delivering superior value to our clients and, in turn, shareholders," said Art Zeile, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Prior to joining DHI, Mr. Farnsworth was the Chief Technology Officer at Reed Group, where he was responsible for the company's technology operations including software delivery, end user support and vendor strategy. He previously served as Senior Vice President of Level 3 Communications and has served on multiple advisory boards in all stages from startups, to growth companies to global enterprises.
"DHI feels like a perfect fit for my background of modernizing technology platforms to meet the business goals of an organization, which furthers innovation and is foundational to delivering results for customers," said Paul Farnsworth. "I'm looking forward to working at a Company which has a demonstrated history of championing the technology industry and technology professionals like myself all over the world."
Investor Contact Arbor Advisory Group 212-448-4181 ir@dhigroupinc.com
Media Contact Rachel Ceccarelli Director of Corporate Communications 212-448-8288 media@dhigroupinc.com
About DHI Group, Inc. DHI Group, Inc. DHX, +0.00% is a leading provider of data, insights and employment connections through our specialized services for technology professionals and other select online communities. Our mission is to empower tech professionals and organizations to compete and win through expert insights and relevant employment connections. Employers and recruiters use our websites and services to source, hire and connect with the most qualified and highly-skilled tech professionals, while professionals use our websites and services to find ideal employment opportunities, relevant job advice and tailored career-related data. For over 25 years, we have built our Company on providing employers and professionals with career connections, news, tools and information. Today, we serve multiple markets located throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.
View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paul-farnsworth-joins-dhi-group-inc-as-chief-technology-officer-300798371.html
SOURCE DHI Group, Inc.
Copyright (C) 2019 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
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