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Next up in Privacy Technology at #enigma2021, Kelly Huang from @ethyca speaking about "GONE, BUT NOT "FORGOTTEN"—TECHNICAL & PRACTICAL CHALLENGES IN OPERATIONALIZING MODERN PRIVACY

 Just imagine there's a global pandemic forcing everyone to stay home and buy their stuff over the internet. And you've been working on your sanitization-on-demand startup. You've got more users than you can count! ... literally, because your data's all over.
Now you're a multi-national international country with privacy issues because your information is all over the place.

Now a user writes to request you delete their data. Where is it? How do you do that? Who's responsible for privacy in your business.
How do you operationalize privacy rights?

Primary stakeholders:
* Legal
* Business
* Engineering
We spend a lot of time on Twitter analyzing the legal rulings, but it's harder where the "rubber meets the code" 🥁
Three rights:
* access
* rectification
* deletion

Legal's trying to uphold them, but it's a technical question!

Legal wants to decrease risk but don't know software
The business wants to stay in business and make money. They want to be able to use data for things like placing ads and analysis.
It takes a lot of time to handle these requests, too!

They need a streamlined technical solution.
Program management wants to streamline and make things efficient and predictable... but they don't understand the technical limitation
As a software engineer, you've seen technical debt. So much technical debt. All the weight of the decisions that were made in the past, especially if you scaled without a data plan.

Average SMB has data in 10 different systems.
How do we delete?
Some poor software engineer is trying to track down what data is where?
What even *is* PII? There's no real standard.
What should be returned? What should be deleted.

Make a definition and stick to it.
Some of your databases might use email addresses as a primary key, some user IDs, etc.
1. Define PII
2. Find all the PII
3. Use pseudonymization to replace PII with some kind of random value which can't be tied back to the user

[reminder I am livetweeting this is not me speaking]
How do you do this at scale?
Maybe a centralized team who can handle this?
If you're a small company, plan ahead!
Be careful when you're doing sanitization -- some databases really don't like batch processes and you can make things fall over.
Speed
* you have a timeline -- often 30 or 45 days
* but that's not enough time if you haven't planned for streamlined speed

Ideally you won't need it, but have a backup plan, in case something goes wrong with a slow data system
Plan for a solution that grows with your business, not just a hacked-together series of SQL queries, but instead a centralized portal with extensibility as the business changes and technical systems grow.

... and as new privacy laws come into place
Privacy is way, way more than compliance. But compliance needs to happen.

Let's all do our part

[ end of talk ]

More from Lea Kissner

Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Next up at #enigma2021, Sanghyun Hong will be speaking about "A SOUND MIND IN A VULNERABLE BODY: PRACTICAL HARDWARE ATTACKS ON DEEP LEARNING"

(Hint: speaker is on the

In recent years ML models have worked from research labs to production, which makes ML security important. Adversarial ML research studies how to mess with ML

For example by messing with the training data (c.f. Tay which became super-racist super-fast) or by foiling ML models by changing inputs in ways humans can't see.


Prior work considers ML models in a standalone, mathematical way
* looks at the robustness in an isolated manner
* doesn't look at the whole ecosystem and how the model is used -- ML models are running in real hardware with real software which has real vulns!


This talk focuses on hardware-level vulnerabilities. This is particularly interesting because these can break cryptographic guarantees (because those are outside of their threat models)
e.g. fault injection attacks, side-channel attacks
SCIENCE
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
We're kicking off the Privacy Tech session at #enigma2021 with Mitch Negus speaking about "NO DATA, NO PROBLEM—GIVING NUCLEAR INSPECTORS BETTER TOOLS WITHOUT REVEALING STATE

A nuclear catastrophe hasn't occurred... yet. So we need to stay vigilant. Nuclear inspectors go in according to treaties to check what's going on and check compliance with treaty rules.

But as sophisticated analytics become more common, states will only want to share the minimum amount of information necessary under the treaty.

But perhaps we can use MPC -- secure multi-party computation

Yao's garbled circuits were first demonstrated on the millionaire's problem -- figuring out who's richer without revealing actual amounts.

Used for other things like cryptocurrency these days.

Can we use this for nuclear inspection?

MPC can be used to compute anything computed by a computer [but it's expensive!]
TECH
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Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last up in Privacy Tech for #enigma2021, @xchatty speaking about "IMPLEMENTING DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY FOR THE 2020

Differential privacy was invented in 2006. Seems like a long time but it's not a long time since a fundamental scientific invention. It took longer than that between the invention of public key cryptography and even the first version of SSL.


But even in 2020, we still can't meet user expectations.
* Data users expect consistent data releases
* Some people call synthetic data "fake data" like
"fake news"
* It's not clear what "quality assurance" and "data exploration" means in a DP framework


We just did the 2020 US census
* required to collect it by the constitution
* but required to maintain privacy by law

But that's hard! What if there were 10 people on the block and all the same sex and age? If you posted something like that, then you would know what everyone's sex and age was on the block.
TECH , TEACH
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
In more Securing Democracy at #enigma2021, @ChrFolini talking about "THE ADVENTUROUS TALE OF ONLINE VOTING IN

Switzerland is a direct democracy where citizens get to vote at least 4x/year, with a lot of mail-in voting. We have a long history of online voting.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT SWEDEN.

[I get the picture that @ChrFolini has had to explain the difference several times.]


Process around mail-in ballots.

[tl;dr it's very complicated and wasn't threat-modeled until recently]


But the in-person ballots are complicated, too!


Most security folks don't think that we can't make a secure online voting system.

@ChrFolini says this is because of encryption
[Note: this is not the main reason that a lot of people cite -- we're more worried about things like malware but it's complicated]
WORLD
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?

Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!

Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton


One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.
POLITICS

More from Tech

Mrkhtake2
Mrkhtake2
@mrkhtake2
Today we’re going to talk statistics and semantics. I’m going to do so via the medium of one of Twitter’s favourite stats 1.7% (aka “intersex is as common as red heads.”). The statistic comes from Fausto-Sterling’s work, which you can see a review of

To understand the statistic, we have to drill down into what the meaning of the word intersex is. Most people think of hermaphrodites. Let’s stress at the beginning there has been no example ever of a human being with both sets of working reproductive organs.

There is a very tiny percentage of people who are born with both testicular and ovarian tissue (what Fausto-Sterling calls “true hermaphrodites”). And when I say tiny, we’re talking intersex tiny, as in 0.0117/1,000 live births, or one in 1,000,000. These are very complex cases.

So, how do we arrive at 1.7%? What Fausto-Sterling does is apply a wider scope. Instead, she argues that intersex is anything that doesn’t fit into a platonic ideal. The platonic ideal, in this case, being a phenotypically perfect XX female and a phenotypically perfect XY male.

This means that intersex, used in the context of the 1.7% statistic, includes people for whom there is no sexual ambiguity. Take for example Klinefelter syndrome (XXY males). As Fausto-Sterling acknowledges, many males can go their whole life and not realise they are XXY.
TECH
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr
There are only 3 real challenges to free speech at the tech level a) the need for CDNs at scale b) distortions of net neutrality c) nation-state firewalls.

All other claims are about social governance on private sites, where applying free speech doctrine is a stretch at best

Baseline free speech has expanded modestly since 1776 or whatever your reference point is.

About 20% beyond core case of government-critical speech in formally public spaces and media I'd say.

You can (for example) have more kinds of conversations in a bar without getting punched or kicked out by other patrons or management. You can teach more things in colleges than 100 years ago.

That's a genuine de facto increase in practical, informal free speech/expression.

But online free "speech" is, as @reneed has pointed out, not an expansion of free speech at all, but an expansion of reach. It is like the secondary freedom of the press to print as many copies as they can afford, not primary freedom to say what they want

If a newspaper wants to print more copies it has buy more printing equipment and front more upfront costs. Reach for a paper publication is not "free", but a function of desired circulation, which in turn is a function of demand prediction etc. But that logic is obscured online.
TECH
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foone
foone
@Foone
you know how Atari called the Jaguar as a "64bit system", because it had two 32bit CPUs? (or because it had a 64bit bus, but let's not worry about that)
we should apply that logic to the current generation of consoles.
So the Switch is a 256bit console. It's the Nintendo 256.

The Xbox Series X? terrible name.
Better call it the "Xbox 512 Blu-ray".
like the Jaguar CD, the Sega CD... the good old days when consoles had their media type in the name.

Boringly the PS5 is also a Playstation 512 Blu-ray, because both of them are using the same AMD Zen 2 CPU.

The Switch one is weeeird. It's built on an Nvidia Tegra X1, which is an 8 core 64-bit CPU, so that should be 512, right?

Well... no. Four of them can't be used. And later documentation doesn't even mention them.

it's some weird system where the system-on-a-chip has four Cortex-A57 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores but only the A57s are usable?
TECH
Aviral Bhatnagar
Aviral Bhatnagar
@aviralbhat
I spent 1.4 lakhs on Zomato alone this year

Once these platforms build a habit, it's hard to leave

Lifetime value of customers is immense, which recover marketing costs and more

These very "loss-making" companies eventually become money-making machines

I love the assumptions people are making here to try to work out how this is possible, but I'll not share the math to just keep this fun.

Few hints: I have excellent cardiovascular fitness, love fine + healthy dining and order with my wife and brother

Guess AOV and order freq
TECH
Matt Stoller
Matt Stoller
@matthewstoller
1. One of the best changes in recent years is the GOP abandoning libertarianism. Here's GOP Rep. Greg Steube: “I do think there is an appetite amongst Republicans, if the Dems wanted to try to break up Big Tech, I think there is support for that."

2. And @RepKenBuck, who offered a thoughtful Third Way report on antitrust law in 2020, weighed in quite reasonably on Biden antitrust frameworks.

3. I believe this change is sincere because it's so pervasive and beginning to result in real policy changes. Example: The North Dakota GOP is taking on Apple's app store.


4. And yet there's a problem. The GOP establishment is still pro-big tech. Trump, despite some of his instincts, appointed pro-monopoly antitrust enforcers. Antitrust chief Makan Delrahim helped big tech, and the antitrust case happened bc he was recused.

5. At the other sleepy antitrust agency, the Federal Trade Commission, Trump appointed commissioners
@FTCPhillips and @CSWilsonFTC are both pro-monopoly. Both voted *against* the antitrust case on FB. That case was 3-2, with a GOP Chair and 2 Dems teaming up against 2 Rs.
TECH

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SRI LALITHAMBIGAI, THIRUMEYACHUR (TN)
#bharatmandir #navratri2021

Kshetram where Shiva is worshipped as Meghanatha and his consort is Lalithambigai seen in Abhay mudra.
Once, a demon Pandasura was harassing the Devas who went to Devi Parashakti for protection. 
@GunduHuDuGa


Devi rose from a Yaga Gunda, mounted on the Sri Chakra Rath with the name Lalithambika, waged a war against Pandasura and destroyed him.  When her fury did not subside, Shiva asked her to go to Earth, assume the name Manonmani, perform penance and shed her fury.


Shiva blessed Devi to be Shanta nayagi. There is a sculpture here depicting Shiva pacifying Devi. If you observe closely, you can see that from your left hand side there will be a smile on Her face and if you see from your right hand side you can see anger in Her face.


Hayagriva taught the greatness of Lalitha Sahasranama to Rishi Agasthya. Pleased with his devotion, Ma Lalithambikai appeared before Agastya. He is believed to have then sung Lalita Navaratnamala in praise of Devi. He has also composed a hymn named Rahasyanamasahasram.
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Savitri Mumukshu - \u0938\u093e\u0935\u093f\u0924\u094d\u0930\u0940 \u092e\u0941\u092e\u0941\u0915\u094d\u0937\u0941
Savitri Mumukshu - साव...
@MumukshuSavitri
1/n
The kingdom of Sindh was ruled by its last Hindu king Raja Dahir during the 8th century. When Muhammad-bin-Qasim invaded Sindh, he decimated Sindh in his savage bloodlust. The chronicles of his advent are described in the Chachnama.


2/n
The Chachnama describes in detail how the Arabs led by butcher Qasim conquered Sindh. It tells the terrible tale of bravery, treachery, & carnage marking the entry of Islamic conquest of India’s Hindus.


3/n
When Muhammad-bin-Qasim attacked Sindh, Dahir had collected an army of 50,000 horses and marched from Brahamanabad to Rawar to face the invader. Qasim had an army that numbered in the tens of thousands with camels & horses.

4/n
Earlier Arab Alafis - Syeds from Prophet Mohammed’s own family had fled from Mecca with 500 men to Sindh and Raja Dahir had given them asylum. Trusting these Muslims would prove to be the fatal mistake for the downfall of Sindh & pave the way for Islamic invasion.

5/n
On an “auspicious day” in A.D. 711, fixed by astrologers, Mohammed Bin Qasim started for Sindh at the head of the Iraqi, Syrian, and other Arab soldiers. His horses and camels were disguised to look like lions and elephants. Rebel Jats also joined Qasim’s army.
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Sam Dylan Finch \U0001f937\U0001f3fb\u200d\u2642\ufe0f
Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️...
@samdylanfinch
I had the most bizarre experience outside of a bar yesterday, which my partner very aptly described as "toxic mask-unlinity." (A Thread.)

I was standing outside, waiting for a lyft to get home, when two cis men came out of the bar to smoke cigarettes. They're discussing the masks that folks are wearing in California at the moment because of the very dangerous air pollution from the fires happening.

I happen to be wearing one of those masks, because I think lungs are important and I like breathing. I dunno. One of the men notices me standing there, and says, "Like this f*cker right here. What is this shit?"

He goes on a homophobic rant about me, the pansy with a mask, and what a Very Manly Man he is because he's not afraid to smoke a pack of cigarettes while California is on fire. He doesn't need a mask, because something-something-heterosexual-something.

And part of me is just... impressed by the fact that this dude thinks he's Owning The Gay Libs by not wearing a mask to protect his lungs from smoke and particles in the air that are literally DANGEROUS... while chain-smoking. Outside of a bar.
SOCIETY
\u0100yudhika
Āyudhika
@Satyamev1310
Ashta Siddhi

Ashta Siddhi is mentioned in Patanjali Yog sutra and can be obtained by very few through countless years of practice and devotion to all eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga.

Siddhi can loosely be translated as accomplishment or a special power or unusual skill.


The eight Siddhis are:

1. Anima: Reducing one’s physical self to the size of an atom.

2. Mahima: Expanding one’s physical self to infinite level

3. Garima: Making one’s physical self so heavy as immovable by others

4. Laghima: Becoming almost weightless


5. Prapti: Being able travel anywhere in the Universe

6. Prakamya: Can know & understand what is going on in one’s mind. Can understand other person’s min.

7. Ishitva: Possessing title of Bhagwan

8. Vashitva: A seeker can subdue any person/thing

(Hanuman Jayanti is coming)


Hanumanji not only possessed all eight siddhis, but was also blessed by Sita mata as “Ashta Siddhi Nau Nidhi Ke Daata”.

When Hanumanji first reaches to Lanka on his mission to find Sita, he makes use of anima so as to be discrete in enemy territory.


He uses it again when he approaches Sita mata for the first time – reducing his size to that of a schoolboy, to avoid scaring her. He uses mahima to outwit & overpowers
the demons.
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