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China's Giant New Gamble With Digital IDs

2 months 2 weeks ago
China will launch digital IDs for internet use on July 15th, transferring online verification from private companies to government control. Users obtain digital IDs by submitting personal information including facial scans to police via an app. A pilot program launched one year ago enrolled 6 million people. The system currently remains voluntary, though officials and state media are pushing citizens to register for "information security." Companies will see only anonymized character strings when users log in, while police retain exclusive access to personal details. The program replaces China's existing system requiring citizens to register with companies using real names before posting comments, gaming, or making purchases. Police say they punished 47,000 people last year for spreading "rumours" online. The digital ID serves a broader government strategy to centralize data control. State planners classify data as a production factor alongside labor and capital, aiming to extract information from private companies for trading through government-operated data exchanges.

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AI Note Takers Are Increasingly Outnumbering Humans in Workplace Video Calls

2 months 2 weeks ago
AI-powered note-taking apps are increasingly attending workplace meetings in place of human participants, creating situations where automated transcription bots outnumber actual attendees. Major platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet now offer built-in note-taking features that record, transcribe and summarize meetings for invited participants who don't attend. The technology operates under varying legal frameworks, with most states requiring only single-party consent for recording while California, Florida, and Pennsylvania mandate all-party approval.

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US Probes Whether Negotiator Took Slice of Hacker Payments

2 months 2 weeks ago
An anonymous reader shares a report: Law enforcement officials are investigating a former employee of a company that negotiates with hackers and facilitates cryptocurrency payments during ransomware attacks, according to a statement from the firm, DigitalMint. DigitalMint President Marc Jason Grens this week told organizations it works with that the US Justice Department is examining allegations that the then-employee struck deals with hackers to profit from extortion payments, according to a person familiar with the matter. Grens did not identify the employee by name and characterized their actions as isolated, said the person, who spoke on condition that they not be identified describing private conversations. DigitalMint is cooperating with a criminal investigation into "alleged unauthorized conduct by the employee while employed here," Grens said in an email to Bloomberg News. The Chicago-based company is not the target of the investigation and the employee "was immediately terminated," Grens said, adding that he can't provide more information because the probe is ongoing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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