Cryptopia: High Court decides cryptocurrency is property and it was held on trust for account holders – JD Supra

Updated: May 25, 2018:

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Cryptopia: High Court decides cryptocurrency is property and it was held on trust for account holders - JD Supra

Google Removes 49 Phishing Extensions That Steal Cryptocurrency Data – Cointelegraph

Google recently removed 49 phishing Google Chrome web browser extensions after receiving reports about their activity.

Harry Denley, director of security at cryptocurrency wallet startup MyCrypto, explained in an April 14 Medium post how he got the extensions removed from Chromes store within 24 hours with the help of phishing-specialized cybersecurity firm PhishFort.

The removed extensions include ones that targeted the owners of hardware wallets produced by Ledger, Trezor and KeepKey, and users of software wallets Jaxx, MyEtherWallet, Metamask, Exodus and Electrum.

The extensions triggered the users to enter the credentials needed to access the wallet such as mnemonic phrases, private keys and keystore files and sent them to bad actors. Hackers were then able to steal the crypto assets contained in the wallets.

Some of the extensions also had fake five-star ratings in the Chrome extension store, but the reviews contained little to no info ranging from good, helpful app to legit extension.

One of the extensions reportedly had the same review copied and pasted eight times by different users. The copypasta included an introduction to Bitcoin (BTC) and explained why MyEtherWallet the extensions targeted wallet was the preferred wallet option. It is worth noting that MyEtherWallet does not actually support Bitcoin.

The investigation uncovered 14 control servers behind all the extensions, but fingerprinting analysis revealed that some of the servers were managed by the same bad actors, with the oldest domain being linked to many other control servers. Denley subsequently concluded that the same bad actors were behind most of the extensions.

Some of the domains used in the phishing campaigns were relatively old, but 80% of them were registered in March and April 2020. Most of the extensions were published on Chromes store this month.

This is not the first time that the community has discovered a malicious Google Chrome browser extension targeting crypto users. As Cointelegraph reported in late March, a Redditor warned the community that he lost some crypto assets after falling victim to a fake Ledger extension.

Google Chrome extensions targeting crypto users are so common, that earlier this month MyEtherWallet warned its user that its official extension was removed for allegedly containing malware. Fortunately, the extension was restored shortly after the team contacted Google to solve the issue.

Brett Callow, threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft shared some advice on how to avoid falling victim to such phishing attempts:

"Security products may detect malicious extensions, but the first line of defence should always be common sense. The best advice is to only install extensions from official stores and to do a little research prior to installing them. If a website randomly prompts you to Click allow' to continue downloading an important browser update, just close the page.

Originally posted here:
Google Removes 49 Phishing Extensions That Steal Cryptocurrency Data - Cointelegraph

Can we protect against cryptocurrency theft? – SecurityBrief Asia

Article by Yubico Asia Pacific & Japandirector of solutions engineering, Alex Wilson.

The cryptocurrency market attracts a huge number of investors and everyone hopes to get the highest returns possible. Bitcoin has so far been the most successful virtual currency, but has seen its value rise and fall dramatically over the past few years. Price volatility has undoubtedly been one of the most significant challenges facing all cryptocurrencies, but the other is security.

Over the years, digital thieves have stolen millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from both exchanges and wallets. The problem is that once cryptocurrency is stolen, there is no refund like there is with a bank or credit card company, and governments offer no protection for users. For some, this makes cryptocurrency too risky of an investment.

There is a very real vulnerability of cryptocurrency exchanges and bitcoin wallets when it comes to hacking attacks and theft: SIM swapping. Recent events have shown that millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency can be lost with just one attack. The current state of SIM spoofing attacks, where a mobile phone number is taken over by an attacker, means that when a two-factor authentication (2FA) code is sent via SMS it can be intercepted by an attacker to access and steal vast sums of cryptocurrency. Its a silent but oftentimes catastrophic attack and there is very little anyone can do about it.

Such sophisticated attacks are now a reality bolstered by the increasing use and value of cryptocurrency accounts and these highly reported thefts have stunned currency traders across the globe. In turn, its spawning an industry uptick in stronger two-factor authentication (2FA) methods.

WebAuthn, the new W3C open standard for web authentication, is gaining particular traction within the cryptocurrency space and for good reason. WebAuthn is supported by all major browsers and operating systems and depending on the options a service enables, it allows traders to add a biometric device or physical security key as an additional authentication method. Whereas a one-time code sent via phone or email could be easily intercepted by a remote attacker, a fingerprint (biometric) or security key must be physically present to permit a user to log in.

Motivating traders to use WebAuthn isnt difficult. The ability to foil SIM hijacking and other attacks that use fraudulent credentials are reason enough to select a fingerprint or security key as the preferred method of account protection. With these, credentials are much more difficult to forge. And if there needs to be further convincing, usability is unparalleled. Both biometrics and security keys are able to be self-registered, and only take seconds to log in.

Given the lack of regulation and protection for cryptocurrency, it would seem a no brainer that cryptocurrency platforms employ WebAuthn to offer traders peace of mind with a simple and easy solution.

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Can we protect against cryptocurrency theft? - SecurityBrief Asia

Why is TRON The Future Of Cryptocurrency? – The Coin Republic

TRON owns huge potential in outshining the other cryptocurrencies in the near future. It is only a few years old to the crypto industry but has yet become one amongst the largest Blockchain-based operators. It offers distinctive features and continues to remain an unique initiative.

TRON is a decentralised platform of the blockchainnetwork founded in 2017 by an organisation called TRON foundation. It is headed by Justin Sun who is the CEO. Its main objectives are to evolve a free and global digital entertainment system relying on distributed technology. It enhances cost-effectiveness for the sharing of digital content.

TRON aims to get rid of the middleman by connecting the content creators to the content consumers directly. Hence, this reduces overall costs for the consumer and offers direct receipts for the creators.

It is a decentralised, open platform and a distributed storage technology. This helps it to be more efficient and cost-effective too.

It allows anyone to host the digital entertainment content on its Blockchain-based network. Hence, allowing the consumers to make direct payments in order to access the content.

TRX (Tronix) is the native cryptocurrency of TRON. TRX is used for making payments by the consumers to access the digital content.

In this layout, the phases TRON has planned to carry out until the year 2027 are mentioned. Each of its phase has a draft of the objectives to be achieved. Its completion proves it being a step ahead in becoming a leading cryptocurrency.

Currently, TRON offers a platform called Exodus. It features Peer-to-Peer network for the distribution and sharing of digital content.

Odyssey was initiated for the promotion of creating and hosting content onTRON. It follows the Proof-Of-Stake Cryptocurrency. Amid, this phase is to support the power of Blockchain technology. Additionally, it features reward to users based on how well they perceived the content.

Great Voyage is scheduled to take place in the mid-2020. It is to deal with issues such as dividend management, income payment and supporter management.

Apollo planned to be phased in mid-2021 is similar to its last phase. However, TRON will be able to launch its personalised token in this phase. This token is to be used for successful decentralised trading.

Furthermore, Startek and Eternity are the two other phases scheduled to take place in the year 2023 and 2015 respectively. Startek will secure market capitalization for TRON if it indicates the profit of the gaming market. On the other hand, Eternity is for the provision of opportunities to developers to create personalised games. Through both these phases, participants would be able to raise funds.

Therefore, the successful completion of the above scheduled phases will mark a new start for TRON in the Crypto Industry. It will get ahead in terms of market capitalisation as well the usage. Additionally, the important potential of it is its place in the entertainment industry. Entertainment sector has a bright future with its constant growth and increasing applications. This adds to the reliability to the TRON, hence making it highly probable to be the future cryptocurrency.

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Why is TRON The Future Of Cryptocurrency? - The Coin Republic

How Do Cryptocurrency Exchanges Report to the IRS? Here’s How – Coinfomania

This past summer, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the tax-collecting agency of the United States, sent more than 10,000 warning and action letters out to cryptocurrency holders who may or may not have been accurately reporting their crypto gains and losses on their taxes. This series of events had many people questioning how the IRS even had information about their crypto holdings.

As it turns out, cryptocurrency exchanges report tax information to the IRS. This article explains precisely how they do that.

Cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, and others that operate within the U.S. market use a specific type of 1099 Form to report tax information to the IRS. 1099s of all types serve the same purpose within the United States all 1099s report non-employment related income.

In other words, 1099s tell the government how much income you made outside of your job. Income is taxable within the U.S., so it makes sense that the IRS wants to be informed of income sources outside of typical W2 wages.

The problem with the way cryptocurrency exchanges report is that they use a specific type of 1099 known as Form 1099-K.

1099-K reports gross proceeds from a specific platform, and it is typically used by third-party settlement organizations like Uber, Lyft, and others to report gross income incurred on the platform.

When cryptocurrency exchanges use this form, they report gross amounts transacted on the cryptocurrency exchange. This can massively inflate your income, and the document actually becomes useless for cryptocurrency investors for tax reportingas they need to be reporting capital gains and losses, not merely gross proceeds.

In this sense, it really doesnt make a lot of sense for cryptocurrency exchanges to be issuing a 1099-K. However, they do so to cover their regulatory bases from a liability standpoint and also to reduce the reporting that they have to do.

If they issued a different type of 1099 that is more common within the world of stocks and investing, they would have to issue forms to many more customers, almost all of them. This would be a significant compliance burden that the exchanges would prefer to avoid if possible. Right now, Forms 1099-K only goes out to a small percentage of customers within the exchanges overall user base.

If you meet certain qualifying requirements (based on trading volume and gross proceeds), both you and the IRS will be sent a copy of Form 1099-K by your cryptocurrency exchange. This alerts the government that you have cryptocurrency activity that you should be reporting on your tax return.

Frustratingly, 1099-K does not help the taxpayer actually report his or her capital gains and losses on a tax return. Again, this is because 1099-K does not report any of this, it only reports gross proceeds or the total volume of your transactions on your cryptocurrency exchange.

To properly report, you need to calculate your gains and losses for each trade and report them on Form 8949 and include it with your tax return. You can learn more about the specifics of cryptocurrency tax reporting in this complete guide for investors.

As sending out 1099-K to customers is obviously extremely misleading and frustrating experience for the customers of cryptocurrency exchanges, it is likely that they move away from this practice in the future.

As the IRS continues to pass legislation in the space, cryptocurrency exchanges will likely be forced to send out a Form 1099-B to customers who meet specific requirements. 1099-B is typically used within the world of stock trading and investing, and it does indeed report gains and losses to the taxpayer this greatly helps when it comes to reporting on your tax return.

There are other challenges that cryptocurrency exchanges face when trying to issue a 1099-B, and they all stem around cost basis reporting. Because cryptocurrency is transferable, cost basis information is not always held by a single cryptocurrency exchange which makes 1099-B reporting extremely difficult.

As long as you are reporting your capital gains and losses from your cryptocurrency investing activity, you dont have anything to worry about.

Coinbase, Gemini, and others may still send out a 1099-K, but you will have your bases covered. When the government receives the 1099-K, they will see that you have indeed claimed cryptocurrency on your tax return and reported the income associated with it properly.

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How Do Cryptocurrency Exchanges Report to the IRS? Here's How - Coinfomania

4 platforms to push cryptocurrency trading to the next level – Coinlist

By Coinlist Posted on 17 April, 2020 0 Comments

Since the cryptocurrency boom in 2017, many investors have seen the potential of these financial instruments and included them in their investment strategies. Their intrinsic volatility makes them the grail of the most intrepid traders, mixing risk with opportunity for faster results. However, to get the most out of these instruments, only the best platforms should be used. In this article we present 4 cryptocurrency trading platforms that we believe can take your strategies to the next level.

eToro is a regulated exchange platform that distinguishes itself from the rest of the market for its model of operating, which combines the typical characteristics of a traditional investment platform with a kind of social network. The platform has gradually become involved in the cryptocurrency market and has expanded its coin offerings, with a number that today amounts to an impressive 17 digital currencies.

One of the great advantages of operating through eToro is that the investor has the possibility of expanding their strategies both in the short and the long, since cryptocurrencies are offered through Contracts for Difference (CFD).

Cryptocurrencies act as underlying derivatives to set the price of CFDs. The advantage is that the operator can open long trades, which win if the price of the cryptocurrency increases, but short trades can also be opened, which win if the currency price falls. In addition, advanced tools such as leverage are included, which increases risk exposure but accelerates results.

Going a step further, eToro has also included the possibility of converting these CFDs into real cryptocurrencies that are stored in a wallet (eToro Wallet) that has advanced security elements integrated.

But eToros greatest feature is social trading. On this platform, the trader can monitor the strategies of other successful traders from around the world. If you so choose, you can literally copy your portfolio and transactions in real time. With hundreds of experts with different risk profiles, it is a unique opportunity for investor, regardless of their level of experience.

Key Features Access the worlds most popular Crypto assets including Bitcoin Automatically copy the trades of top Crypto traders Deposit using PayPal + 9 other deposit options

Key Features

Payment Methods

eToro is a multi-asset investment platform with more than 2000 assets, including FX, stocks, Crypto, ETFs, indices and commodities. eToro offers a wide range of cryptos, such as Bitcoin, XRP and others, alongside crypto/fiat and crypto/crypto pairs. eToro users can connect with, learn from, and copy or get copied by other users.

Cryptoassets are highly volatile unregulated investment products. No EU investor protection. eToro USA LLC does not offer CFDs and makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the content of this publication, which has been prepared by our partner utilizing publicly available non-entity specific information about eToro. Your capital is at risk.

For those who really want to be connected not only with the market, but with the underlying technologies of cryptocurrencies, Binance is a great candidate. It has remained one of the most important exchanges over the last 3 years and is currently positioned according to CoinMarketCap as the exchange with the highest reported volume of operations in the world.

In addition to the intrinsic benefits of the experience and stable trading platform of this Malta-based company, Binance has introduced advanced trading tools. Among them is margin trading, which allows you to use and establish a loan model, providing benefits for all parties.

For its part, the Binance Launchpad platform allows participation in decent ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) previously audited by the Binance team, which places operators in the closest place to a typical IPO (Initial Public Offering).

Finally, Binance offers hundreds of cryptocurrencies in over 400 different currency pairs. They are stored in real wallets and the user decides what to do with their digital currencies, bringing them closer to the technology that these digital assets are built upon.

Key Features

Payment Methods

Binance has grown exponentially since it was founded in 2017 and is now one of, if not the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges on the market.

If are not necessarily looking for a balance between risk and opportunity, BitMEX could be the ideal platform for cryptocurrency trading. In a market that is moving so fast, it is important to be in the right place.

BitMEX agglomerates 8 cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, TRON, Bitcoin Cash, EOS and Cardano) into 12 different currency pairs. As with eToro, these pairs are contract-based, although futures contracts are traded in this case. These have an expiration date and are typical in professional investment environments.

With a more advanced interface, BitMEXs true unique feature is its leverage rate. Here, traders can open positions with a leverage rate of up to 1: 100 (for BTC). In this way, in exchange for greater risk exposure, the investor can multiply his initial investment by 100. The advantage is that with just a 1% increase in the price of the cryptocurrency, the operator can make 100% profits. However, the risk increases dramatically and 1% would mean the loss of the entire investment, a concept known as position liquidation.

Thus, BitMEX is not a platform for everybody, and has received hundreds of criticisms for its regulatory loopholes and for the fact that it does not require a mandatory KYC identity verification. However, it remains the favourite of many followers of the digital currency market.

Traders who are more familiar with traditional trading will be able to enjoy a modern interface, but with similar elements to legendary platforms such as the MetaTrader MT4 / MT5. This broker has all the relevant regulatory compliance, but also offers very competitive conditions at the level of spread and maintenance fees.

Plus500 offers 7 different cryptocurrencies and includes an index whose value moves according to the price of the top 10 digital assets currently on the market. Its cross-platform scheme allows user access through mobile devices (iOS, Android, Windows Phone), a desktop application for Windows and the exchange platform can also be accessed through any web browser.

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4 platforms to push cryptocurrency trading to the next level - Coinlist

Ethereum (ETH) Has Prospective Remote Cryptocurrency Jobs for Technical and Non-Technical Talent in the Ec … – The Cryptocurrency Analytics

Developers, Researchers & Academics know how to get started with Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Those who have non-technical skills are not sure where to start with ETH. Writing content on Ethereum, Offering to take notes for community calls in ETH, Translating ETH content in your native language are ways in which non-technical people can get involved in ETH.

Financial professionals and accountants can contribute to DeFi apps and in accounting. Product manager roles, marketing, and communication roles are available in the Ethereum Ecosystem.

Sydney Ifergan, the Crypto Expert, tweeted: Ethereum Jobs (ETH) might become a career goal at the time of the pandemic where many are losing employment. It can help get discovered by companies looking for a typical professional DNA suitable to Ethereum Ecosystem.

Maybe those developers, researchers, academicians, non-technical talents, marketing skills might find breakthrough luck by searching for jobs and exploring companies.

Those who have had fancy jobs before might not have had the time to explore the job opportunities in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Perhaps, one might not land gainful employment right now during the pandemic. This might be the time to know where opportunities exist, and perhaps when all becomes normal, one might find a way to pay a few bills using the cryptocurrency jobs. Some might be lucky to find the best opportunity of their life during the lockdown.

Ethereum Meet Up groups helps enthusiasts, HODlers, users, technologists, and developers from across the world to get involved in the Ethereum community. There are many online forums, meetup groups, and events, which users and developers who are willing to contribute to the project can make use of as a mode of getting involved in the Ethereum community.

Those who are willing to get involved with Ethereum will be able to do it in more than one ways depending upon ones skill and professional background. There are some methods that help contribute directly.

Sharing news, talking about technical issues, debating on the recent developments are all the key ways in which contributions are done to help Ethereum Network Imagine its future. Those who are willing to know more about the community need to kick start with influential Ethereum Twitter Accounts, chat rooms, and forums.

The upcoming events scheduled for Ethereum will help develop new skills and to develop employment opportunities.

Ethereum enthusiasts organize meet-ups at a local level, which is a chance for people who are interested in Ethereum to get together and to learn more about Ethereum. Several active meet up groups gets organized across different countries like in Austin, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Columbus, Cape Town, Denver, Hong Kong, Jakarta, and in several countries.

There are ways for artists, accountants, and developers to contribute their skill set in one area or the other.

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Ethereum (ETH) Has Prospective Remote Cryptocurrency Jobs for Technical and Non-Technical Talent in the Ec ... - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

A Bright Side to the Dark Web – Cryptonews

Source: Adobe/manuelhuss

The dark web typically conjures up thoughts of criminal activity. While there are undoubtedly unsavory characters leveraging the darknet for illegal pursuits, there are also virtuous uses of the hidden internet.

As reported, per data from blockchain analytics provider Chainalysis, over USD 600 million worth of bitcoin (BTC) moved on darknet markets in Q4 of 2019. (However, the darknet still accounts for less than 1% of all BTC transactions.)

In this article, we will highlight the bright side of the dark web and discuss instances where it has played a role in making positive change.

In the last decade, there have been several high-profile whistleblowers who have exposed criminal actions by governments, such as spying on their own citizens. While whistleblowers have played pivotal roles in exposing the crimes of governments, they typically do so at great risk.

For example, in June 2013, The Guardian published an explosive article revealing that the American government, through the National Security Agency (NSA), had been spying on its citizens by accessing records pertaining to their phone calls. At the time, the data was said to be from an anonymous informer. However, former government contractor, Edward Snowden, eventually outed himself as the source of the leak.

Laura Poitras, the journalist who Snowden reached out to in order to share the information with the public, credits Tor, the infamous dark web browser, as one of the main tools which made the entire endeavor possible. In a Reddit AMA, she stated:

"It would have been impossible for us to work on the NSA stories and make "Citizenfour" without many encryption tools that allowed us to communicate more securely. In fact, in the credits, we thank several free software projects for making it all possible. It's definitely important that we support these tools so the creators can make them easier to use. They are incredibly underfunded for how important they are. You can donate to Tails, Tor and a few other projects at the Freedom of the Press Foundation."

Additionally, In 2015, President Obama signed an Executive Order barring donations to people or parties that may affect national security. The loose wording of the Order led to beliefs that it applied to whistleblowers like Snowden.

In response, people began to donate to The Snowden Defence Fund in bitcoin, exceeding any amount previously donated to the fund over a similar period of time. WikiLeaks also accepts donations in bitcoin and anonymous submissions over Tor.

While the dark web is considered to be a playground for shadowy figures peddling illegal wares, a University of Surrey research paper found that only 60% of websites on the dark web were of an illegal nature.

The rest of the dark web is utilized by law-abiding citizens who simply want to protect their privacy. This is especially true in the case of citizens living in repressive regimes where there is significant censorship. Totalitarian regimes typically limit access to the internet by throttling the bandwidth or more severe blanket website restrictions and blockages.

Cindy Cohn, the executive director of US e-rights campaign group EFF, explained the connection between legitimate sites with dark web mirrors and censorship resistance saying:

Facebook has a Tor instance for people in repressive regimes. We see Tor use go up whenever a dictatorship takes over or a coup occurs. Tibetans, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Egypt. The list goes on and on.

The dark web, accessed through Tor, can be an invaluable tool for those seeking to counter repressive regimes and their machinations. For instance, grassroots efforts leading to the adoption of the Tor browser in Mauritania led to the government abandoning the filtering of websites in 2005.

Additionally, when the government of Venezuela began to impose internet restrictions, citizens took to Tor to communicate. While the government eventually banned access to Tor through the state-owned internet service provider, some citizens were able to leverage their access to crypto to hedge themselves from inflation, conserve the value of their assets, and provide themselves with some liquidity on an as-needed basis.

Chainalysis noted in a recent report focused on the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic, the bitcoin price correction, and activity on darknet markets that spending has slowed down.

"Darknet market revenue has fallen much more than wed expect following bitcoins recent major price drop...Perhaps darknet market customers arent buying as many drugs given the public health crisis," the Chainalysis report explained.

This state of affairs is not unique to darknet marketplaces as businesses across the world are reporting significant dips in profit. However, given the lockdown effective in many areas of the world, people are not frequenting bars, clubs, pubs, festivals or other such social situations where drugs are typically consumed. Thus, people just likely don't have the need for drugs, which is one of the biggest revenue drivers for the darknet vendors.

Despite the marked fall in profits for darknet vendors, many seem to be standing in solidarity with the rest of the world. The cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows reveals that many of the actors on dark web marketplaces are echoing information found on the surface web in regards to staying safe and flattening the curve.

Additionally, some hackers are even rejecting calls for ideas through which they can exploit the general public during the pandemic. Digital Shadows states:

As weve seen time and time again, cybercriminals will find ways to take advantage of peoples fears and uncertainties in the wake of major disasters and emergencies. However, the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown some benevolent reasoning has emerged on some platforms that are typically used for crime: Users urging others to avoid taking advantage of an already dire situation.

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A Bright Side to the Dark Web - Cryptonews

Government Surveillance Is a Dangerous Path to Trek – American Greatness

Big Brother is watching you appeared on billboards in George Orwells acclaimed novel, 1984, first published in 1949. Today, that ominous warning is rapidly becoming a reality.

In the past two decades, roughly since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has increased its surveillance of Americans to a level unforeseen, even by Orwell.

Whether it be the National Security Administration, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or your supposedly benign local government, you are being watched and tracked at almost every turn.

Making matters even more harrowing, the advent of smartphones, GPS tracking devices, social media, and countless other new technologies has made it easier than ever for private corporations to track your every move, thought, and desire. Just think about it: your every text message, Google search, phone call, and email is stored somewhere.

And as we have seen in the recent past, the government is not shy about forcing companies to hand over their users most private data should they deem it necessary. Although there is a need for the work of the NSA, CIA, FBI, or whichever organization claims jurisdiction to access sensitive personal data in extreme cases, such as an imminent terrorist attack, common sense and reality shows that these omnipotent agencies have been more than willing to seek data and information that is well outside the bounds of these strict guidelines.

Fortunately, whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee, have exposed some of the surveillance-state actions perpetrated by his ubiquitous former employer. Who knows what is actually happening in the deep corridors of these agencies, however, under the auspices of national security?

Although technology per se is not the primary driver of the increased government surveillance weve all come to expect and accept today, it certainly makes it much easier for governments to monitor their citizens. From a historical perspective, the scourge of surveillance has been alive and well for centuries. The Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi are just two examples of the sordid history of government surveillance.

In perhaps the most ominous current case, consider Communist Chinas massive surveillance apparatus, where every citizen is monitored constantly. Chinas social credit system is the most all-encompassing and terrifying surveillance program in world history.

For better or worse, most Americans are not overly concerned with government surveillanceyet. When we hear about things like city cameras capturing our every move, however, we should definitely raise our eyebrows. Even worse, stories abound over seemingly innocuous government surveillance operations that continue to push the envelope while trampling upon privacy rights and individual liberty.

The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy rights for a reason. Before our victory over Great Britain in the War of Independence, Americans (or colonists as they were then known) were victims of British surveillance and spy networks. Indeed, a primary reason for going to war against the mighty British military was so Americans would be free from surveillance.

Yet, here we are, more than two centuries later, struggling to avoid the onset of our own surveillance state. Although numerous officials from NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. will claim surveillance is necessary to protect the homeland, this is a false choice.

Benjamin Franklin warned us, Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither. This may be more relevant today than ever before.

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Government Surveillance Is a Dangerous Path to Trek - American Greatness

Google Engineers ‘Mutate’ AI to Make It Evolve Systems Faster Than We Can Code Them – ScienceAlert

Much of the work undertaken by artificial intelligence involves a training process known as machine learning, where AI gets better at a task such as recognising a cat or mapping a route the more it does it. Now that same technique is being use to create new AI systems, without any human intervention.

For years, engineers at Google have been working on a freakishly smart machine learning system known as theAutoML system(or automatic machine learning system), which is already capable of creating AI that outperforms anything we've made.

Now, researchers have tweaked it to incorporate concepts of Darwinian evolution and shown it can build AI programs that continue to improve upon themselves faster than they would if humans were doing the coding.

The new system is called AutoML-Zero, and although it may sound a little alarming, it could lead to the rapid development of smarter systems - for example, neural networked designed to more accurately mimic the human brain with multiple layers and weightings, something human coders have struggled with.

"It is possible today to automatically discover complete machine learning algorithms just using basic mathematical operations as building blocks," write the researchers in their pre-print paper. "We demonstrate this by introducing a novel framework that significantly reduces human bias through a generic search space."

The original AutoML system is intended to make it easier for apps to leverage machine learning, and already includes plenty of automated features itself, but AutoML-Zero takes the required amount of human input way down.

Using a simple three-step process - setup, predict and learn - it can be thought of as machine learning from scratch.

The system starts off with a selection of 100 algorithms made by randomly combining simple mathematical operations. A sophisticated trial-and-error process then identifies the best performers, which are retained - with some tweaks - for another round of trials. In other words, the neural network is mutating as it goes.

When new code is produced, it's tested on AI tasks - like spotting the difference between a picture of a truck and a picture of a dog - and the best-performing algorithms are then kept for future iteration. Like survival of the fittest.

And it's fast too: the researchers reckon up to 10,000 possible algorithms can be searched through per second per processor (the more computer processors available for the task, the quicker it can work).

Eventually, this should see artificial intelligence systems become more widely used, and easier to access for programmers with no AI expertise. It might even help us eradicate human bias from AI, because humans are barely involved.

Work to improve AutoML-Zero continues, with the hope that it'll eventually be able to spit out algorithms that mere human programmers would never have thought of. Right now it's only capable of producing simple AI systems, but the researchers think the complexity can be scaled up rather rapidly.

"While most people were taking baby steps, [the researchers] took a giant leap into the unknown," computer scientist Risto Miikkulainen from the University of Texas, Austin, who was not involved in the work, told Edd Gent at Science. "This is one of those papers that could launch a lot of future research."

The research paper has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, but can be viewed online at arXiv.org.

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Google Engineers 'Mutate' AI to Make It Evolve Systems Faster Than We Can Code Them - ScienceAlert