Category Archives: Data Mining
How Much Of Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:HYMC) Do Institutions Own? – Simply Wall St
If you want to know who really controls Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:HYMC), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it's not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies. We also tend to see lower insider ownership in companies that were previously publicly owned.
Hycroft Mining Holding is not a large company by global standards. It has a market capitalization of US$106m, which means it wouldn't have the attention of many institutional investors. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it seems that institutions own shares in the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about Hycroft Mining Holding.
See our latest analysis for Hycroft Mining Holding
Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.
We can see that Hycroft Mining Holding does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This can indicate that the company has a certain degree of credibility in the investment community. However, it is best to be wary of relying on the supposed validation that comes with institutional investors. They too, get it wrong sometimes. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Hycroft Mining Holding's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.
It looks like hedge funds own 73% of Hycroft Mining Holding shares. That catches my attention because hedge funds sometimes try to influence management, or bring about changes that will create near term value for shareholders. Mudrick Capital Management, LP is currently the company's largest shareholder with 40% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 14% and 9.2% of the stock.
After doing some more digging, we found that the top 2 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.
While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There is some analyst coverage of the stock, but it could still become more well known, with time.
While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.
I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.
Our data suggests that insiders own under 1% of Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation in their own names. It appears that the board holds about US$798k worth of stock. This compares to a market capitalization of US$106m. Many investors in smaller companies prefer to see the board more heavily invested. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.
The general public, with a 15% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.
It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Hycroft Mining Holding better, we need to consider many other factors. Be aware that Hycroft Mining Holding is showing 4 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 2 of those are a bit unpleasant...
If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.
NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. *Interactive Brokers Rated Lowest Cost Broker by StockBrokers.com Annual Online Review 2020
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How Much Of Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:HYMC) Do Institutions Own? - Simply Wall St
The State of Consumer Data Privacy Laws in the US (And Why It Matters) – The New York Times
With more of the things people buy being internet-connected, more of our reviews and recommendations at Wirecutter are including lengthy sections detailing the privacy and security features of such products, everything from smart thermostats to fitness trackers. As the data these devices collect is sold and sharedand hackeddeciding what risks youre comfortable with is a necessary part of making an informed choice. And those risks vary widely, in part because theres no single, comprehensive federal law regulating how most companies collect, store, or share customer data.
Most of the data economy underpinning common products and services is invisible to shoppers. As your data gets passed around between countless third parties, there arent just more companies profiting from your data, but also more possibilities for your data to be leaked or breached in a way that causes real harm. In just the past year, weve seen a news outlet use pseudonymous app data, allegedly leaked from an advertiser associated with the dating app Grindr, to out a priest. Weve read about the US government buying location data from a prayer app. Researchers have found opioid-addiction treatment apps sharing sensitive data. And T-Mobile recently suffered a data breach that affected at least 40 million people, some who had never even had a T-Mobile account.
We have these companies that are amassing just gigantic amounts of data about each and every one of us, all day, every day, said Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel for the First Amendment and consumer privacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ruane also pointed out how data ends up being used in surprising waysintentionally or notsuch as in targeting ads or adjusting interest rates based on race. Your data is being taken and it is being used in ways that are harmful.
Consumer data privacy laws can give individuals rights to control their data, but if poorly implemented such laws could also maintain the status quo. We can stop it, Ruane continued. We can create a better internet, a better world, that is more privacy protective.
Currently, privacy laws are a cluttered mess of different sectoral rules. Historically, in the US we have a bunch of disparate federal [and state] laws, said Amie Stepanovich, executive director at the Silicon Flatirons Center at Colorado Law. [These] either look at specific types of data, like credit data or health information, Stepanovich said, or look at specific populations like children, and regulate within those realms.
The United States doesnt have a singular law that covers the privacy of all types of data. Instead, it has a mix of laws that go by acronyms like HIPAA, FCRA, FERPA, GLBA, ECPA, COPPA, and VPPA.
The data collected by the vast majority of products people use every day isnt regulated. Since there are no federal privacy laws regulating many companies, theyre pretty much free to do what they want with the data, unless a state has its own data privacy law (more on that below).
Most people believe theyre protected, until theyre not, said Ashkan Soltani, an independent researcher and former chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. Sadly, because this ecosystem is primarily hidden from view and not transparent, consumers arent able to see and understand the flow of information.
Europes comprehensive privacy law, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), requires companies to ask for some permissions to share data and gives individuals rights to access, delete, or control the use of that data. The United States, in contrast, doesnt have a singular law that covers the privacy of all types of data. Instead, it has a mix of laws that go by acronyms like HIPAA, FCRA, FERPA, GLBA, ECPA, COPPA, and VPPA, designed to target only specific types of data in special (often outdated) circumstances.
With the wide range of different laws, its easy to see how people get confused about what rights they do and dont have. To add to that, alongside these federal laws are a handful of state laws, as well.
Currently, three states in the US have three different comprehensive consumer privacy laws: California (CCPA and its amendment, CPRA), Virginia (VCDPA), and Colorado (ColoPA). Regardless of which state a company is located in, the rights the laws provide apply only to people who live in these states.
A lot of the provisions are business-model affirming. [VCDPA] essentially allows big data-gathering companies to continue doing what they have been doing. Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel, American Civil Liberties Union
These laws have similar provisions that tend to give you some type of notice and choice in controlling your data. Essentially, a company operating under these regulations must tell you if its selling your data; you also get a choice in whether youre okay with that or not, and you have the right to access, delete, correct, or move your data. These laws differ slightly in other ways, such as in the allowed cure periods (the amount of time a company has to correct a mistake), the size or income level of businesses the law applies to, and whether you can use tools or authorized agents for opt-out requests (such as a setting in your web browser that automatically opts you out of data sales on a web page, or a service where another person makes opt-out requests for you).
The experts we spoke to referred to Californias privacy protections as the strongest in the US, since the regulations include a limited private right of actionthe ability to sue a companyagainst certain types of data breaches. California also requires a global opt out to remove ones self from data sharing by device or browser, instead of being forced to opt out on each site individually. In contrast, some of the experts we spoke with viewed Virginias Consumer Data Protection Act with skepticism. I would consider [VCDPA] a pretty weak bill, said Ruane at the ACLU. It is based on opt-out consent. There are no civil-rights protections. There is no private right of action. A lot of the provisions are business-model affirming. It essentially allows big data-gathering companies to continue doing what they have been doing. None of that should be too surprising considering that Virginias law was written with strong input from Amazon.
At least four other states, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, have serious comprehensive consumer data privacy proposals in committee right now. Other states have varying laws in the early stages. It can be difficult to follow the status of all these proposals, but the International Association of Privacy Professionals has a tracker that shows which states have privacy legislation in progress and where those bills are in the process. According to research from The Markup, at least 14 of the proposals are similar to Virginias weaker law.
As with the national laws, there are state-level laws that carve out coverage of individual aspects of data privacy. Missouri has ebook privacy rules. The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) gives people privacy rights over their biometric data, such as their fingerprint or face scans. When it comes to data-breach notifications, its particularly hard to know your rights, with at least 54 different laws that vary by region.
Amie Stepanovich of the Silicon Flatirons Center noted that such state laws are still useful, even if they can get confusing. You can think of them as raising the water level, she said, adding that companies often choose to apply the stronger, more protective standard across the board for everyone when legal standards go up.
Theres also a risk of too many state laws generating confusion, both operationally for companies and practically for consumers. Whitney Merrill, a privacy attorney and data protection officer, said that a federal law would make matters easier for everyone. We need a federal law that thinks about things in a much more consistent approach, Merrill said, to make sure that consumers understand and have the right expectation over rights that they have in their data.
Everyone we spoke with described potential consumer data privacy laws as the floor, where it would be possible to build upon them in the future as new technologies spring up. This floor typically encompasses a few basic protections:
Merrill would also like to see a more comprehensive data-breach notification law, perhaps as a standalone bill. I think thatd be a pretty easy thing to pass, she said. Who gets notified? What are the common standards? Lets make it easy so everyone is on the same page.
Especially in those states where they dont allow a private right [to sue], to then also underfund the public enforcementits just an insult to injury. Hayley Tsukayama, legislative activist, Electronic Frontier Foundation
No regulation means much without an enforcement mechanism. And lobbyists have contested a private right of actionletting an individual sue a company over privacy violationsas one such mechanism. Californias law has a limited private right of action related to negligence with regard to a data breach. The Colorado and Virginia laws dont even have that. Several bills, including those in Connecticut, Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington, failed to become laws because they included a private right of action. In early 2021, lawmakers in North Dakota introduced a bill that included a private right of action and opt-in consent, and in response a group of advertising companies (PDF) claimed: Such an approach would create the most restrictive privacy law in the United States. The bill failed in the state house.
Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, described the situation bluntly. We would like to see full private rights of action in privacy legislation, she said. We just think if a company violates your privacy, you should be able to sue them.
Historically, marginalized communities have not been able to rely on public institutions to vindicate their rights, Stepanovich said. So having something like a private right of action for Black communities and for other communities that are not white ensures that they can enforce their own rights or go to court when something has gone wrong.
Soltani, in contrast, saw a way forward without the private right of action: I think enforcement is a really important facet. If theres adequate enforcementlegal protections and regulatory resourcesI dont think its a dealbreaker to forgo a private right to action.
Those resources are important. Especially in those states where they dont allow a private right [of action], to then also underfund the public enforcementits just an insult to injury, Tsukayama said. California created an enforcement group just for this purpose called the California Privacy Protection Agency, which will receive $10 million in annual funding. The Virginia state attorney generals office handles enforcement there with $400,000 in funding, supplemented with fines and penalties.
Throwing money at enforcement or requiring companies to adapt to new rules also requires people to do the work, and those people arent always readily available. One of my concerns with state laws is that its more and more stuff to learn, Merrill noted, and Im afraid of burnout in the privacy community because its impossible to keep up, and the stakes are so high.
The Internet Association, an industry group that represents several big tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, and Google, pointed us to a letter and testimony sent to the New Jersey legislature that focuses on two points: consent and private right of action. The association is pushing for the current opt-out consent model to maintain the status quo, in which consumers have to go out of their way to get the privacy protections outlined in the law. The association also included a paper from the Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce that advocates for business-friendly legal reforms, which claims that private lawsuits would hinder innovation, cost too much money, and lead to inconsistent rulings.
If youve ever clicked through one of those annoying cookie notifications or been forced to scroll to the end of a privacy policy before you can use software, youve had a glimpse at how such laws can have a detrimental effect on your day-to-day experience.
It doesnt have to be this way. Stepanovich said that if a privacy law is well written, most peoples lives shouldnt change. Privacy isnt about not using tech, its about being able to participate in society and knowing your data isnt going to be abused, or youre not going to have some harm down the road because of it, she said. Done right, the sorts of consequences from scandals like those surrounding Cambridge Analytica or Grindr could be minimized. And youd see fewer personalized ads and more contextual ones, which are arguably less creepy (subscription required to read article), anyway.
A well-written data privacy law would make it easier for you to buy many of the products youre curious about without needing to worry about the privacy concerns of doing so. Perhaps Wirecutter reviews and guides wouldnt need in-depth comparisons assessing the privacy policies for running watches, smart scales, or robot vacuums, because theyd all have a baseline of privacy, as well as clear, easy-to-understand opt-in rules for sharing data. And if a company messes up and abuses those privacy rights, that company would be held accountable for a change.
Even the latest laws leave out all sorts of other data concerns, such as algorithm transparency or government use of facial recognition.
One sticking point of the current opt-out system is notification fatigue. When every app and website is asking you for dozens of permissions, it becomes easier to accept the status quo than to manually opt out of every tracking technology. A review article in Science (PDF) in 2015 highlighted just how poorly most people performed in navigating privacy risks, and a 2019 paper described the sort of notice and choice consent that everyone is used to as a method of privacy regulation which promises transparency and agency but delivers neither.
All of the experts we spoke with preferred an opt-in consent model and privacy by default concepts. Such an arrangement would make accounts private initially, and apps wouldnt have any permissions. It would be up to you to opt into those settings. Alongside the right to sue companies, opt-in consent is proving to be one of the hardest things to get into privacy laws. In place of that, experts are pushing for the ability to use browser extensions or other tools that opt out automatically.
Ashkan Soltani, the former chief technologist at the FTC, has proposed a technical solution with Global Privacy Control (GPC), which provides a way to opt out of the sale of data at the browser or device levelan improvement over the need to opt out at every site or on every service. GPC is currently included in a handful of browsers and is respected by several publications, including The New York Times. California will more explicitly require businesses to honor GPC once its global opt out rules go into effect in 2023.
The impact of these types of laws could even reverse some of the privacy is dead despair that many people feel, as Amie Stepanovich noted. You want that hopelessness to go away and for people to know: You are being protected while youre doing this activity.
The basic privacy laws being advocated for, proposed, and sometimes passed cant and wont fix everything. Given the complexity of the data economy that now exists, theres plenty more that could and arguably should be done. Even the latest laws leave out all sorts of other data concerns, such as algorithm transparency or government use of facial recognition. There are several national privacy laws in various stages of legislation, but none that have a serious chance of passing anytime soon.
But new laws could at least encourage less privacy-hostile products and services, and they could provide basic protections (and enforcement) against the most harmful types of data mining, as well as form a baseline for more privacy protections in the future. At its best, a data privacy law could make it so that you can buy the latest gizmos with fun new features without having to fret over the fact that the company is collecting more data than you realize and selling it to companies youve never heard of to be used by advertisers to market to you.
1. Whitney Merrill, privacy attorney and data protection officer, phone interview, July 26, 2021
2. Ashkan Soltani, independent researcher and former chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, phone interview, July 21, 2021
3. Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel for the First Amendment and consumer privacy at the American Civil Liberties Union, phone interview, July 21, 2021
4. Amie Stepanovich, executive director at the Silicon Flatirons Center at Colorado Law, phone interview, July 15, 2021
5. Hayley Tsukayama, legislative activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, phone interview, July 14, 2021
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The State of Consumer Data Privacy Laws in the US (And Why It Matters) - The New York Times
After years of inaction against adtech, UKs ICO calls for browser-level controls to fix cookie fatigue – TechCrunch
In the latest quasi-throwback toward do not track, the U.K.s data protection chief has come out in favor of a browser- and/or device-level setting to allow internet users to set lasting cookie preferences suggesting this as a fix for the barrage of consent pop-ups that continue to infest websites in the region.
European web users digesting this development in an otherwise monotonously unchanging regulatory saga should be forgiven not only for any sense of dj vu they may experience but also for wondering if they havent been mocked/gaslit quite enough already where cookie consent is concerned.
Last month, U.K. digital minister Oliver Dowden took aim at what he dubbed an endless parade of cookie pop-ups suggesting the government is eyeing watering down consent requirements around web tracking as ministers consider how to diverge from European Union data protection standards post-Brexit. (Hes slated to present the full sweep of the governments data reform plans later this month.)
Today, the U.K.s outgoing information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, stepped into the fray to urge her counterparts in G7 countries to knock heads and coalesce around the idea of letting web users express generic privacy preferences at the browser/app/device level, rather than having to do it through pop-ups every time they visit a website.
In a statement announcing an idea she will present this week during a virtual meeting of fellow G7 data protection and privacy authorities less pithily described in the press release as being on how to improve the current cookie consent mechanism, making web browsing smoother and more business-friendly while better protecting personal data Denham said: I often hear people say they are tired of having to engage with so many cookie pop-ups. That fatigue is leading to people giving more personal data than they would like.
The cookie mechanism is also far from ideal for businesses and other organizations running websites, as it is costly and it can lead to poor user experience. While I expect businesses to comply with current laws, my office is encouraging international collaboration to bring practical solutions in this area.
There are nearly 2 billion websites out there taking account of the worlds privacy preferences. No single country can tackle this issue alone. That is why I am calling on my G7 colleagues to use our convening power. Together we can engage with technology firms and standards organizations to develop a coordinated approach to this challenge, she added.
Contacted for more on this idea, an ICO spokeswoman reshuffled the words thusly: Instead of trying to effect change through nearly 2 billion websites, the idea is that legislators and regulators could shift their attention to the browsers, applications and devices through which users access the web.
In place of click-through consent at a website level, users could express lasting, generic privacy preferences through browsers, software applications and device settings enabling them to set and update preferences at a frequency of their choosing rather than on each website they visit.
Of course a browser-baked do not track(DNT) signal is not a new idea. Its around a decade old at this point. Indeed, it could be called the idea that cant die because its never truly lived as earlier attempts at embedding user privacy preferences into browser settings were scuppered by lack of industry support.
However, the approach Denham is advocating, vis-a-vis lasting preferences, may in fact be rather different to DNT given her call for fellow regulators to engage with the tech industry, and its standards organizations, and come up with practical and business-friendly solutions to the regional Internets cookie pop-up problem.
Its not clear what consensus practical or, er, simply pro-industry might result from this call, if anything.
Indeed, todays press release may be nothing more than Denham trying to raise her own profile because shes on the cusp of stepping out of the information commissioners chair. (Never waste a good international networking opportunity and all that; her counterparts in the U.S., Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy are scheduled for a virtual natter today and tomorrow where she implies shell try to engage them with her big idea).
Her U.K. replacement, meanwhile, is already lined up. So anything Denham personally champions right now, at the end of her ICO chapter, may have a very brief shelf life unless shes set to parachute into a comparable role at another G7-caliber data protection authority.
Nor is Denham the first person to make a revived pitch for a rethink on cookie consent mechanisms even in recent years.
Last October, for example, a U.S.-centric tech-publisher coalition came out with what they called a Global Privacy Standard (GPC) aiming to build momentum for a browser-level pro-privacy signal to stop the sale of personal data, geared toward Californias Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), though pitched as something that could have wider utility for internet users.
By January this year, they announced 40 million-plus users were making use of a browser or extension that supports GPC along with a clutch of big-name publishers signed up to honor it. But its fair to say its global impact so far remains limited.
More recently, European privacy group noyb published a technical proposal for a European-centric automated browser-level signal that would let regional users configure advanced consent choices enabling the more granular controls it said would be needed to fully mesh with the EUs more comprehensive (versus CCPA) legal framework around data protection.
The proposal, for which noyb worked with the Sustainable Computing Lab at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, is called Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC). And noyb has called on the EU to legislate for such a mechanism suggesting theres a window of opportunity as lawmakers there are also keen to find ways to reduce cookie fatigue (a stated aim for the still-in-train reform of the ePrivacy rules, for example).
So there are some concrete examples of what practical, less fatiguing yet still pro-privacy consent mechanisms might look like to lend a little more color to Denhams idea although her remarks today dont reference any such existing mechanisms or proposals.
(When we asked the ICO for more details on what shes advocating for, its spokeswoman didnt cite any specific technical proposals or implementations, historical or contemporary, either, saying only: By working together, the G7 data protection authorities could have an outsized impact in stimulating the development of technological solutions to the cookie consent problem.)
So Denhams call to the G7 does seem rather low on the substance versus profile-raising noise.
In any case, the really big elephant in the room here is the lack of enforcement around cookie consent breaches including by the ICO.
Add to that, theres the now very pressing question of how exactly the U.K. will reform domestic law in this area (post-Brexit) which makes the timing of Denhams call look, well, interestingly opportune. (And difficult to interpret as anything other than opportunistically opaque at this point.)
The adtech industry will of course be watching developments in the U.K. with interest and would surely be cheering from the rooftops if domestic data protection reform results in amendments to U.K. rules that allow the vast majority of websites to avoid having to ask Brits for permission to process their personal data, say by opting them into tracking by default (under the guise of fixing cookie friction and cookie fatigue for them).
That would certainly be mission accomplished after all these years of cookie-fatigue-generating-cookie-consent-non-compliance by surveillance capitalisms industrial data complex.
Its not yet clear which way the U.K. government will jump but eyebrows should raise to read the ICO writing today that it expects compliance with (current) U.K. law when it has so roundly failed to tackle the adtech industrys role in cynically sicking up said cookie fatigue by failing to take any action against such systemic breaches.
The bald fact is that the ICO has for years avoided tackling adtech abuse of data protection, despite acknowledging publicly that the sector is wildly out of control.
Instead, it has opted for a cringing process of engagement (read: appeasement) that has condemned U.K. internet users to cookie pop-up hell.
This is why the regulator is being sued for inaction after it closed a long-standing complaint against the security abuse of peoples data in real-time bidding ad auctions with nothing to show for it. So, yes, you can be forgiven for feeling gaslit by Denhams call for action on cookie fatigue following the ICOs repeat inaction on the causes of cookie fatigue.
Not that the ICO is alone on that front, however.
There has been a fairly widespread failure by EU regulators to tackle systematic abuse of the blocs data protection rules by the adtech sector with a number of complaints (such as this one against the IAB Europes self-styled transparency and consent framework) still working, painstakingly, through the various labyrinthine regulatory processes.
Frances CNIL has probably been the most active in this area last year slapping Amazon and Google with fines of $42 million and $120 million for dropping tracking cookies without consent, for example. (And before you accuse CNIL of being anti-American, it has also gone after domestic adtech.)
But elsewhere notably Ireland, where many adtech giants are regionally headquartered the lack of enforcement against the sector has allowed for cynical, manipulative and/or meaningless consent pop-ups to proliferate as the dysfunctional norm while investigations have failed to progress and EU citizens have been forced to become accustomed not to regulatory closure (or indeed rapture), but to an existentially endless consent experience thats now being (re)branded as cookie fatigue.
Yes, even with the EUs General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into application in 2018 and beefing up (in theory) consent standards.
This is why the privacy campaign group noyb is now lodging scores of complaints against cookie consent breaches to try to force EU regulators to actually enforce the law in this area, even as it also finds time to put up a practical technical proposal that could help shrink cookie fatigue without undermining data protection standards.
Its a shining example of action that has yet to inspire the lions share of the EUs actual regulators to act on cookies. The TL;DR is that EU citizens are still waiting for the cookie consent reckoning even if there is now a bit of high-level talk about the need for something to be done about all these tedious pop-ups.
The problem is that while GDPR certainly cranked up the legal risk on paper, without proper enforcement, its just a paper tiger. And the pushing around of lots of paper is very tedious, clearly.
Most cookie pop-ups youll see in the EU are thus essentially privacy theater; at the very least, theyre unnecessarily irritating because they create ongoing friction for web users who must constantly respond to nags for their data (typically to repeatedly try to deny access if they can actually find a reject all setting).
But even worse many of these pervasive pop-ups are actively undermining the law (as a number of studies haveshown) because the vast majority do not meet the legal standard for consent.
So the cookie consent/fatigue narrative is actually a story of faux compliance enabled by an enforcement vacuum thats now also encouraging the watering down of privacy standards as a result of such much-unpunished flouting of the law.
There is a lesson here, surely.
Faux consent pop-ups that you can easily stumble across when surfing the ad-supported internet in Europe include those failing to provide users with clear information about how their data will be used; or not offering people a free choice to reject tracking without being penalized (such as with no/limited access to the content theyre trying to access); or at least giving the impression that accepting is a requirement to access said content (dark pattern!); and/or otherwise manipulating a persons choice by making it super simple to accept tracking and far, far, far more tedious to deny.
You can also still sometimes find cookie notices that dont offer users any choice at all and just pop up to inform that by continuing to browse you consent to your data being processed which, unless the cookies in question are literally essential for provision of the webpage, is basically illegal. (Europes top court made it abundantly clear in 2019 that active consent is a requirement for non-essential cookies.)
Nonetheless, to the untrained eye and sadly there are a lot of them where cookie consent notices are concerned it can look like its Europes data protection law thats the ass because it seemingly demands all these meaningless consent pop-ups, which just gloss over an ongoing background data grab anyway.
The truth is regulators should have slapped down these manipulative dark patterns years ago.
The problem now is that regulatory failure is encouraging political posturing and, in a twisting double-back throw by the ICO, regulatory thrusting around the idea that some newfangled mechanism is whats really needed to remove all this universally inconvenient friction.
An idea like noybs ADPC does indeed look very useful in ironing out the widespread operational wrinkles wrapping the EUs cookie consent rules. But when its the ICO suggesting a quick fix after the regulatory authority has failed so spectacularly over the long duration of complaints around this issue, youll have to forgive us for being skeptical.
In such a context, the notion of cookie fatigue looks like its being suspiciously trumped up or fixed on as a convenient scapegoat to rechannel consumer frustration with hated online tracking toward high privacy standards and away from the commercial data-pipes that demand all these intrusive, tedious cookie pop-ups in the first place while neatly aligning with the U.K. governments post-Brexit political priorities on data.
Worse still: The whole farcical consent pantomime which the adtech industry has aggressively engaged in to try to sustain a privacy-hostile business model in spite of beefed-up European privacy laws could be set to end in genuine tragedy for user rights if standards end up being slashed to appease the law mockers.
The target of regulatory ire and political anger should really be the systematic law-breaking thats held back privacy-respecting innovation and non-tracking business models by making it harder for businesses that dont abuse peoples data to compete.
Governments and regulators should not be trying to dismantle the principle of consent itself. Yet at least in the U.K. that does now look horribly possible.
Laws like GDPR set high standards for consent, which if they were but robustly enforced could lead to reform of highly problematic practices like behavorial advertising combined with the out-of-control scale of programmatic advertising.
Indeed, we should already be seeing privacy-respecting forms of advertising being the norm, not the alternative free to scale.
Instead, thanks to widespread inaction against systematic adtech breaches, there has been little incentive for publishers to reform bad practices and end the irritating consent charade which keeps cookie pop-ups mushrooming forth, oftentimes with ridiculously lengthy lists of data-sharing partners (i.e., if you do actually click through the dark patterns to try to understand what is this claimed choice youre being offered).
As well as being a criminal waste of web users time, we now have the prospect of attention-seeking, politically charged regulators deciding that all this friction justifies giving data-mining giants carte blanche to torch user rights if the intention is to fire up the G7 to send a collect invite to the tech industry to come up with practical alternatives to asking people for their consent to track them and all because authorities like the ICO have been too risk-averse to actually defend users rights in the first place.
Dowdens remarks last month suggest the U.K. government may be preparing to use cookie consent fatigue as convenient cover for watering down domestic data protection standards at least if it can get away with the switcheroo.
Nothing in the ICOs statement today suggests it would stand in the way of such a move.
Now that the U.K. is outside the EU, the U.K. government has said it believes it has an opportunity to deregulate domestic data protection although it may find there are legal consequences for domestic businesses if it diverges too far from EU standards.
Denhams call to the G7 naturally includes a few EU countries (the biggest economies in the bloc) but by targeting this group, shes also seeking to engage regulators further afield in jurisdictions that currently lack a comprehensive data protection framework. So if the U.K. moves, cloaked in rhetoric of Global Britain, to water down its (EU-based) high domestic data protection standards, it will be placing downward pressure on international aspirations in this area as a counterweight to the EUs geopolitical ambitions to drive global standards up to its level.
The risk, then, is a race to the bottom on privacy standards among Western democracies at a time when awareness about the importance of online privacy, data protection and information security has actually never been higher.
Furthermore, any U.K. move to weaken data protection also risks putting pressure on the EUs own high standards in this area as the regional trajectory would be down, not up. And that could, ultimately, give succor to forces inside the EU that lobby against its commitment to a charter of fundamental rights by arguing such standards undermine the global competitiveness of European businesses.
So while cookies themselves or indeed cookie fatigue may seem an irritatingly small concern, the stakes attached to this tug of war around peoples rights over what can happen to their personal data are very high indeed.
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Element’s latest bridge for Matrix: ‘All the good stuff from WhatsApp, without the less good Facebook stuff’ – The Register
Element, the commercial face of the Matrix messaging system, may have added to the woes of WhatsApp with the introduction of a bridge from the Facebook tentacle into the federated messaging world of Matrix.
The technology follows similar bridges introduced for the likes of Microsoft Teams, Telegram and Slack. With Tulir Asokan's (not an Element-employed developer) open-source matrix-whatsapp bridge doing the heavy lifting, according to Element, the cost is 50 cents per active user per month.
WhatsApp has been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons, having been clobbered with an eye-watering 225m GDPR fine and being the focus of worries over just how private chats on the service really are.
Amandine Le Pape, co-founder of Element, wasted no time in sticking the knife into WhatsApp, and told The Register: "The fine isn't surprising and it's good to see regulations having an impact. However, three years to get to this result and misalignment between countries on the details show we're still far from something easily applicable."
"Many authorities," she continued, "especially those in Germany and the rest of the EU, are uncomfortable with WhatsApp. It has far deeper adoption across Europe than in the US. European governments see the dangers of surveillance capitalism, and don't like the thought of so many citizens using a messaging app owned by a US-based data mining firm."
Yikes. However, Le Pape acknowledged that "no CISO worth their salt would support WhatsApp usage in the workplace anyway."
WhatsApp remains popular with consumers and has been known to feature in the world of shadow IT, to the annoyance of administrators.
Naturally, Element is keen for customers to make the jump, having used the bridge and become used to its own, Matrix-powered experience.
"It's all the good stuff from WhatsApp, without the less good Facebook stuff," claimed Le Pape, "and fully integrated with the rest of the company's ID management, access controls and permissions. You can't use a stick and ban WhatsApp, but you can dangle the far more enticing carrot that is Element."
Enticing? Perhaps. Not all the functionality is present. Sure, one can send messages between Element and WhatsApp, but other WhatsApp goodies, such as audio and video calling are absent at present.
And then there is the risk of WhatsApp abruptly pulling up the drawbridge and breaking the integration.
"Some systems like Telegram allow third-party clients," said Le Pape, "others like WhatsApp discourage it.
"However, with all the legislation pushing hard towards interoperability (whether the EU Digital Markets Act or US ACCESS) it feels like it would be a very ill-advised move for a big tech megacorp like Facebook to bring down the hammer on innocent users who are simply trying to interoperate."
Le Pape concluded: "It would certainly be an excellent way to bring yet more antitrust scrutiny or worse."
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227 people were killed defending the environment last year, a new report shows. That’s a record. – CNN
The environmental and human rights watchdog Global Witness gathered and analyzed 2020 data from around the world involving lethal attacks on environmental defenders, and discovered that an average of more than four people a week died while defending the environment.
The Philippines was the only country outside the region to record more than 15 deaths, Global Witness reported 29 people there were killed for attempting to halt mining, logging, and dam projects. Together, the more than half of the attacks in 2020 took place in those three countries, according to Global Witness.
The family members of some victims described to Global Witness how lockdowns during the pandemic made it easier for defenders to be attacked in their own homes, targeted for taking on governments and businesses to protect natural resources that their communities rely on.
"2020 was supposed to be the year the world stood still, but our data shows that this didn't translate to safer outcomes for those standing up for our planet," Chris Madden, one of the report's authors, told CNN.
"It's clear that the unaccountable exploitation and greed that's driving the climate crisis are also having an increasingly violent impact on people," he added.
More than 70% of the attacks were on people defending forests one of the planet's natural carbon sinks from further deforestation and industrial development, according to Global Witness. The watchdog says others were killed for protecting rivers, oceans and other coastal ecosystems.
The report found logging to be the largest sector connected to most of the murder cases, with 23 in Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines collectively, followed by the fight for water rights and against dam building and mining.
And, despite making up only 5% of the world's population, more than 30% of all the fatal attacks targeted Indigenous people in 2020. Global Witness documented these in Mexico, Central and South America, as well as the Philippines.
Environmental activists in Africa are also experiencing the same violence, but researchers say it may be under reported. Global Witness documented 18 killings on the continent in 2020, a jump from just seven in 2019. Most of these attacks took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while the rest were in South Africa and Uganda.
"We know that beyond killings, many defenders and communities also experience attempts to silence them, with tactics like death threats, surveillance, sexual violence, or criminalisation," the authors wrote. "These kinds of attacks are even less well reported."
Adrien Salazar, policy director with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, said the report's findings also reflect what's happening in the US, where police are cracking down on Indigenous organizers protesting the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure like the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota.
"Activists in the global north are facing increased criminalization, while environmental defenders in the global south are facing increasing risk of death," Salazar, who was not involved with the report, told CNN.
"It's infuriating but also unsurprising that the murders of environmental defenders have increased again," he added. "As this new report shows, these defenders and Indigenous environmental defenders in particular are putting their lives at risk to protect our future."
Global Witness' researchers analyzed international and national datasets that lists attacks on environmental defenders, search-engine alerts, news sources, and information from dozens of local, national, and regional organizations around the world. They also examined data in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
While Global Witness has been documenting environmental attacks around the globe since 2012, the group noted that they may be undercounting the killings, since many parts of the world don't have free press and independent monitoring on attacks.
The authors as well as Salazar warn that as the climate crisis intensifies, so do the attacks against those trying to stop it.
"As the climate crisis and ecological devastation accelerate, the corporations that perpetrate these crises will be relentless in pursuing their profits even above the cost of human life," Salazar said. "Every life and every story matters. As long as violence against the earth continues, resistance will continue."
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Chemistry, Math and CS researchers elected to RSC – UBC Faculty of Science
UBC researchers elected to Royal Society of Canada.
Three UBC Science researchers have been elected to join the Royal Society of Canada. Professors Alejandro Adem, Curtis Berlinguette and Raymond Ng join over 40 UBC Science researchers in the RSC since 2000.
The Royal Society of Canada elects scholars who have made significant contribution in three different areasArts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Science. Election to the RSC is the highest honour a scholar can achieve in Canada for these areas.
This year, the Royal Society of Canada welcomes an outstanding cohort of artists, scholars and scientists, all of whom have excelled in their respective disciplines and are a real credit to Canada, says RSC President Jeremy McNeil.
Dr. Adems research interests include algebraic topology, group cohomology, and related areas. In recent years, he has focused on educational and research leadership, having served on a variety of scientific, editorial, and governance boards in the global mathematics community. He previously led Mitacs in expanding internships across Canada and abroad and establishing an Indigenous engagement initiative. Today, he is a part of the NSERC Council, Canada Research Coordinating Committee, Global Research Council, and more.
The Berlinguette lab explores, discovers and uses advanced materials to serve an ever-growing need for high-performance, low-cost alternative energy technologies. His research group connects artificial intelligence with automation to accelerate materials science discovery and translation with the mission to transform how materials research is done. Currently, they employ artificial intelligence to develop HTM films with super conductivity and durability for the next generation of solar cells. In addition to solar electricity, the team is also exploring the storage and transportation of energy to mitigate the negative environmental impact of current energy production methods, as well as CO2 reduction.
Dr. Ngs research areas are in data mining, text mining, health informatics, sensor analytics and databases. In the last 10 years, he has focused on genomics data, working on the development of biomarker panels for various conditions related to organ failures. He also focuses on text data, with the objective to create meta data, such as natural language summaries, to facilitate access to otherwise unstructured raw data. He launched and currently directs UBCs Data Science Institute.
The Royal Society of Canada elects scholars who have made significant contribution in three different areasArts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Science.
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Chemistry, Math and CS researchers elected to RSC - UBC Faculty of Science
Mining Industry Forecast to Embrace Digitalization with Spend Reaching US$9.3 Billion in 2030 – PRNewswire
LONDON, Sept. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mining firms are starting to appreciate the benefits that digital technologies can deliver, such as having insights on changing geological conditions to ensure workforce safety and the condition of their equipment to avoid unplanned downtime. ABI Research, a global tech market advisory firm, forecasts that miners' spend on digital technologies will grow by a CAGR of 5.2% over this decade and reach US$9.3 billion in 2030.
"While the needs are critical, technology suppliers cannot assume that example deployments from other verticals will resonate with miners. Often individual mining plants operate autonomously with relevant references from other mines a key investment criteria. Suppliers will need to be patient and support partners to build their credibility in the vertical," explains Michael Larner, Principal Analyst, Industrial & Manufacturing at ABI Research.
Fortunately for suppliers, some of the largest mining firms realize the benefits that digital technologies provide. Rio Tinto, for example, has been a keen advocate of automation and has been running a fleet of autonomous trucks since 2008, and more recently, a fleet of autonomous trains. Miners' key investments will be in 4G/5G networks to underpin data collection projects to map sites or utilize drones to collect images of the entire site. Data analytics software from suppliers such as IntelliSense.io, Seeq, and Senseye will help miners avoid unplanned downtime. Suppliers such as Strayos help miners anticipate the impact of blasts in open-cast mines, which is forecast to fuel spend on data analytics to increase by CAGR 8.9% and be worth US$1.4 billion in 2030.
" The saying 'Where There's Muck There's Brass' applies for technology firms targeting this vertical. Miners need to clean, sort, and mill the materials that come out of the earth to deliver high-quality minerals. Solutions that can optimize the processes, both in terms of efficiency and increased yield, will be looked upon favorably," Larner concludes.
These findings are from ABI Research's Digital Transformation and the Mining Industry application analysis report. This report is part of the company'sIndustrial and Manufacturing research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.Based on extensive primary interviews, Application Analysis reports present in-depth analysis on key market trends and factors for a specific application, which could focus on an individual market or geography.
About ABI Research ABI Research provides actionable research and strategic guidance to technology leaders, innovators, and decision makers around the world. Our research focuses on the transformative technologies that are dramatically reshaping industries, economies, and workforces today. ABI Research's global team of analysts publish groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms, empowering our clients to stay ahead of their markets and their competitors.
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For more information about ABI Research's services, contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visit http://www.abiresearch.com .
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To Understand How Mountains And The Atmosphere Bring Water To The West, Scientists Aim Their Instruments At Colorado’s Sky – Colorado Public Radio
In the 1920s, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory was founded in the abandoned mining town of Gothic, Colo., about 9 miles north of Crested Butte. Since then, thousands of field biologists have studied the streams, snowfall and soil in the diverse mountain ecosystem. Now, researchers are aiming their instruments at the sky.
This project is trying to make the atmospheric connection of how the atmosphere fuels the watershed and where all the water comes from, said John Bilberry, the project manager of the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory campaign.
Bilberry stands in front of a row of white shipping containers housing mobile laboratories that have traveled the Arctic and the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.
The steel boxes are packed with different research instruments, like LIDARS, which pulse a laser into the sky and use sensors connected to a receiver to measure the reflection. Based on the timing, the equipment can tell how high a cloud is.
The project includes dozens of different instruments that will collect an unprecedented amount of data for nearly two years, Bilberry said.
For the first time, atmospheric measurements will be directly connected to measurements of available water.
The information will improve the computer models that scientists use to predict water availability in mountain watersheds. Its important data for Colorado and the West as a 20-year-long, climate change-fueled megadrought dries up the Colorado River.
The mountains are really the water towers for much of the freshwater in the world, said Erik Hulm, project manager at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
He says this research will help improve the understanding of how mountain watersheds behave with a changing climate and what that might mean for the 40 million people that rely on Colorado River water and the millions more who rely on mountain water around the world.
This research, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will build on years of study of water on or under the ground in the upper Colorado River basin. Bilberry says one missing piece of data the project could supply is how an environment as complex as a mountain watershed extracts moisture from the atmosphere.
He says the improvements to the computer models will help decision-makers and stakeholders, like farmers, water managers and utilities, know how much water the West will have in a warmer climate.
Dan Feldman is the principal investigator of the campaign. He said with climate change, the practical lessons learned from the past now only provide a partial understanding of the amount and the timing of water that comes from the Colorado River.
He pointed to the megadrought as an example of moving far and fast away from the hydrology of the past.
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Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future – The Verge
Data-mining firm Palantir invested $25 million in Faraday Future shortly before the electric vehicle startup became a publicly traded company in July, according to a previously unreported Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document filed late last week.
In addition, Faraday Future signed a commercial contract to use Palantirs software, according to one of Palantirs most recent SEC filings. Neither company disclosed how much Faraday Future is paying, though Palantirs filing notes the contract will last between four and six years. Representatives for both companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Palantir says its software is meant to serve as a central operating system for companies that need to sift through lots of data. Its customers have included the US Customs and Border Protection agency, which used Palantir software to track immigrants during the Trump administration, as well as police departments around the country, which have used Palantirs controversial predictive policing software.
Palantirs investment was part of the so-called Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) portion of the merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that made Faraday Future public. PIPEs are essentially a fundraising round that happens concurrently with many SPAC mergers. Faraday Future raised a total of around $795 million in its PIPE, which included other investors like Geely, Chinas largest private automaker.
Palantirs participation in the PIPE is just the latest in a rash of investments the company has made in startups that are (or were) in the process of merging with SPACs. In some of those instances, Palantir has followed up its investment with a deal to sell its software services to the company in question, as was first reported in July by journalist Eric Newcomer. (One robotics startup, Newcomer reports, is paying Palantir $42 million to use its software, following a $21 million investment from the data-mining company.)
Faraday Futures electric vehicles are going to create an incredible amount of data at least, once theyre built. The companys first vehicle, the FF 91 SUV, isnt supposed to go into production until at least July 2022, and has been delayed for years as the company struggled. But when it exists, the electric SUV will be dotted with sensors and cameras meant to power an advanced driver assistance system in the near term and one day (perhaps) something closer to full autonomy.
The inside of the FF 91 will be even more of a data-generation machine. There are cameras in every seat capable of performing facial recognition, which will be used to quickly pull up all sorts of preferences for drivers and passengers, like their personalized app and media libraries, favored seating positions and climate settings, and more.
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What is a Referral Under the Anti-Kickback Statute? – Lexology
Central to the practice of medicine, referrals are an important part of patient care. Referrals are also a critical component when evaluating whether arrangements between parties violate the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), which prohibits knowingly or willfully offering, paying, soliciting, or receiving any remuneration in return for referring patients for services that are reimbursable by federal health care programs. However, the AKS does not establish a definition for referral leaving it up to the courts to interpret and apply.
On June 8, 2021 in Stop Illinois Health Care Fraud, LLC v. Sayeed et al., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois determined that a group of defendants violated the AKS by paying a community care organization for access to their client files in order to market services to federal health care program beneficiaries. In its analysis, the court determined that paying for the file access constituted a referral, the fees paid were intended to be remuneration for the referral of federal health care program beneficiaries, and that the defendants had violated the AKS.
The defendants originally entered into a management services agreement with the community care organization purportedly to assess the feasibility of creating an Accountable Care Organization. However, the file access also involved using the information for data mining purposes to identify and solicit services to federal health care program beneficiaries. In its ruling, the court applied a broad definition of referral to include payments intended to induce the community care organization to indirectly refer its clients to the defendants even if the arrangement was intended for a different purpose.
With the courts determination focusing on the referral prong of the AKS, this ruling could have a far reaching impact for parties wanting to enter into arrangements involving the exchange of patient information. It will be important to carefully evaluate and analyze any sort of arrangement involving patient file access in order to make sure there is no underlying objective by either party to use such information to solicit patients.
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What is a Referral Under the Anti-Kickback Statute? - Lexology