Police in Australia are reported to be using data recorded by a murder victim’s Apple smartwatch to help catch her killer.

Murder

The victim and owner of the smartwatch was Grandmother Myrna Nilsson, who was found dead in the laundry of her Valley View home in Adelaide’s north-east in September 2016.

The prime suspect in the murder case is daughter-in-law Caroline Dela Rose Nilsson, who was found gagged and distressed at the scene, and who told Police that her mother-in-law had been followed home by (and had argued at length with) a group of men in a car.

How Could The Watch Data Help?

The Apple watch contains sensors that can measure fitness signals such as heart rate. The watch can also track a person’s movements and, being a watch, it can link the other signals to the exact time.

It is believed that this data could indicate when the victim’s heart rate indicated a loss of consciousness as well as the actual time of death.

Contradiction

Reports about the case so far indicate that while the daughter-in-law’s testimony puts the time of death at around 10pm, and that her mother-in-law allegedly argued with the men for 20 minutes, the data from the watch is not consistent with this version of events.

Reports about evidence uncovered by the Prosecutor in the case, Carmen Matteo, show that watch data shows activity consistent with the victim being ambushed and attacked as she walked into her home just after 6:30pm. The watch is also reported to show activity and heart rate measurements consistent with her body going into shock and losing consciousness.
According to the Apple watch, the deceased must have been attacked at around 6:38pm and had died by 6:45pm, some 3 hours earlier than the time stated by the daughter-in-law.

Bail Denied

The strength and apparent reliability of the watch data has been enough to lead Magistrate Oliver Koehn to deny bail to Ms Nilsson.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Our phones and gadgets are now tracking devices, and can store or transmit a lot of data about us and our activities. In the right hands, as in this case and in situations where mobile phone signals have been used in legal cases, this information can be valuable for some very important reasons i.e. in the interest of justice for victims and their families.

In the wrong hands e.g. ‘sports wearables’ possibly leaking our login credentials and transmitting our activity tracking information in a non-secure way such as that identified back in February 2016 in Canadian research by Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, could make us more vulnerable to crime.

This story should also, therefore, be a reminder to manufacturers of wearable technology that security and privacy of the data stored and transmitted about us should always be a priority, and it is in the interest of the manufacturer and the customer that correct safeguards are taken. After all, as this case proves, you never quite know how useful the secure, uncorrupted data from a mobile or wearable device could turn out to be.

Coca-Cola, the US State Department, and 2 other companies are working on a project to used blockchain to fight forced labour worldwide.

What Is Blockchain?

Blockchain is an incorruptible peer-to-peer network (a kind of ledger) that allows multiple parties to transfer value in a secure and transparent way. Blockchain’s Co-Founder Nic Carey describes Blockchain as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify”.

Forced-Labour

The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are nearly 25 million people working in forced-labour conditions worldwide, and 47% of them in the Asia-Pacific region.

The kind of work where there is known to be forced-labour varies, but many are engaged in work that contributes to products for food and beverage e.g. forced-labour in countries where sugarcane is produced.

A KnowTheChain (KTC), a partnership founded by U.S.-based Humanity United, showed that most food and beverage companies could be doing more solve the problem.

Coca-Cola Committed

As part of a new partnership, Coca-Cola has now committed to conduct 28 country-level studies on child labour, forced-labour, and land rights for its sugar supply chains by 2020.

Blockchain

Blockchain’s validation and digital notary capabilities are being used in the new project to create a secure registry for workers and their contracts. The project, involving Trust Accelerator (BTA), a non-profit organization, the US State Department, Coca-Cola, and U.S.-based Humanity United, will use blockchain to create a validated chain of evidence that will encourage compliance with labour contracts.

US tech company The Bitfury Group, will build the blockchain platform, while Emercoin will provide blockchain services.

Blockchain Used To Reduce Child Labour Too

Earlier this month it was reported that blockchain is also being used in a pilot project between car-maker BMW and start-up Circulor with a view to eliminating battery minerals produced using child labour. In that project, blockchain is being used to help provide a way to prove that artisanal miners are not using child labour in their cobalt mining activities. Bags of cobalt are given a digital tag which can be entered into blockchain using a mobile phone. The details of the digital tag can then be entered by each link in the chain of buyers, thereby providing a clear, verifiable trail, all the way from miner to smelter.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The new project involving Coca-Cola is another example of how blockchain is being used to ethically add value, genuinely reduce suffering and exploitation, and shows how this new technology can deliver social impact. One of the strengths central to blockchain is that it offers an incorruptible and transparent system that can provide a much greater, and more reliable level of proof that something has happened in the correct way in a value chain. Many different types of businesses can use blockchain to categorically prove a certain source and route for e.g. delivery, raw materials or production. This is proving to be particularly valuable to businesses where provenance is necessary to add to the monetary, ethical or other value of a product, service, and brand.

First Direct customers can now make voice-activated payments to existing payees or mobile contacts via the Siri tool on their Apple iPhones, without logging into online banking or using their password.

Following Barclays

First Direct’s move to voice-activated payments follows the move by Barclays last August to allow its customers (with an Apple device with iOS 10 software or above, with fingerprint technology) to make payments using Apple’s voice-activated assistant, Siri.

Dutch Pioneers

Dutch banking group ING Netherlands are widely credited as being the pioneers of this kind of system when, back in 2014, they launched a voice-navigated banking app with a view to enabling biometric voice recognition as a replacement for PINs in the future.

Interface Between The Customer and Paym

In the case of First Direct, the Siri digital assistant acts as an interface between the customer and the Paym mobile payment system.

Paym is the service, launched by the Payments Council, that allows users to send and receive payments directly to a current account using only the mobile number of the account holder.

How Does It Work?

With the First Direct system, users simply tell Siri what amount they would like to pay, and the name of the person that they would like to pay using First Direct. The system then asks for verification using the fingerprint scanner or face ID tool on the payer’s mobile device. It has been reported that the money is then transferred instantly, and First Direct customers can make transfers of up to £350 daily using the new system.

What Will You Need?

Clearly, to use the system you will need to be registered for digital banking with First Direct. You will then need to activate Paym in the First Direct app, and make sure that you are using an iPhone that is capable of fingerprint or facial recognition so that your payments can be verified without a password.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For businesses, saving time and getting cash quickly into the business are important, and the First Direct system looks as though it is capable of helping both these things to happen. It also offers your business, suppliers, and other stakeholders a convenient way of paying while on the move.

Also, the biometric aspect (fingerprint or facial recognition) is believed to provide greater security than passwords.

Voice-activated assistants have proven popular with users, and it makes sense that they could be linked up with other technologies and systems to deliver greater value, convenience, and time savings. It is likely that other banks will now follow suit, and voice-activated assistants will be linked-up to a whole range of other services in the near future to benefit the business and the customer.

A study by job website ‘Indeed’ based on job postings on its site since 2015 has found that demand for skills in AI and machine learning has almost tripled in 3 years.

Demand – AI Boom

With the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector booming in the UK, and with the pace of growth in demand for AI roles here outstripping that in the US, Canada and Australia, AI is providing a shot in the arm to Britain’s jobs market, and Britain is consolidating its reputation as a world tech leader. The ‘Indeed’ figures show that the number of AI roles advertised in the UK is now 1,300 out of every million, but that there are six times more AI roles available in Britain than there are candidates to fill them.

Supply Increasing Too

Just as demand for AI professionals has shown a huge increase, the number of candidates actually looking for jobs in this area has doubled over the same period. One of the key benefits of landing a job in an emerging field is, of course, the salary. According to Indeed’s figures, jobs in AI advertised for an average of £56,385 a year and machine learning roles at £54,617.

Skills Gap & Brexit

Unfortunately, one of the reasons why companies are willing to pay so much is that experts of this kind are hard to find in a labour market where there is a real tech skills gap. Some tech commentators have long been predicting that Brexit is only likely to make matters worse. For example, a 2016 survey by the ‘Hired’ website highlighted skills gap challenges in many areas of IT, possible challenges to attracting high-skilled workers from across the globe because of Brexit, lower average salaries for London tech jobs compared to places like San Francisco and New York, leading to a possible brain drain, and the number of UK students graduating with computer science degrees falling.

A further example of the possible impact of Brexit on AI and robotics in the UK comes from an RSA report from late 2017 which showed that the UK receives up to 80% of its funding for autonomous systems and robotics directly from the EU, and even with the government’s Autumn statement promise of a boost to R&D, it may not be enough to plug the funding hole that Brexit will create.

Funding Needed

Also, some industry experts have recently criticised the UK government for making a strategic error in their perceived lack of funding in AI and robotics.

There have been calls for the setting up of systematic programmes to mobilise the brain power of AI and robotics communities around the most important challenges of government.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

If your business needs an AI or robotics professional, you may have a challenge on your hands. A home-grown skills gap means that you may need to attract talent from overseas, one aspect of which is being able to pay a considerable salary that is competitive with that offered in other countries. Getting an overseas professional to come to the UK, however, may be problematic because of the insecurities that Brexit is presenting to migrant workers.

Ideas to plug the UK’s skills gap in many tech areas include the offering of digital apprenticeships e.g. by Microsoft, but AI is a very specialised area, and much more investment and specialist education and training may need to be made available in the UK in a short time to enable UK industries to make the most of the UK’s AI boom.

Lottery operator Camelot has announced that 150 customer accounts have been affected by a hack that took place prior to Friday’s £14-million draw at 8.30pm.

Low Level

The company has described the hack as ‘low level’ and has stressed that no money was stolen, and that the attackers only saw limited information. Camelot attributed the early discovery of the attack to its regular security monitoring which, in this case, detected suspicious activity on a small number of accounts.

Credential-Stuffing

The kind of hack that took place was a method known as ‘credential-stuffing’. This hack uses a list of passwords taken from other websites that have been circulated online e.g. on hacking groups / on the dark web. This method relies on people using the same password for multiple websites.

Suspended Accounts + Change Passwords

Camelot has said that it has directly contacted the customers whose accounts had been affected and all of the affected accounts have now been suspended. The company has also advised all 10.5 million National Lottery players to change the password on their online accounts.

Warned In November 2016

Back in November 2016, Camelot announced that it believed that as many as 26,500 online National Lottery accounts had been hacked using login details that had been stolen from elsewhere (e.g. a list of stolen passwords circulated online). At the time, Camelot said that it believed that suspicious activity appeared to have taken place in fewer than 50 of the hacked accounts.

Camelot re-assured customers by saying that it didn’t hold full debit card or bank account details in the online accounts for National Lottery player, and no money had been taken or deposited.

Criticism

Although, as in the latest hack, Camelot was quick to submit a breach report to The Information Commissioner’s Office, some critics voiced concerns and suspicion that there could have been some kind of deficiency in the system to allow 26,500 correct logins while saying that the details were not taken from Camelot’s servers.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

If you have an online National Lottery account, change the password as soon as possible.

This story illustrates one of the main dangers of using the same passwords for multiple accounts. If there is a hack and theft of your login details from just one website, you could be in danger of falling victim to cyber-crime as those details are circulateing among other hackers and used for credential-stuffing attacks. The advice is, therefore, to change your passwords regularly and avoid using the same password for multiple accounts.

This story is also a reminder that businesses have a legal responsibility to protect customer data, and this responsibility will be enforced even more rigorously, and with the threat of very large fines for non-compliance with the introduction of GDPR in May this year.

One positive aspect of this story is that Camelot appear to have been proactive in their monitoring of customer account activity, were quick to inform the Information Commissioner’s Office, publicly announced the hack, and gave clear advice to customers (unlike many other companies). This story is also an example of why having a good Disaster Recovery Plan is important.