The European Parliament is reported to have approved the introduction of a new system which will collect biometric information about all non-EU visitors to the EU.

EES

Under the EU’s newly approved entry/exit system (EES), which is also part of ‘Smart Borders’ package, anyone travelling to an EU country from a non-EU country (e.g. post-Brexit UK), will need to provide some biometric information.

Whilst the term ‘biometric’ implies some kind of intrusion or sampling, what it will actually mean is the need to have a digital photo taken and a fingerprint scan, and for these ‘biometrics’ to be stored in a central database, along with travel documents and information about place of entry, exit and entry refusal.

Why?

The stated aims for the introduction of the new system are to reduce irregular migration of over-stayers, to fight organised crime and terrorism, and to speed up border checks by replacing the manual stamping of passports.

Who?

The new system will apply to every third-country national, even visa-exempt travellers travelling to and from the EU Schengen area. The Schengen area consists of most EU States, except for Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Romania and the United Kingdom (Bulgaria and Romania are in the process of joining).

How Long?

The information collected by the EU with its new entry / exit system will be stored on the central EES database for least three years, or five years for over-stayers.

Access

Those who can access the information in the EU’s database will include border, visa and national enforcement authorities, and Europol. It has been reported that the information stored on the EES database can be consulted to prevent, detect or investigate terrorist offences, or other serious criminal offences.

The information will not be accessible to national asylum authorities.

Not New

Biometrics being used as an immigration control is not new. The UK government, for example, already operates its own biometric residence permit (BRP) system whereby those planning to stay longer than 6 months, or apply to settle in the UK need a biometric permit. This permit includes details such as name, date and place of birth, a scan of the applicant’s fingerprints and a digital photo of the applicant’s face (this is the biometric information), immigration status and conditions, and information about access public funds (benefits and health services).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Since the UK is still in the EU, business travellers to the EU will not be subject to the new system just yet, but post-Brexit this will have to change. This could initially mean that UK travellers to the EU are subject to longer delays and greater scrutiny on entry / exit. There are also extra privacy / security concerns for UK citizens based around where (and how securely) very personal data is being stored, who has access to it, and worries about the results of hacking of the data e.g. we assumed that NHS systems and credit systems were safe until they were both subject to malware and hacking.

Some UK citizens may also be concerned about the apparent increasing need for states to gather information about citizens and their activities / movements e.g. this news border rule, US border checks that can require checks of social media, and the UK’s own storing of the browsing history of its citizens under the ‘Snooper’s Charter’.

The assumption is that, at some point, all information about one person collected in several locations could be pulled together, stored and cross-referenced in a way that feels too intrusive, and too much like ‘big brother’. For some, the argument that ‘if you have done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear’ is sufficient, but others object to this being used as an excuse for states to gradually erode rights to privacy.

Facebook has released figures ahead of a Senate hearing showing that Russia-based operatives have uploaded 80,000 posts to Facebook in the last 2 years.

Big Influence?

Ahead of Facebook, Twitter and Google’s Senate hearing on Monday, Facebook’s revelation about posts published between June 2015 and August 2017, means that 29 million Americans are believed to have seen them directly, but it is possible that 26 million American users have seen, and perhaps been influenced by liked and shared messages and comments that could have originated in Russia.

Kremlin-Linked Company

The implication is that, because the messages / posts are believed to have been posted by a created by a Kremlin-linked company, they may be state-sponsored. One of the key concerns is that many of the posts may have been sent around the time of the US election, and may, therefore, have had an unknown degree of influence on the opinions and choices of some American voters, and, therefore, on the outcome of the election itself.

This is particularly pertinent, given the accusations that have been circulating for some time now that President Trump’s campaign may have received help from Russia.

Two More Stories

The news from Facebook is even more timely and relevant because on Monday, the world’s media was buzzing with two more Trump-linked stories. The first was that President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and aide Rick Gates are facing money-laundering charges (unrelated to the 2016 election campaign). The second was that one of Mr Trump’s advisers (in a volunteer capacity, George Papadopoulos) has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his contacts with Russia.

Not Violations, But Deleted

It has been reported that although many of the posts said to have originated in Russia did not actually breach Facebook’s guidelines, the company still went against its mission of building community by deleting 170 Instagram accounts, which posted about 120,000 pieces of content.

Also, Google’s YouTube

Google has also reported the posting of more than 1,000 political videos on YouTube on 18 different channels by Russian trolls, although it is not believed that they were targeting American viewers specifically.

Twitter Too

News has come from Twitter about the company suspending 2,752 accounts that it had tracked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The bigger picture is that election results (i.e. which party / candidate wins) haves a big effect on the business environment as well as on society. It is not a surprise that one country could seek to influence events in another, but it is a surprise to some that tech companies and social media companies are still able to offer a voice and a channel to all.

The challenge that tech companies such as Facebook and Google (with YouTube) face is that they need to protect the idea that they reject censorship (and interference from governments), while still being seen to be acting responsibly and proactively, while protecting their brands and monetising elements of their business at the same time. It is clearly frustrating to some governments and politicians, both in the US and the UK, that they don’t have more of an influence over social media and tech companies e.g. with the end-to-end encryption debate in the UK, and that they often only come up against lawyers for these companies rather being able to be seen to be publicly grilling the owners of these tech giants themselves.

As for the story about possible Russian influence over the US election result, it still has a good way to run and it is likely that we have only witnessed the start of many twists, turns and revelations.

Not only has Facebook’s Workplace Collaboration Tool exceeded expected take-up numbers by businesses, but it now getting a desktop app for group chats.

What Workplace Tool?

Facebook’s Workplace platform app was introduced in October 2016 to enable businesses to have their own social network while allowing Facebook to compete in the same collaborative and communications business tool market as Microsoft’s Yammer, Slack and Google’s Cloud. Slack is the current market leader with 4 million daily users.

The Workplace platform supports features such as live video and instant messaging and can be used by businesses internally to replace tools such as email. Previously known in its testing phase under the working title of ‘Facebook at Work’ the Workplace platform is an all-in-one integrated structure and incorporates many of Facebook’s best elements.

More Than 30,000 + New Features.

One year on, Facebook’s Workplace, which was a late arrival in the market, now has 30,000 organisations signed up to it, which is more than double the number announced just six months ago. The platform has been given some new performance-boosting features such as screen sharing, and (the upcoming) group video chat support for up to 50 people per conference call.

Initial Worries Unfounded

The large numbers of businesses now using Facebook’s Workplace mean that initial fears by the company that it could be difficult to sell have proven to be unfounded. It was, for example, thought that the platform’s appearance and how it’s used could be too similar to, and could be seen as encouraging the use of social media at work that many companies had been seeking eradicate.

App

It has been announced that Facebook’s Workplace will also soon be augmented with a desktop version of its app for group chats, and an update in the not-too-distant future should mean that this app will support video calls.

With the extension of the app and the new features of the platform, Facebook has picked up on the value that users have been placing on messaging for real-time, reliable communication wherever they are (mobile or in the office).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Businesses are now realising that an effective, easy, low cost, and high-tech means of collaborative working and communicating (in real time) can bring greater effectiveness, efficiency and competitive advantage.

Facebook’s Workplace app provides businesses with a way to benefit from the use of a fully integrated social network, and another of its key advantages is that it offers a degree of familiarity because of its similarity to Facebook’s social platform.
Although Workplace was a relatively late market entrant, it was tested for years and already has over tens of thousands of subscribers, thus helping it to iron out any faults. Workplace’s special appeal and credibility is also helped by the fact that it comes from what most people would consider the definitive social networking expert company.

A new study by money management app Yolt has found that nearly half of UK shoppers (48%) don’t always check the amount before they tap to pay via contactless.

Switch To Contactless

The implications of the findings of the study are so significant because the UK has seen a significant shift away from cash to contactless. For example, British Retail Consortium figures show that contactless payments now account for a third of all card transactions in the UK.

Yolt Figures from the new study show that 76% of Britons have used contactless payments, and 40% make half or more of their card payments using contactless.

An average 416.3 million contactless payments are made each month totalling £3.913 million (UK Finance figures), and this is an increase of 147.6% on 2016 figures. At the same time, projected figures from payments industry trade body ‘Payments UK’ have shown that by as soon as next year, more payments will be made using debit cards (with contactless) than using cash.

London Especially

Transport for London (TfL) figures, for example, show that 40% of public transport customers in London are now paying for their journeys with contactless payment cards (rather than using pre-paid cards), and 82% of Londoners have used contactless payments, making it the most popular city in the UK for this type of transaction.

It should also be noted that, according to this latest study, only 38% of Londoners said they always checked the amount before using contactless to pay.

Young People Least Likely To Check

The new Yolt study also revealed that young people (18 to 34) are the least likely to check the amount before paying via contactless, with only 39% doing so every time they pay. In contrast, 62% of those aged over 55 in the study said they check the amount every time they use contactless.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

As far as businesses are concerned e.g. in retail, the rise of contactless has meant the need to invest heavily in new payments technology in order to make it easier and quicker for customers to securely complete transactions in-store. Retailers have, however, benefited from cost and time savings (and having to deal with less cash). The fact that consumers aren’t checking shows a degree of trust in the contactless system, which is again good news for retail businesses, provided that systems are functioning properly.

This story is also an example of how daily contact with technology, and a lack of negative reinforcement in many situations has led to an increase of our trust in it. Some would say however, that too much trust can lead to lack of basic checks, and a dangerous suspension of basic reasoning and judgement. A study by the Georgia Tech Research Institute in March 2016, for example, showed how humans trusted robots in an emergency, even though the machines had shown themselves to have behaved unreliably just a short while earlier. In the experiment, a pre-programmed robot lead visitors to the wrong room, and took them around in circles, and yet, when a fire was staged shortly after, people ignored clearly marked exits and followed the robot deeper into the building.

With the decline of cash as a worldwide trend, we are likely to continue using contactless regularly, and card issuers are likely to continue happily driving the change in customer behaviour. We do need, therefore, to remember that human error is commonplace e.g. typing in wrong amounts for purchases, prices may be entered in systems wrongly, and that technology and systems of all kinds can go wrong, and can be interfered with by cyber criminals. Keeping up the habit of making basic visual checks could save us time, trouble, and money, and could help us to use technology more safely.

An Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm has been developed that can fool the Captcha website security check system by mimicking how the brain processes images and visual clues.

CAPTCHA

Most of us will be familiar with the Captcha system that requires us to prove that we’re not robots by recognising and entering a series of apparently random letters and numbers into a field i.e. solving visual puzzles to complete a login process.

Captcha, which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, was developed in the late 1990s as a counter-fraud measure, and to stop automated bots accessing and using websites and other online resources. If Captchas are not used, some of these bots can post spam comments in blogs, sign up for thousands of email accounts every minute e.g. on Yahoo, buy multiple tickets from ticket sites, gather email addresses (written in text) from web pages, distort online polls, and launch dictionary attacks on password systems. The use of Captchas can also offer full protection to pages that you don’t want indexed by search engines, and offer worm and spam protection.

Up until now, Captcha tests have been sufficient to separate humans from robots, and statistics show that the test is so complicated that even humans only pass it 87% of the time.

New System Beats Captcha

Details of the new Captcha-beating system have been published in the Journal of Science. The system was developed after research by Californian artificial intelligence company ‘Vicarious’, funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Rather than using ‘neural networks’ that would require large networks of computers in layers and extensive training of those computers to solve problems, the new, simpler, algorithm based-system from Vicarious has been designed to imitate how the human brain responds to visual clues.

Little Training, Good Results

Reports of the results of tests with the new Recursive Cortical Network (RCN) show that by being able to actually pick out distorted letters and digits from images, it can beat the Captcha system with minimal training (other AI programs have needed 50,000 times more training).

The RCN algorithm works by recognising contours, edges, shapes, and textures of an image, and analysing the pixels to try and find a match with the outline of an object.

Tests to date have shown that the new algorithm can accurately guess a Captcha image 66% of the time, and can correctly guess an individual character with 81% accuracy.

What Does This Mean For Your Businesses?

The Captcha system has helped businesses by providing an easy way to deter potentially costly, disruptive and damaging bot attacks and spam. Many tech commentators, however, believe that the Captcha system (which dates back to 2000) is now outdated, and at the very least, needs to be improved. Now that a new algorithm has been developed that can beat Captcha, many tech and security commentators fear that it will now only be a matter of months before a similar system is being used to attack Captchas on websites, which can only spell bad news for businesses.

Two-factor authentication has proven itself to be an effective security gateway for websites, and many see this as the way forward.

Given the big tech names involved in the development of the Captcha-beating algorithm, you could, however, be forgiven for thinking that they may have an idea about (or already have another system) that could replace it.