Getty Images Facebook, Twitter and Google aren’t prepared for deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election, a top Congressman said after the tech giants sent letters last week about how they deal with high-tech doctored videos and other kinds of media manipulation. The companies “have begun thinking seriously” about the challenges, said Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, but it’s their responsibility to prevent their platforms from being weaponized. “It’s clear they are far from ready to accomplish that,” Schiff said in a statement. Deepfakes are sophisticated video forgeries, created automatically by artificial intelligence, that can make people appear to be doing or saying things they never did. Though computer manipulation of video has existed for decades, artificial intelligence is making deepfakes and other so-called synthetic media more accessible and harder to detect. The companies — YouTube-owner Google, Facebook and Twitter — all responded in letters dated Wednesday to questions Schiff sent them…
Revenge Porn News
WASHINGTON — How cautious are you online? Scammers attempt to get money, goods or services out of unsuspecting people — and military members are often targets. Here are some scams that have affected service members, Defense Department employees and their families. Romance scams In April, Army Criminal Investigation Command put out a warning about romance scams in which online predators go on dating sites claiming to be deployed active-duty soldiers. It’s a problem that’s affecting all branches of service — not just the Army. CID said there have been hundreds of claims each month from people who said they’ve been scammed on legitimate dating apps and social media sites. According to the alleged victims, the scammers have asked for money for fake service-related needs such as transportation, communications fees, processing and medical fees — even marriage. CID said many of the victims have lost tens of thousands of dollars and likely will…
VICTIMS of revenge porn are suffering in silence in the UK, new research has claimed. Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan commissioned an anonymous survey of 92 victims who were asked about their experiences. Only 4% successfully prosecuted their offender, 76% did not report their crime to the police. 75% of those who responded said they did not tell anyone as they felt embarrassed or ashamed, and 90% said they would have reported it to the police if they were assured of anonymity. Mrs Mulligan said the report showed “stark and irrefutable” evidence that “the government, police and criminal justice system are collectively failing victims of revenge porn”. She said: “With just 4% of victims who responded to our survey achieving a successful prosecution, there is no question in my mind - the law is not fit for purpose. “The lack of anonymity is key to victims concerns and…
It was 1995. Bill Clinton was in the White House. Seinfeld and Friends dominated primetime on TV. Radiohead was on the radio. The internet was still an innocent baby (except for porn, of course), but people could anticipate that it was going to be huge. That year, the story goes, California Congressman Chris Cox was on an airplane back to Washington when he read that the early online service provider Prodigy had been sued for defamation over something that a user had posted to one of its bulletin boards. The anonymous person had accused a Long Island securities firm (later immortalized in The Wolf of Wall Street) of fraud in connection with an initial public offering. The majority opinion of the New York State Supreme Court said that because Prodigy posted user guidelines, used moderators, and scanned for indecent content, it was therefore a “publisher” and therefore legally liable…
A University of Utah student was being extorted by her ex-boyfriend before he killed her, police say. Lauren McCluskey, 21, had reported an extortion attempt to university police on Oct. 13, nine days before she was killed. McCluskey told the officers that she had wired $1,000 to an account earlier in the month to prevent “compromising pictures” of her and her ex-boyfriend Melvin Rowland from being released to the public, according to Fox News. But it took six days for university police to begin investigating the extortion attempt - a fact officials blamed on workload issues, according to CBS News. Also, while they were aware of the 37-year-old Rowland’s status as a sex offender, they didn’t know he was on parole at the time. “It was assigned out to a detective. The detective had been in contact with Ms. McCluskey, and they were working to build a case against our…
One out of 20 teens report they have been sexually extorted online, according to new research out of UW-Eau Claire. Sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” occurs when a victim who voluntarily shares sexual images finds themself threatened with the release of those materials unless they meet the blackmailer’s demands — many of which are sexual. The U.S. Federal Justice department identified sextortion as the fastest growing form of online bullying among children and teens. Dr. Justin Patchin, the UW-Eau Claire researcher behind this study, surveyed of 5,500 middle and high school students nationwide and found that 5 percent of the teens he surveyed had experienced sextortion. “Five percent isn’t a huge number but it’s still a lot of young people and so it’s something we can’t ignore,” Patchin said. “Most often what we hear are the threats are made to post the images online or send the images to classmates…
Just 12 people were convicted of sharing revenge porn in the West Midlands last year. It became a criminal offense to disclose private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress in April 2015, but numbers of prosecutions and convictions resulting from the new law are still low. The founder of a helpline for victims, which is receiving thousands of calls each year, said poor responses from police, as well as victims fearing reprisals or people finding out, may be behind the low number of convictions nationally. In the West Midlands police force area, there were 13 prosecutions for revenge porn in 2017, leading to 12 convictions. This was down from 24 prosecutions and 22 convictions in 2016. Of those prosecuted in 2017, five were men aged 25 or over, three were men aged 21 to 24, one was a man aged 18 to 20, one was a…
Express News Service MANGALURU: When a Tulu film comedian got a friend request on Facebook from a pretty girl calling herself Ashwini, he readily accepted and soon fell victim to blackmail and extortion. A police complaint followed. The Mangaluru police traced the girl to Bengaluru. But, when they caught her after a chase and took her to the jurisdictional Bengaluru police station on Tuesday, they and the comedian who was present got the shock of their lives. Though the accused was dressed as a girl, the Bengaluru police who recognised ‘Ashwini’ told them it was a boy. ‘Ashwini’ alias Adithya (19), a first PU student, is a resident of Subedar Palya, Yeshwantpur. The police also nabbed his accomplice, Arun H S (27), who hails from Kanakapura, and a supervisor with a cab aggregator. Both were charged with blackmail and extortion. ‘Ashwini’ alias Adithya Uday M Nayak, ACP, Central Mangaluru, said they…
A Summit County man learned the hard way last month that you can’t always trust people you meet online. The 21-year-old had been communicating with someone he thought was a woman on Facebook when the person convinced him to send explicit photos of himself through the messenger app, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. The person demanded money to not make the photos public, so the victim sent $100 through Western Union, a Sheriff’s Office report states. The person then requested an additional $1,000, but the victim refused to send it. The victim filed a report with the Sheriff’s Office on Sept. 26. Lt. Andrew Wright said reports of people attempting to extort others over social media are becoming increasingly common. “It’s so easy for people to disguise themselves and have ill intentions,” he said. “Before anyone chooses to engage in that type of risqué behavior, they really…
The presidential office is expected to announce its stance on revenge porn as more than 200,000 people have signed an online petition calling for heavier penalties for the crime.More than 214,000 Koreans have signed a petition titled “Please put revenge porn offenders in jail,” posted on the Cheong Wa Dae website last Thursday. The presidential office is required to issue a formal response if an online petition on its website garners more than 200,000 signatures in 30 days. “Over the several decades since revenge porn crimes first became known, none of the offenders have gone to jail, and victims have killed themselves due to sickening secondary damage and attacks such as ‘you should have been careful,’” the petitioner wrote. (Yonhap) A debate over revenge porn swept the internet with recent reports that singer-turned-actor Goo Ha-ra and her ex-boyfriend had assaulted each other, and that the young man had later…