SMS is supported by almost every mobile network provider in the world, with over two trillion(new window) SMS messages being sent during 2020 in the United States alone. Indeed, the United States remains a bastion of SMS use(new window), bucking the growing trend in other countries to use internet-based alternatives such as WhatsApp and Telegram.The big advantage of SMS is that it is universal — it’s on everyone’s phones, allowing you to text anyone, regardless of whether they use an iPhone or an Android phone, or whether they use one of many competing third-party messaging apps.

However, unlike encrypted email, SMS was developed before the necessity of ensuring communications are secure and private was even considered. The result is that SMS messages are an open book, easily read by your mobile service provider, your government, and criminal hackers.

This is made all the scarier by the fact that two-factor authentication (2FA)(new window) codes are routinely sent via SMS.

Researchers have just unveiled a pre-release, game-changing AI upgrade for Google Messages. But it’s one with a serious privacy risk—it seems that Bard may ask to read and analyze your private message history. So how might this work, how do you maintain your privacy, and when might this begin.Google’s AI to begin analyzing private messages on Android smartphones.

And so here comes the next privacy battlefield for smartphone owners still coming to terms with app permissions, privacy labels and tracking transparency, and with all those voice AI assistant eavesdropping scandals still fresh in the memory. Google’s challenge will be convincing users that this doesn’t open the door to the same kind of privacy nightmares we’ve seen before, where user content and AI platforms meet.

Bard’s chat says the same. “While Google assures on-device analysis,” it says, “any data accessed by Bard is technically collected, even temporarily. Concerns arise about potential leaks, misuse, or hidden data sharing practices. The extent of Bard’s analysis and how it uses your data should be transparent. Users deserve granular control over what data is analyzed, for what purposes, and how long it’s stored.”

The analysis of your message history isn’t the only privacy debate here. Google’s deployment of Bard is just part of the shift from browser-based to directed search, and you will need to be increasingly cautious as to the quality of the results you’re being given. Bard isn’t a chat with a friend. It’s a UI sitting across the world’s most powerful and valuable advertising and tracking machine.

On which note, Bard’s chat left me a final thought that might be better directed at its creators than its users: “Remember, you have the right to demand clarity, control, and responsible AI development from the companies you trust with your data.”

Subject: Improvements to information sharing between U.S. Intelligence Community, private companies introduced in Congress
Source: Homeland Preparedness News
https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/81823-improvements-to-information-sharing-between-u-s-intelligence-community-private-companies-introduced-in-congress/<

Several Democrat and Republican lawmakers from both chambers of Congress recently introduced the Enhancing Public-Private Sharing on Manipulative Adversary Practices in Critical Minerals Projects Act to increase the information sharing relationship between private companies and the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). While Congress is considering banning TikTok for reportedly doing similar things with China, lawmakers from both parties introduced this legislation to require the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to develop a strategy for improving the sharing of information and intelligence on foreign adversaries’ tactics and activities to spread disinformation, steal intellectual property or pursue other illegal efforts against U.S. interests abroad. Specifically, though, this would apply to U.S. companies in foreign jurisdictions on projects relating to energy generation and storage. …