Our picksSuperbugs kill 33,000 in Europe every year; drones to fix unsolved-murders; some (unspoken) rules for cyberwar, and more

Published 8 November 2018

·  Superbugs kill 33,000 in Europe every year

·  Chinese ‘gait recognition’ tech IDs people by how they walk

·  Kentucky is turning to drones to fix its unsolved-murder crisis

·  Tech companies offered free products to help secure the election. Now what?

·  Why won’t red tide go away? After Hurricane Michael, toxic algae has again spread

·  When seconds count, 911 calls are taking minutes to answer in Colorado Springs

·  How the government plans to reskill workers for cybersecurity

·  In cyberwar, there are some (unspoken) rules

Superbugs kill 33,000 in Europe every year (Lianne Kolirin, CNN)
Superbugs are killing about 33,000 people in Europe every year, according to a new report.
The”burden of infection” — measured in the number of cases, attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) — of these superbugs is equivalent to that of flu, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which conducted the research.
These deaths come as a “direct consequence of an infection due to bacteria resistant to antibiotics,” according to the authors of the report, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases on Monday.

Chinese ‘gait recognition’ tech IDs people by how they walk (Dake Kang, TechXplore)
Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: “gait recognition” software that uses people’s body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras. Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, “gait recognition” is part of a push across China to develop artificial-intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concern about how far the technology will go.

Kentucky is turning to drones to fix its unsolved-murder crisis (Sidney Fussell, Defense One)
Only 52 percent of the state’s homicides result in an arrest when the victim is black. Could automating police work help?

Tech companies offered free products to help secure the election. Now what? (Zaid Shoorbajee, Cyberscoop)
The unprecedented foreign hacking and misinformation campaigns that were reported around the 2016 U.S. election cast a cloak of doubt over the integrity of the country’s democratic process. The threat sent government officials on the federal, state and local level scrambling to ensure that the country’s voting machines, voter registration systems, pollbooks, results-reporting websites and other election technology is ready for the midterm elections.
Over the past few months, about a dozen technology companies have announced programs offering state and local election offices or political organizations free services to help them fend off looming threats, including email protection, extra security for cloud applications, basic antivirus coverage, multi-factor authentication tools and several other types of products. As elections in the U.S. are run by the states, securing a federal election requires a massive coordinated effort. The federal government has been playing a greater role to this end since 2016, but can only do so much without overstepping its bounds. In this gap, some companies saw a role they could play, and some of them decided to step in for free.
But those steps seem to be very disjointed. There is no coordination to make sure officials and campaign members understand their options. There is no overarching plan describing the private sector’s role.One official called the phenomenon a “free-for-all” that has “inundated” the government officials across the country who are responsible for running elections.

Why won’t red tide go away? After Hurricane Michael, toxic algae has again spread (Jenny Staletovich, Miami Herald)
Polluted run-off from a storm’s heavy rain or retreating storm surge likely provide the blooms with an injection of fuel.

When seconds count, 911 calls are taking minutes to answer in Colorado Springs (Kaitlin Durbin, The Gazette)
Records show that in August, the average time it took to get through to 911 was about 21 seconds. The longest wait was in May, an average of 24 seconds.

How the government plans to reskill workers for cybersecurity (Phil Goldstein, FedTech)
OMB and DHS are working on plans to retool the federal workforce to fill needed cybersecurity positions, but it will not be easy.

In cyberwar, there are some (unspoken) rules (Miguel Alberto N. Gomez, Foreign Policy)
A recent article argues that the lack of legal norms invites cyberconflict. But governments know the price of overreach and are refraining from unleashing their full capabilities.