industryterm:online search

  • New report exposes global reach of powerful governments who equip, finance and train other countries to spy on their populations

    Privacy International has today released a report that looks at how powerful governments are financing, training and equipping countries — including authoritarian regimes — with surveillance capabilities. The report warns that rather than increasing security, this is entrenching authoritarianism.

    Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance, and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is resulting in entrenched authoritarianism, further facilitation of abuse against people, and diversion of resources from long-term development programmes.

    The report, titled ‘Teach ’em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance’ is available to download here.

    Examples from the report include:

    In 2001, the US spent $5.7 billion in security aid. In 2017 it spent over $20 billion [1]. In 2015, military and non-military security assistance in the US amounted to an estimated 35% of its entire foreign aid expenditure [2]. The report provides examples of how US Departments of State, Defense, and Justice all facilitate foreign countries’ surveillance capabilities, as well as an overview of how large arms companies have embedded themselves into such programmes, including at surveillance training bases in the US. Examples provided include how these agencies have provided communications intercept and other surveillance technology, how they fund wiretapping programmes, and how they train foreign spy agencies in surveillance techniques around the world.

    The EU and individual European countries are sponsoring surveillance globally. The EU is already spending billions developing border control and surveillance capabilities in foreign countries to deter migration to Europe. For example, the EU is supporting Sudan’s leader with tens of millions of Euros aimed at capacity building for border management. The EU is now looking to massively increase its expenditure aimed at building border control and surveillance capabilities globally under the forthcoming Multiannual Financial Framework, which will determine its budget for 2021–2027. Other EU projects include developing the surveillance capabilities of security agencies in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere. European countries such as France, Germany, and the UK are sponsoring surveillance worldwide, for example, providing training and equipment to “Cyber Police Officers” in Ukraine, as well as to agencies in Saudi Arabia, and across Africa.

    Surveillance capabilities are also being supported by China’s government under the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and other efforts to expand into international markets. Chinese companies have reportedly supplied surveillance capabilities to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador [3]. In Ecuador, China Electronics Corporation supplied a network of cameras — including some fitted with facial recognition capabilities — to the country’s 24 provinces, as well as a system to locate and identify mobile phones.

    Edin Omanovic, Privacy International’s Surveillance Programme Lead, said

    “The global rush to make sure that surveillance is as universal and pervasive as possible is as astonishing as it is disturbing. The breadth of institutions, countries, agencies, and arms companies that are involved shows how there is no real long-term policy or strategic thinking driving any of this. It’s a free-for-all, where capabilities developed by some of the world’s most powerful spy agencies are being thrown at anyone willing to serve their interests, including dictators and killers whose only goal is to cling to power.

    “If these ‘benefactor’ countries truly want to assist other countries to be secure and stable, they should build schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure, and promote democracy and human rights. This is what communities need for safety, security, and prosperity. What we don’t need is powerful and wealthy countries giving money to arms companies to build border control and surveillance infrastructure. This only serves the interests of those powerful, wealthy countries. As our report shows, instead of putting resources into long-term development solutions, such programmes further entrench authoritarianism and spur abuses around the world — the very things which cause insecurity in the first place.”

    https://privacyinternational.org/press-release/2161/press-release-new-report-exposes-global-reach-powerful-governm

    #surveillance #surveillance_de_masse #rapport

    Pour télécharger le rapport “Teach ’em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance”:
    https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/Teach-em-to-Phish-report.pdf

    ping @fil

    • China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise

      The Chinese authorities turned to a Massachusetts company and a prominent Yale researcher as they built an enormous system of surveillance and control.

      The authorities called it a free health check. Tahir Imin had his doubts.

      They drew blood from the 38-year-old Muslim, scanned his face, recorded his voice and took his fingerprints. They didn’t bother to check his heart or kidneys, and they rebuffed his request to see the results.

      “They said, ‘You don’t have the right to ask about this,’” Mr. Imin said. “‘If you want to ask more,’ they said, ‘you can go to the police.’”

      Mr. Imin was one of millions of people caught up in a vast Chinese campaign of surveillance and oppression. To give it teeth, the Chinese authorities are collecting DNA — and they got unlikely corporate and academic help from the United States to do it.

      China wants to make the country’s Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, more subservient to the Communist Party. It has detained up to a million people in what China calls “re-education” camps, drawing condemnation from human rights groups and a threat of sanctions from the Trump administration.

      Collecting genetic material is a key part of China’s campaign, according to human rights groups and Uighur activists. They say a comprehensive DNA database could be used to chase down any Uighurs who resist conforming to the campaign.

      Police forces in the United States and elsewhere use genetic material from family members to find suspects and solve crimes. Chinese officials, who are building a broad nationwide database of DNA samples, have cited the crime-fighting benefits of China’s own genetic studies.

      To bolster their DNA capabilities, scientists affiliated with China’s police used equipment made by Thermo Fisher, a Massachusetts company. For comparison with Uighur DNA, they also relied on genetic material from people around the world that was provided by #Kenneth_Kidd, a prominent #Yale_University geneticist.

      On Wednesday, #Thermo_Fisher said it would no longer sell its equipment in Xinjiang, the part of China where the campaign to track Uighurs is mostly taking place. The company said separately in an earlier statement to The New York Times that it was working with American officials to figure out how its technology was being used.

      Dr. Kidd said he had been unaware of how his material and know-how were being used. He said he believed Chinese scientists were acting within scientific norms that require informed consent by DNA donors.

      China’s campaign poses a direct challenge to the scientific community and the way it makes cutting-edge knowledge publicly available. The campaign relies in part on public DNA databases and commercial technology, much of it made or managed in the United States. In turn, Chinese scientists have contributed Uighur DNA samples to a global database, potentially violating scientific norms of consent.

      Cooperation from the global scientific community “legitimizes this type of genetic surveillance,” said Mark Munsterhjelm, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario who has closely tracked the use of American technology in Xinjiang.

      Swabbing Millions

      In Xinjiang, in northwestern China, the program was known as “#Physicals_for_All.”

      From 2016 to 2017, nearly 36 million people took part in it, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency. The authorities collected DNA samples, images of irises and other personal data, according to Uighurs and human rights groups. It is unclear whether some residents participated more than once — Xinjiang has a population of about 24.5 million.

      In a statement, the Xinjiang government denied that it collects DNA samples as part of the free medical checkups. It said the DNA machines that were bought by the Xinjiang authorities were for “internal use.”

      China has for decades maintained an iron grip in Xinjiang. In recent years, it has blamed Uighurs for a series of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, including a 2013 incident in which a driver struck two people in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

      In late 2016, the Communist Party embarked on a campaign to turn the Uighurs and other largely Muslim minority groups into loyal supporters. The government locked up hundreds of thousands of them in what it called job training camps, touted as a way to escape poverty, backwardness and radical Islam. It also began to take DNA samples.

      In at least some of the cases, people didn’t give up their genetic material voluntarily. To mobilize Uighurs for the free medical checkups, police and local cadres called or sent them text messages, telling them the checkups were required, according to Uighurs interviewed by The Times.

      “There was a pretty strong coercive element to it,” said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Washington who studies the plight of the Uighurs. “They had no choice.”

      Calling Dr. Kidd

      Kenneth Kidd first visited China in 1981 and remained curious about the country. So when he received an invitation in 2010 for an expenses-paid trip to visit Beijing, he said yes.

      Dr. Kidd is a major figure in the genetics field. The 77-year-old Yale professor has helped to make DNA evidence more acceptable in American courts.

      His Chinese hosts had their own background in law enforcement. They were scientists from the Ministry of Public Security — essentially, China’s police.

      During that trip, Dr. Kidd met Li Caixia, the chief forensic physician of the ministry’s Institute of Forensic Science. The relationship deepened. In December 2014, Dr. Li arrived at Dr. Kidd’s lab for an 11-month stint. She took some DNA samples back to China.

      “I had thought we were sharing samples for collaborative research,” said Dr. Kidd.

      Dr. Kidd is not the only prominent foreign geneticist to have worked with the Chinese authorities. Bruce Budowle, a professor at the University of North Texas, says in his online biography that he “has served or is serving” as a member of an academic committee at the ministry’s Institute of Forensic Science.

      Jeff Carlton, a university spokesman, said in a statement that Professor Budowle’s role with the ministry was “only symbolic in nature” and that he had “done no work on its behalf.”

      “Dr. Budowle and his team abhor the use of DNA technology to persecute ethnic or religious groups,” Mr. Carlton said in the statement. “Their work focuses on criminal investigations and combating human trafficking to serve humanity.”

      Dr. Kidd’s data became part of China’s DNA drive.

      In 2014, ministry researchers published a paper describing a way for scientists to tell one ethnic group from another. It cited, as an example, the ability to distinguish Uighurs from Indians. The authors said they used 40 DNA samples taken from Uighurs in China and samples from other ethnic groups from Dr. Kidd’s Yale lab.

      In patent applications filed in China in 2013 and 2017, ministry researchers described ways to sort people by ethnicity by screening their genetic makeup. They took genetic material from Uighurs and compared it with DNA from other ethnic groups. In the 2017 filing, researchers explained that their system would help in “inferring the geographical origin from the DNA of suspects at crime scenes.”

      For outside comparisons, they used DNA samples provided by Dr. Kidd’s lab, the 2017 filing said. They also used samples from the 1000 Genomes Project, a public catalog of genes from around the world.

      Paul Flicek, member of the steering committee of the 1000 Genomes Project, said that its data was unrestricted and that “there is no obvious problem” if it was being used as a way to determine where a DNA sample came from.

      The data flow also went the other way.

      Chinese government researchers contributed the data of 2,143 Uighurs to the Allele Frequency Database, an online search platform run by Dr. Kidd that was partly funded by the United States Department of Justice until last year. The database, known as Alfred, contains DNA data from more than 700 populations around the world.

      This sharing of data could violate scientific norms of informed consent because it is not clear whether the Uighurs volunteered their DNA samples to the Chinese authorities, said Arthur Caplan, the founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s School of Medicine. He said that “no one should be in a database without express consent.”

      “Honestly, there’s been a kind of naïveté on the part of American scientists presuming that other people will follow the same rules and standards wherever they come from,” Dr. Caplan said.

      Dr. Kidd said he was “not particularly happy” that the ministry had cited him in its patents, saying his data shouldn’t be used in ways that could allow people or institutions to potentially profit from it. If the Chinese authorities used data they got from their earlier collaborations with him, he added, there is little he can do to stop them.

      He said he was unaware of the filings until he was contacted by The Times.

      Dr. Kidd also said he considered his collaboration with the ministry to be no different from his work with police and forensics labs elsewhere. He said governments should have access to data about minorities, not just the dominant ethnic group, in order to have an accurate picture of the whole population.

      As for the consent issue, he said the burden of meeting that standard lay with the Chinese researchers, though he said reports about what Uighurs are subjected to in China raised some difficult questions.

      “I would assume they had appropriate informed consent on the samples,” he said, “though I must say what I’ve been hearing in the news recently about the treatment of the Uighurs raises concerns.”
      Machine Learning

      In 2015, Dr. Kidd and Dr. Budowle spoke at a genomics conference in the Chinese city of Xi’an. It was underwritten in part by Thermo Fisher, a company that has come under intense criticism for its equipment sales in China, and Illumina, a San Diego company that makes gene sequencing instruments. Illumina did not respond to requests for comment.

      China is ramping up spending on health care and research. The Chinese market for gene-sequencing equipment and other technologies was worth $1 billion in 2017 and could more than double in five years, according to CCID Consulting, a research firm. But the Chinese market is loosely regulated, and it isn’t always clear where the equipment goes or to what uses it is put.

      Thermo Fisher sells everything from lab instruments to forensic DNA testing kits to DNA mapping machines, which help scientists decipher a person’s ethnicity and identify diseases to which he or she is particularly vulnerable. China accounted for 10 percent of Thermo Fisher’s $20.9 billion in revenue, according to the company’s 2017 annual report, and it employs nearly 5,000 people there.

      “Our greatest success story in emerging markets continues to be China,” it said in the report.

      China used Thermo Fisher’s equipment to map the genes of its people, according to five Ministry of Public Security patent filings.

      The company has also sold equipment directly to the authorities in Xinjiang, where the campaign to control the Uighurs has been most intense. At least some of the equipment was intended for use by the police, according to procurement documents. The authorities there said in the documents that the machines were important for DNA inspections in criminal cases and had “no substitutes in China.”

      In February 2013, six ministry researchers credited Thermo Fisher’s Applied Biosystems brand, as well as other companies, with helping to analyze the DNA samples of Han, Uighur and Tibetan people in China, according to a patent filing. The researchers said understanding how to differentiate between such DNA samples was necessary for fighting terrorism “because these cases were becoming more difficult to crack.”

      The researchers said they had obtained 95 Uighur DNA samples, some of which were given to them by the police. Other samples were provided by Uighurs voluntarily, they said.

      Thermo Fisher was criticized by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and others who asked the Commerce Department to prohibit American companies from selling technology to China that could be used for purposes of surveillance and tracking.

      On Wednesday, Thermo Fisher said it would stop selling its equipment in Xinjiang, a decision it said was “consistent with Thermo Fisher’s values, ethics code and policies.”

      “As the world leader in serving science, we recognize the importance of considering how our products and services are used — or may be used — by our customers,” it said.

      Human rights groups praised Thermo Fisher’s move. Still, they said, equipment and information flows into China should be better monitored, to make sure the authorities elsewhere don’t send them to Xinjiang.

      “It’s an important step, and one hopes that they apply the language in their own statement to commercial activity across China, and that other companies are assessing their sales and operations, especially in Xinjiang,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director of Human Rights Watch.

      American lawmakers and officials are taking a hard look at the situation in Xinjiang. The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese officials and companies over China’s treatment of the Uighurs.

      China’s tracking campaign unnerved people like Tahir Hamut. In May 2017, the police in the city of Urumqi in Xinjiang drew the 49-year-old Uighur’s blood, took his fingerprints, recorded his voice and took a scan of his face. He was called back a month later for what he was told was a free health check at a local clinic.

      Mr. Hamut, a filmmaker who is now living in Virginia, said he saw between 20 to 40 Uighurs in line. He said it was absurd to think that such frightened people had consented to submit their DNA.

      “No one in this situation, not under this much pressure and facing such personal danger, would agree to give their blood samples for research,” Mr. Hamut said. “It’s just inconceivable.”

      https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html?action=click&module=MoreInSect
      #USA #Etats-Unis #ADN #DNA #Ouïghours #université #science #génétique #base_de_données

  • Snapchat has a hidden visual search function

    The popular photo sharing app has unreleased sections of code that will enable online searches through photos.
    What it says: According to TechCrunch (https://technologyreview.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=47c1a9cec9749a8f8cbc83e78&id=4c6f58ec3a&e) , text buried in Snapchat’s building blocks reads, “Press and hold to identify an object, song, barcode, and more! This works by sending data to Amazon, Shazam, and other partners.” After the scan is complete, you can “See all results at Amazon.”
    Code detective: The feature, codenamed “Eagle” was discovered by 15-year-old app researcher Ishan Agarwal.
    Why it matters: It reveals a possible partnership with Amazon, and indicates Snapchat is looking for new ways to bring in revenue. This gave Snap stocks a three percent bump yesterday. According to the Information (https://technologyreview.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=47c1a9cec9749a8f8cbc83e78&id=570bceb893&e), it will also be launching a gaming platform this fall. A visual search feature could set Snapchat apart from platforms like Instagram, and give users a reason to stay—or come back—to the app.

  • Competition Commission of India Fines #Google for ’Search Bias’ - The Wire
    https://thewire.in/222371/competition-commission-india-fines-google-search-bias

    New Delhi: India’s antitrust watchdog on Thursday imposed a 1.36 billion rupee ($21.17 million) fine on Google for “search bias”, in the latest regulatory setback for the world’s most popular internet search engine.

    The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said Google, a unit of U.S. firm #Alphabet Inc, was abusing its dominance in online web search and online search advertising markets.

    “Google was found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so, it causes harm to its competitors as well as to users,” the CCI said in its order.

    #biais

  • EU copyright reform is coming. Is your startup ready?
    https://medium.com/silicon-allee/eu-copyright-reform-is-coming-is-your-startup-ready-4be81a5fabf7?source=user

    Last Friday, members of Berlin’s startup community gathered at Silicon Allee for a copyright policy roundtable discussion hosted by Allied for Startups. The event sparked debate and elicited feedback surrounding the European Commission’s complex drafted legislation that would have significant impact on startups in the EU. Our Editor-in-Chief, Julia Neuman, gives you the rundown here — along with all the details you should know about the proposed reform.

    ‘Disruption’ in the startup world isn’t always a good thing — especially when it involves challenging legislation. Over the past five years, as big data and user-generated content began to play an increasing role in our society, startups have worked tirelessly to navigate laws regarding privacy and security in order to go about business as usual. Now, they may soon be adding copyright concerns to their list of potential roadblocks.

    The forthcoming copyright reform proposed by the European Commission severely threatens the success and momentum that startups have gained in the EU, and it’s being introduced under the guise of “a more modern, more European copyright framework.”

    On September 14, 2016, the European Commission tabled its Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (commonly referred to as the “Copyright Directive”) — a piece of draft legislation that would have significant impact on a wide variety of modern copyrighted content. Consequently, it poses a direct threat to startups.

    Members of the startup community are now coming together, unwilling to accept these measures without a fight. On Friday, members of Allied for Startups and Silicon Allee — alongside copyright experts and Berlin-based entrepreneurs and investors — met at Silicon Allee’s new campus in Mitte for a policy roundtable discussion. Additional workshop discussions are taking place this week in Warsaw, Madrid and Paris. The ultimate goal? To get startups’ voices heard in front of policymakers and counter this legislation.
    Sparking conversation at Silicon Allee

    Bird & Bird Copyright Lawyer and IP Professor Martin Senftleben led the roundtable discussions in Berlin, outlining key clauses and offering clarifying commentary. He then invited conversation from guests — which included representatives from content-rich startups such as Fanmiles, Videopath, and Ubermetrics. The result was a well-balanced input of perspectives and testimonials that sparked an increased desire to fight back. The roundtable covered the three main areas affected by the proposed reforms: user-generated content, text and data mining, and the neighboring right for press publishers.
    User-generated content

    The internet has allowed us all to become content creators with an equal opportunity to make our voices heard around the world. With this transition comes evolving personal responsibilities. Whereas in the past, copyright law only concerned a small percentage of society — today it concerns anyone posting to social media, uploading unique content, or founding a company that relies on user-generated content as part of its business model.

    The proposed EU copyright reform shifts copyright burden to content providers, making them liable for user content and forcing them to apply content filtering technology to their platforms. As it stands now, management of copyright infringement is a passive process. Companies are not required to monitor or police user-generated content, instead waiting for infringement notices to initiate relevant takedowns.

    New laws imply that companies would have to constantly police their platforms. As you can imagine, this would quickly rack up operating costs — not to mention deter investors from committing if there’s such a inherently persistent and high legal risk for copyright infringement. Furthermore, filtering technology would not exactly promote public interest or media plurality, as an efficiency-based filtering system would be more likely to result in overblocking and censoring (even if unintentional). This result is counter to the expressed aims of the reform.

    “Having this necessity to add filtering technology from the start would kill any innovation for new startups, which is the reason why we’re all here and this economy is booming and creating jobs,” said Fabian Schmidt, Founder of Fanmiles. “The small companies suddenly cannot innovate and compete anymore.”

    Text and data mining

    The proposed reform also blocks startups from using text and data mining technology, consequently preventing the rich kind of data analysis that has added value and yielded deeper insights for growing startups. Copyright law today accounts for lawful access and consultation, however not for the automated process of reading and drawing conclusions. The scraping and mining of freely available texts could give rise to complex, costly legal problems from the get-go — problems that not even the most prudent founder teams could navigate (unless they work to the benefit of research institutions, which are exempt from the measure).

    What kind of message does this send out to new startups? As with laws dealing with user-generated content, these measures don’t entice entrepreneurs to turn their seeds of ideas into profitable companies. Nor do they get VCs jumping to invest. Data input from mining and scraping suddenly gives rise to a huge legal issue that certainly does not benefit the public interest.

    Senftleben reminded the group in Berlin that these types of legislation normally take several years to implement, and that the proposed policy could have amplified effects down the road as the role of data mining increases. “If this legislation is already limiting now, who knows what kind of text and data mining will be used in ten years and how it will play in,” he said.
    Neighboring right for press publishers

    The third and final point discussed at the roundtable has gathered the most media attention thus far. It’s the “elephant in the room,” unjustly pitting established publishers against startups. Proposed legislation creates an exclusive right for publishers that protects their content for digital use in order to “to ensure quality journalism and citizens’ access to information.”

    Sure, this reasoning sounds like a positive contribution to a free and democratic society. But closer examination reveals that these publishers’ outdated and financially unviable business models are being grandfathered in for protection at the expense of more innovative content models.

    It’s not hard to see why this is happening. Publishers have lobbying power, and they are bleeding money in today’s digital climate. “I work a lot with publishers. Their position here in Europe is a little more old school,” said one of the founders present at the discussion. “Their business model and revenues are going down, so they’re going to fight hard.”

    Axel Springer, for example, is lobbying for greater protection; they want a piece of Google’s success. But the most interesting aspect of this measure is that it’s unclear how much value it would add for publishers, who already have rights to digital reproduction from the individual content creators employed under contract with their firms. A freelance journalist contributing to Die Zeit, for example, is already transferring digital reproduction rights to the newspaper just by agreeing to publish.

    The drafted legislation makes it pretty clear that content aggregating search engines would take a big hit when they would inevitably have to pay content reproduction fees to publishers. But the interdependent relationship between publishers and online search aggregation services makes this legislation unlikely to generate a meaningful revenue stream for publishers anyway: Publishers want compensation for snippets of articles that show up on search engines, and search engines want compensation for bringing attention to them in the first place. In the end, content aggregators would likely just stop their use of content fragments instead of resorting to pay license fees to publishers.

    It’s unclear how the proposed legislation could promote media plurality and freedom; instead, it seems to promote market concentration and monopolization of content publishing, potentially stifling free and open access to information.

    “I know two small aggregators here in Germany that have given up because of this,” said Tobias Schwarz, Coworking Manager at Sankt Oberholz in Berlin.

    What comes next? Turning discussion into action

    What is clear now is that copyright law has potential to affect anyone. Startups in Europe, especially, are at risk with these new reforms. As players in the European economy, they have not been present in the policy debate so far. Allied for Startups and Silicon Allee are inviting founders, entrepreneurs, and interested members in the tech community to come forward and make their voices heard. They invite contributions to an open letter to the European Parliament which dives into this topic in more detail, explaining how toxic the Copyright Directive is for companies who are trying to stay alive without incurring €60 million in development costs.

    “A lot of startup leaders have their heads down working on their next feature, without realizing policymakers are also creating something that can instantly kill it,” said Silicon Allee co-founder Travis Todd. “But if more startups come to the table and tell others what they learned, they will become more aware of these potential roadblocks and ultimately help change them.”

    To find out more information, participate at the next discussion, or share your ideas and testimonials on this policy discussion, please get in touch! Drop a line to hello@alliedforstartups.org, tweet to @allied4startups, or join the online conversation using #copyright4startups.

  • Hundreds of U.S. Clinics Sell Unapproved Stem Cell ’Therapies’ | Health, Medicine and Fitness | mtstandard.com
    http://mtstandard.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/hundreds-of-u-s-clinics-sell-unapproved-stem-cell-therapies/article_731d2458-4479-54fd-9e60-2442d0b2c089.html

    Hundreds of clinics across the United States are marketing unapproved stem cell treatments for conditions ranging from aging skin to spinal cord injuries, a new study finds.

    In an online search, researchers found at least 570 clinics offering unapproved stem cell “therapies.” They tend to be concentrated in a handful of states — including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New York and Texas — but are scattered across many other states, too.

    Most often, the clinics market stem cell procedures for orthopedic conditions, such as arthritis and injured ligaments and tendons. This does have science behind it, but is still experimental, medical experts said.

    In other cases with little or no supporting evidence, clinics hawked stem cell “facelifts” and therapies for serious conditions such as chronic lung disease, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

    If these pricey stem cell treatments are unproven and unapproved by federal regulators, how can these clinics exist?

    I ask myself that question all the time,” said Leigh Turner, a bioethicist who worked on the study.

    Turner, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics, said attention used to focus on “stem cell tourism” — where people travel to countries such as China, India and Mexico to get unproven treatments.

    I think there’s a misperception that everything here [in the U.S.] is regulated,” Turner said. “But these clinics are operating here, and on a relatively large scale.

    • Cet article est bien complaisant avec la #FDA.

      Le papier suivant est moins timoré,
      DTC Stem Cell Marketing Common in US in #'Cowboy #Culture
      http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/865595

      The analysis raises questions about the adequacy of oversight provided by the US Food and Drug Administration and other federal and state agencies tasked with promoting patient safety and accurate advertising, write Leigh Turner, PhD, and Paul Knoepfler, PhD. “Such practices also prompt ethical concerns about the safety and efficacy of marketed interventions, accuracy in advertising, the quality of informed consent, and the exposure of vulnerable individuals to unjustifiable risks.”

      #Etats-Unis

  • The Afghans of the #Béguinage Church, Brussels

    About seven months ago, I decided to look for voluntary work in Brussels where I had moved to study a Master’s degree recently. In my online search, I came across a very intriguing project; a befriending voluntary activity with Afghan refugees, living in the Béguinage Church near St Catherine. Now, I was sure I had caught a distant glimpse of that church at some point, but I had no idea that there were people actually living inside it.


    https://pseudoeli.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/the-afghans-of-the-beguinage-church-brussels
    #Bruxelles #réfugiés #occupation #église #Belgique #migration #asile #Afghans #église_du_Béguinage
    cc @albertocampiphoto

  • The downsides of Israel’s missions of mercy abroad
    Disaster relief feeds the illusion that we can somehow be clever, creative and cooperative enough to make the world absolve us of everything else that is wrong with what we do.
    By Anshel Pfeffer | Apr. 28, 2015 | | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.653988

    Here are four things that Israel does well. Actually, it does them extraordinarily well. 

    Few, if any countries, are so fast at using every means at their disposal to extricate its citizens in trouble abroad — whether it’s the foreign ministry, which expends a significant proportion of its limited resources on bailing businessmen out of jail and searching for lost trekkers on mountainsides, private specialists, who have made fortunes out of desperate parents of hikers in distress, and just about every other Israeli on Facebook quick to join an online search.

    Ask any Israeli with a dual nationality which of his two governments will be there first in their hour of need. For all the longing of many Israelis for a second passport, they know who will be there when the chips are down. There really is no question. It’s a peculiar Israeli trait that no-one gets left behind in any circumstance and it really shouldn’t be taken for granted. Though it is. 

    And even when no Israelis are involved, few countries are as fast as Israel in mobilizing entire delegations to rush to the other side of the world. It has been proved time and again in recent years, after the earthquake in Haiti, the typhoon in the Philippines and the quake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan. For a country of Israel’s size and resources, without conveniently located aircraft carriers and overseas bases, it is quite an impressive achievement.

    Another thing the Israelis are good at in this respect — and you wouldn’t normally expect it of them — is that, despite their usual brashness and know-it-all attitude, they don’t rush in immediately, but wait for a clear understanding of what the local authorities need most. Only then do they fly in with a tailor-made solution. After Fukushima, for example, the Japanese preferred for the Israelis to come later, after the rescue efforts were over, and open a field hospital to help with routine treatment in areas where the regular health services had been worst hit. 

    And this of course highlights another field in which Israelis excel, often too much for their own good, but in these situations it’s just what you need — improvisation and off-the-cuff solutions.

    As yet another rescue mission by the IDF and Israeli national and private rescue organizations is setting up in quake-hit Nepal, Israelis have every right to be proud of all this again. However, there are some flies in the ointment because there are also four things Israeli do rather badly which are also coming to the fore now.

    For a nation of immigrants, whose young generation fly off to every corner of the world the moment they’re out of the army, Israelis are terribly parochial. The focus of the local media, professional journalists and Facebookers/tweeters was almost exclusively on the Israelis stuck in Kathmandu and on the hillsides. As of writing, there are reportedly still 11 Israeli tourists in Nepal who have yet to make contact with their families. All the rest of the Israelis there got out with at worst minor injuries.

    Experiencing a massive earthquake is a traumatic experience, but for God’s sake, 10,000 people may have been killed, hundreds of thousands are homeless, historic landmarks have been obliterated. Most of the Israelis who wanted to leave are already on their way home, or back by now. Parents with their adopted surrogate children were flown out first by privately chartered business jets. Israelis found food and shelter in Kathmandu, both at the embassy and the Chabad house.

    The headlines in some of the local papers of how they “went through hell” epitomize not only everything that is wrong with the Israeli media but the insularity of Israeli society in general. The media in other countries have similar tendencies, but also a certain sense of proportion. 

    And now that nearly all the Israelis who were there during the quake are accounted for, the media have new local heroes to focus on. Our brave men and women selflessly working there to deliver succor to the Nepalese. Once again, when the saviors are Israeli, they will be getting much more attention than the victims they are aiding.

    I’ve argued about this in the past with Israeli spokespeople who have insisted they are simply doing their jobs by informing the public about what the organizations they represent are doing, and they have a point. But it doesn’t fix the impression of an Israel that is trying to milk tragedy in a faraway country for PR benefit.

    Disasters are sexy, every news editor and publicist knows that. The problem is that so much of Israeli assistance to developing countries is disaster relief and not nearly enough is the mundane, much less media-friendly work that is needed in-between the brief periods when the West’s attention is momentarily fixed on those parts of the world.

    The sad reality is that Israel doesn’t do international development well. Sure, Israeli companies and researchers are world-leaders in various fields of agricultural technology and tropical medicine and are busy doing incredible work in every continent, but so little of that is publicly-financed. The OECD recommends that its members dedicate 0.35 percent of their national budgets to international development, Israel spends less than a quarter of that. This point shouldn’t detract from the contribution of the rescue delegations, but it does highlight the fact that they are woefully inadequate in fulfilling Israelis’ self-image.

    And here’s the fourth way Israelis fail themselves. All the hype leads to the delusion that somehow these missions of mercy should earn us membership of the enlightened nations’ club. But it never can. Using hard-earned capabilities and a tiny fraction of your human and material resources to help those in need in countries far away is what a decent democracy does. It won’t make you one, no matter how much you expend on overseas aid.

    The way Israelis embark on these laudable campaigns simply feeds the illusion that we can somehow be clever, creative and cooperative enough to make the world absolve us of everything else that is wrong with what we do. Footage of officers in IDF uniform extricating survivors from beneath ruined buildings and delivering babies in a sophisticated field hospital won’t replace other disturbing images.

    The fact that Israel can mobilize itself so effectively and carry out complex operations thousands of miles beyond its borders won’t make the world regard us differently. If anything, it will increase the mystification of how such a nation can’t get around to fixing such fundamental flaws back home if it so badly wants to be a member of the club.

  • Society of the Query #2
    Online Search: about 4.720.000.000 results
    November 7 – 8, 2013
    Main Building Amsterdam Public Library (OBA)
    Amsterdam (NL)

    This fall the Institute of Network Cultures invites you to the second Society of the Query conference on search and search engines, 7 and 8 November in the OBA (public library) in Amsterdam. Together with René König from the ITAS Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, we are working on putting together the program with different sessions and discussions, that will hopefully be complemented with exciting workshops, an art program and a hackathon. We aim to give new energy to the discussion on search and search engines by bringing together researchers from different disciplines, with artists, programmers and designers. In early 2014 this will also result in the publication of the Society of the Query Reader.

    Preliminary program:

    November 7 (afternoon):

    1. Google domination
    Even though it is the aim of the Society of the Query to broaden the scope of search beyond Google, it is nonetheless inevitable to pay attention to the dominance of Google in the search engine market - especially from the perspective of the Netherlands, where Google has a market share of around 95%. Despite the growing diversification of Google in terms of revenue, search is still its main source of income, while users still see Google as a free service. Lately the battlefield has shifted to search on mobile phones - could this change or even end Google’s domination? What are the implications of the low resistance of the Google monopoly against PRISM? Has the time come for alternative, independent search engines?
    With Siva Vaidhyanathan (US), Astrid Mager (AT), Dirk Lewandowski (GE)

    2. Search across the border
    It is little known in the west that elsewhere in the world Google is not a major player. Can we speak of cultural differences in the architecture of search technology? And in the way users search in for example the rural parts of India? In China there is a separate search engine domain, leading to a different political economy of online search - geopolitical, linguistically and culturally. How can we oppose this to the libertarian, North-American values of Google?
    With Payal Arora (NL), Min Jiang (US)

    3. Reflections on search
    Is it possible to analyze the search engine as a cultural artifact? Does it have a philosophical agenda and how can we read it? Search is often overlooked as an important part in the fast changing field of knowledge production. It is only dealt with in a mathematical and statistical fashion or with a focus on its economic significance as a tool of corporate power. But search did not commence in the late 90s - it has been around for centuries. It’s important to stress the media-archeological approach, since the history of search, digital or analogue, offers many insights into its cultural meaning.
    With Antoinette Rouvroy (BE), Anton Tantner (AT), Kylie Jarrett (IRE)

    November 8

    4. Search in context
    There is a long-term cultural shift in trust happening, away from the library, the book store, even the school towards Google’s algorithms. What does that mean? How are search engines used in today’s classrooms and do teachers have enough critical understanding of what it means to hand over authority? We think we find more and in a faster way, while we might actually find less or useless information. The way we search is related to the way we see the world - how do we learn to operate in this context?
    With Simon Knight (UK), Thomas Petzold (GE), Sanne Koevoets (NL)

    5. The filter bubble show
    Since Eli Pariser’s influential book The Filter Bubble appeared in 2011, a range of researchers have empirically tried to validate or debunk the proposition of the filter bubble. Is it truly so that the person sitting next to you gets a different search result while using in the same keywords? What do you actually see when you type ‘9/11’ in the Google autocomplete search bar in Baghdad and in New York? What are the long-term effects of personalization and localization and their tendency to a ’relative truth’? We need to find a way to take our Twitter, Facebook and search engine profiles to burst the bubble and understand society.
    With Martin Feuz (UK), Noortje Marres (NL), Carolin Gerlitz (NL), René König (GE) and others

    The Society of the Query project started in 2009 with a conference and research blog, in parallel to the Deep Search series of events, organized by the World-Information Institute in Vienna. While these efforts have contributed to a better understanding of the impact of search engines, many open questions remain. Moreover, dynamics in the field have led to new questions: How does the rise of the social web affect search engines and the practices around them? Which consequences do innovations like personalization, localization or autocomplete have? How can we re-think the established search routines?

    If you have research, art projects or alternative search engines which might be of interest to Society of the Query, don’t hesitate to let us know about it (contact: miriam@networkcultures.org).
    Keep an eye on the website for more information:
    http://networkcultures.org/query
    You can also subscribe to the [re-search] mailing list:
    http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/re-search_listcultures.org

    See you in November!