RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Monday 4 September 2023 Volume 33 : Issue 82

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/33.82>
The current issue can also be found at
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Contents: [Happy Labor Day. This is not work. I do this pro bono. PGN]
The Titan's Submersible Disaster Was Years in the Making,
New Details Reveal (Susan Casey in Vanity Fair)
Hundreds of Flights Into Britain Canceled After ���Technical Issue���
With UK Air Traffic Control (NYTimes)
5,000 pilots suspected of hiding major health issues. Most are still flying.
(WashPost)
AI Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat (The New York Times)
National Academies releases Testing, Evaluating and Assessing AI
systems for the US Air Force (via Simson Garfinkel)
Mushroom pickers urged to avoid foraging books on Amazon
that appear to be written by AI (The Guardian)
A battery catches fire on an Air France flight, the staff
reacts in a few minutes (Euro)
Electric cars catch fire in Florida after flooding (ABC)
Security, Social or routing? (David Lesher)
The decline of social media (Lauren Weinstein)
Prescription drug ads on TV (Lauren Weinstein)
NYTimes Spoofed to Hide Russian Disinformation Campaign (Dark Reading)
Kia and Hyundai Helped Enable a Crime Wave. They Should Pay for It
(The New York Times)
Food delivery robots under attack from vandals, thieves (YouTube)
Tesla owners are angry about buying their vehicles
right before the latest big price cuts and are letting Elon
Musk know: I feel completely duped. (Finance)
Eversource Notice of Data Security Incident (via Monty Solomon)
Mass. woman files class action lawsuit against StarnMarket for
allegedly sending her marketing texts after she opted out
(The Boston Globe)
Saudi man sentenced to death for tweets in harshest verdict yet for online
critics (NPR)
The endless battle to banish the world's most notorious stalker website'
(WashPost)
Dragon Pizza owner on Portnoy feud: 'I'm receiving death threats'
(The Boston Globe)
FCC says *too bad* to ISPs complaining that listing every fee is too hard
(Ars Technica)
Re: Lahaina: single points of failure: cell phones! (PGN)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2023 17:02:28 -0500
From: Robert Dorsett
Subject: The Titan's Submersible Disaster Was Years in the Making,
New Details Reveal (Susan Casey in Vanity Fair)

[It just gets worse and worse...]

To many in the tight-knit deep-sea exploration community, OceanGate's
submersible dives were reckless and often dangerous, writes best-selling
author Susan Casey. *Vanity Fair*, 17 Aug 2023

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/titan-submersible-implosion-warnings

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2023 15:08:11 -0400
From: "Jan Wolitzky" <jan.wolitzky@gmail.com>
Subject: Hundreds of Flights Into Britain Canceled After ���Technical Issue���

Airlines were forced to cancel hundreds of flights and delay hundreds more
on Monday after Britain���s air traffic control service experienced a
*technical issue* that caused widespread disruption on one of the
country���s busiest travel days of the year.

More than 200 flights departing from Britain were canceled, according to
Cirium, the aviation analytics company, along with 271 that were scheduled
to arrive in the country on Monday. Many other flights would be delayed by
more than eight hours, ���which will inevitably result in a cancellation,���
Cirium added.

NATS, Britain���s National Air Traffic Service, said a technical problem had
affected its ability to automatically process flight plans, which meant
that the information had to be entered manually, slowing down the process.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/world/europe/uk-airport-flight-delays.html

[Monty Solomon spotted
UK flights delayed after air-traffic control suffers technical
issue (The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/28/23848721/uk-air-traffic-control-issues-flight-delays
PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2023 09:44:19 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: 5,000 pilots suspected of hiding major health issues. Most are
still flying. (WashPost)

Federal authorities have been investigating nearly 5,000 pilots suspected of
falsifying their medical records to conceal that they were receiving
benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions that could
make them unfit to fly, documents and interviews show.

The pilots under scrutiny are military veterans who told the Federal
Aviation Administration that they are healthy enough to fly, yet failed to
report ���� as required by law ���� that they were also collecting veterans
benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit.

Veterans Affairs investigators discovered the inconsistencies more than two
years ago by cross-checking federal databases, but the FAA has kept many
details of the case a secret from the public. [...]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilots-health-conditions-va-benefits/

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2023 12:10:59 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: AI Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat (The New York Times)

An Air Force program shows how the Pentagon is starting to embrace the
potential of a rapidly emerging technology, with far-reaching implications
for war-fighting tactics, military culture and the defense industry.

It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to
the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying
missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range.

But what really distinguishes the Air Force���s pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie
experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting
it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the
capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are
tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal
weapon. [...]

The Pentagon has a miserable record on building advanced software and trying
to start its own artificial intelligence program. Over the years, it has
cycled through various acronym-laden program offices that are created and
then shut down with little to show.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2023 12:24:47 +0000
From: Simson Garfinkel <simsong@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: National Academies releases Testing, Evaluating and Assessing AI
systems for the US Air Force

This is a major accomplishment and a must-read for anyone concerned about
the use of AI by the US military.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/testing-evaluating-and-assessing-=
artificial-intelligence-enabled-systems-under-operational-conditions-for-the=
-department-of-the-air-force

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2023 13:03:15 -0400
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Mar=EDa?= Mateos <chema@rinzewind.org>
Subject: Mushroom pickers urged to avoid foraging books on Amazon
that appear to be written by AI (Fungi, The Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avo
id-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

> Amateur mushroom pickers have been urged to avoid foraging books sold on
> Amazon that appear to have been written by artificial intelligence
> chatbots. Amazon has become a marketplace for AI-produced tomes that are
> being passed off as having been written by humans, with travel books among
> the popular categories for fake work. Now a number of books have appeared
> on the online retailer���s site offering guides to wild mushroom foraging
> that also seem to be written by chatbots. [...]

[If you are for aging faster, a toxic mushroom may suffice. And you will
no longer be a fun-guy. Sorry, it's not funny. The risks of erroneous
ChatBots are enormous, and it may be difficult to sue anyone for false
representaions. PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2023 16:50:50 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: A battery catches fire on an Air France flight, the staff
reacts in a few minutes (Euro)

It was minus one! On Monday August 21, during Air France flight AF914 to
Accra, the capital of Ghana, a fire on board could have cost the lives of
all the passengers. While the bulk of the travelers doze at an altitude of
nearly 10,000 meters, a hostess detects the battery of a man���s telephone
about to ignite. You have to react without wasting a second. ���It���s smoking,
it���s going to explode!��� sees Marie-C��cile Zinsou, president of the Zinsou
Foundation for Contemporary Art in Ouidah, Benin, who was on board the
plane. With the Figaro, she says: ���I looked through the window and I saw
that we were too high, at 32,000 feet, to escape.