
Get in the KNOW
on LA Startups & Tech
XCivil Liberties Are At Risk in Rush to Track Coronavirus, Data Analysis Firm Warns
Tami Abdollah was dot.LA's senior technology reporter. She was previously a national security and cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She's been a reporter for the AP in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and for L.A.'s NPR affiliate KPCC. Abdollah spent nearly a year in Iraq as a U.S. government contractor. A native Angeleno, she's traveled the world on $5 a day, taught trad climbing safety classes and is an avid mountaineer. Follow her on Twitter.

As this novel coronavirus has rapidly spread through dozens of states this past week, the daily lives of Americans have been upturned to such an extent that many people have grasped for a comparable time in history to look back to in terms of its likely impacts on society as a whole.
For many Americans, that's Sept. 11, 2001.
The comparison comes with a worrisome dark side, which privacy advocates have started to sound the alarm on.
That's because as Americans grieved the terrorist attacks on their homeland nearly 19 years ago, they also called for swift action. Lawmakers moved quickly to craft the USA Patriot Act and the president signed it into law just over a month after the attack. The civil liberties and privacy repercussions of the act, and what it later wrought, are still felt today.
With governments and the private sector both rushing to stop the spread of COVID-19, governments such as South Korea's have used massive tracking initiatives — including a mandated GPS-tracking app, designed to keep its people safe from those who break quarantine and punish those who do. Privacy advocates warn that much like worries about the spread of this new coronavirus, once citizens begin worrying about the loss of privacy, it's probably already too late.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy group, is asking the public to keep in mind protections for their own civil liberties when asking the government for better tracking of the virus's spread.
"As our society struggles with how best to minimize the spread of this disease, we must carefully consider the way that 'big data' containment tools impact our digital liberties," their staffers wrote on March 10. "In the digital world as in the physical world, public policy must reflect a balance between collective good and civil liberties (but) extraordinary measures used to manage a specific crisis must not become permanent fixtures."
A seemingly strange bedfellow on this issue is Palantir Technologies, a private software company that does data integration and analysis, with co-founders that include Peter Thiel, its chairman, and Alex Karp, its CEO. The company's early ties to the intelligence community provides a cloak-and-dagger mystique as well as fuels concerns surrounding the use of its software by the U.S. government. In-Q-Tel, the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm, helped Palantir get its start roughly 15 years ago through an early $2 million total investment.
On Tuesday, the company released a recommended set of principles for organizations battling COVID-19 to follow in order to "use data effectively yet responsibly."
"We are already starting to see in this country and other countries a growing chorus for action, and in exigent circumstances the impulse is to move quickly and to set aside any normative concerns that may otherwise create reasonable impediment," said Courtney Bowman, who heads up Palantir's global privacy and civil liberties engineering team. He spoke by phone with dot.LA on Monday night.
Bowman said that in the wake of 9/11 there was a real need for national security and intelligence agencies to parse and organize vast silos of data, which is ultimately what Palantir decided to tackle. With that early history in mind amid the outbreak of COVID-19, Bowman decided to outline the "best practices for using data during a crisis" and plans to publish it online on Tuesday.
It's "a way to make the problem more tractable to agencies," Bowman said. "Particularly those reeling from shock."
The software firm said it's also having conversations with a number of local and state jurisdictions to provide them with services, which may be one reason it's willing to discuss its privacy principles but it could also explain the broad range of entities that use its software.
Today the private company works with multiple departments of the U.S. government, including the justice, defense and homeland security departments, where it was most recently criticized for allegedly allowing its software to be used to help with the Trump administration's deportation efforts. (Palantir has strongly denied that.) But also, the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Centers for Disease Control, where helps with human disease outbreak response, and the National Institutes of Health. It also works with multiple companies, nonprofits and NGOs, including Merck, Sanofi, the United Nations, World Food Program, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Mercy Corps.
Bowman shared his recommendations with dot.LA (below). First, a major caveat from the data integration and analysis firm: "Data is not a panacea," Bowman said. It's merely a tool.
- Focus on decisions that need to be made, not the insights that you hope will be discovered: Focus only on data that is necessary to help make those decisions so you aren't overwhelmed.
- Start with the data you have: Do not amass all the data. Instead, identify gaps in the data you have, who has what you need and why it is or isn't helpful. Only once you've identified critical gaps should you reach out for more data.
- Beware the shiny new object: Don't rush to adopt the newest technique, whether that's AI or facial recognition, without knowing how accurate, reliable or biased it is. Instead, invest in strong data-management, which may be more valuable for critical analysis.
- Look beyond quick wins: Try to build a unified set of data that lets you quickly adapt to changing and possibly related concerns. For example, a look at national supply-chain investments could be potentially repurposed for anticipated hospital shortages.
- Set rules on data use from the start: Make sure you establish and enforce rules on how the data should be used and who can access what in order to prevent misuse. "Even the most well-meaning or problem solvers sometimes are blinded to the risks of the solutions they create," Bowman writes.
- Establish safeguards: Put protections in place so that you can tell who input the data and how it is used. Make sure that individuals are held accountable for decisions they make that may impact peoples' health, safety, privacy and civil liberties, especially during a pandemic when stakes are high and time pressure is significant
- Secure data before sharing it: Cyber criminals are also cooped up at home and online during a pandemic and aren't taking a break. Scammers have already tried targeting those worried about the coronavirus with malware and phishing scams. Remember that once data is distributed, it's hard to pull back. Look at the risks and benefits and figure out how to enforce security, privacy and minimize what's shared. "Technology should enable data sharing only to the extent needed and, critically, only for the time period needed," Bowman adds.
- Build a data governance body: Bring a dedicated body of experts together to give advice on managing data access and recommend measures for mitigating potential abuse.
- Serve the patient and respect human dignity: "Societies must emerge from a health crisis with their values intact," Bowman writes. While authoritarian responses to pandemics may be more effective in the short term, it comes at the expense of individual privacy and liberty. This doesn't have to happen.
"Exceptional actions carried out under exigent circumstances often define new norms, for good or ill," Bowman writes. "This is an emergency – perhaps the defining one of our age. In acting decisively to defeat this pandemic, we must do so in a way that we will recognize ourselves when it's done."
__
Do you have a story that needs to be told? My DMs are open on Twitter @latams. You can also email me at tami(at)dot.la, or ask for my Signal.
- Event: How to Practice Cybersecurity at Home - dot.LA ›
- 'Citizen SafePass' Partners with LA on COVID Contact Tracing - dot.LA ›
- 'Citizen SafePass' Partners with LA on COVID Contact Tracing - dot.LA ›
Tami Abdollah was dot.LA's senior technology reporter. She was previously a national security and cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She's been a reporter for the AP in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and for L.A.'s NPR affiliate KPCC. Abdollah spent nearly a year in Iraq as a U.S. government contractor. A native Angeleno, she's traveled the world on $5 a day, taught trad climbing safety classes and is an avid mountaineer. Follow her on Twitter.
Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.
Inspectiv Raises $8.6M To Build a Better Cybersecurity Platform
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
What do education startups, maternal care platforms and Minecraft servers have in common? They’re all susceptible to hacking.
Also, businesses in each industry use software created by Manhattan Beach-based Inspectiv, which announced Thursday that it’s raised an $8.6 million Series A round to continue developing its artificial intelligence that detects and wipes out security threats.
The new funds bring the total Inspectiv has raised to $16.6 million since its 2018 launch. Founder and chairman Joseph Melika told dot.LA the company’s recent growth has largely been steered by the pandemic as companies put a higher value on data security.
The heightened need for better security, according to Melika, is due to recent changes in how people work. “Just people, frankly, getting distracted,” he said, has made some businesses more vulnerable to hackers.
“They’re working remotely, their laptops are from home [with] no firewall,” he said, adding that has left a lot of systems potentially exposed to hacks.
Inspectiv’s risk management platform runs autonomously 24/7 and is constantly scanning for threats, Melika said. The software isn’t just run on A.I., it's also combined with a network of security researchers. Melika said part of Inspectiv’s intelligence comes from the input of thousands of researchers.
Once it finds a threat, the software alerts Inspectiv, whose vulnerability spot-checkers verify it and identify it to the client. Then, Inspectiv scans its other clients for the same threat, or similar invasions that could be lurking. There’s also the potential for the software to review backup files, in case a company wants to make sure no older resolved threats spring back to life.
Melika pointed out several current Inspectiv clients using its software are local, including GoGuardian, maternal care company Mahmee and Minehut, a platform for people to host custom “Minecraft” servers.
The funding round was led by StepStone Group, among a suite of existing Inspectiv investors including Westwood-based Fika Ventures, San Francisco’s Freestyle Capital and Santa Monica-based Mucker Capital.
CEO Ryan Disraeli (left) and Founder and Chairman Joseph Melika (right)
Courtesy of Inspectiv
Inspectiv also announced a leadership transition this week alongside several new hires – former CEO and co-founder of fraud prevention service Telesign Ryan Disraeli will take the reins as CEO of Inspectiv, while Melika will remain on board as the company’s board chairman.
“Inspectiv is really helping secure the internet, and that was something that personally I could get passionate about,” Disraeli said. “To be able to work with a team of people that we brought in that also has that security background, but also experience scaling up organizations was a pretty exciting opportunity.”
The company also hired Karen Nguyen as chief revenue officer, Ray Espinoza as chief information security officer and Ross Hendrickson to be vice president of engineering. Disraeli said the Inspectiv team is currently 22 people but the company is “adding aggressively to that number” by expanding its product development team.
Disraeli wouldn’t disclose revenues but told dot.LA he’s confident he can grow Inspectiv quickly.
“There's a lot of companies raising money that don't have customers and don't have real growth,” Disraeli said. “This is a company that has real customers that are growing and growing with us.”
- Santa Barbara Cybersecurity Startups Raise Millions - dot.LA ›
- NVISIONx Cybersecurity Startup Raised $4.6M in Seed Funding ... ›
- Orca Security Lands $230M as it Looks to Grow in Los Angeles - dot ... ›
- Obsidian Cybersecurity Startup Raises $90 Million - dot.LA ›
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Activision Buys Game Studio Proletariat To Expand ‘World of Warcraft’ Staff
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Activision Blizzard intends to acquire Proletariat, a Boston-based game studio that developed the wizard-themed battle royale game “Spellbreak.”
VentureBeat first reported that the Santa Monica-based publisher was exploring a purchase, noting its ongoing mission to expand the staff working on Blizzard’s hit massively multiplayer online game “World of Warcraft,” which launched in 2004.
Proletariat’s team of roughly 100 people will be merged into Activision’s “World of Warcraft” team to work on its upcoming expansion game. Though there’s no release date as yet for the title, “World of Warcraft: Dragonflight” is expected to debut before the end of this year.
Activision did not immediately return a request for comment. Financial terms of the deal were not available.
This Proletariat deal is Activision's latest push to consolidate its family tree by folding its subsidiary companies in under the Blizzard banner. More than 15 years after it bought out New York-based game developer Vicarious Visions, Activision merged the business into its own last year, ensuring that the studio wouldn’t work on anything but Blizzard titles.
The deal could also have implications for workers at Activision who have looked to unionize. One subsidiary of Activision, Wisconsin-based Raven Software, cast a majority vote to establish its Game Workers Alliance—backed by the nationwide Communications Workers of America union—in May.
Until recently, Activision has remained largely anti-union in the face of its employees organizing—but it could soon not have much of a say in the matter once it finalizes its $69 billion sale to Microsoft, which said publicly it would maintain a “neutral approach” and wouldn’t stand in the way if more employees at Activision expressed interest in unionizing after the deal closes.
Each individual studio under the Activision umbrella would need to have a majority vote in favor of unionizing to join the GWA. Now, Proletariat’s workforce—which, somewhat ironically given its name, isn’t unionized—is another that could make such a decision leading up to the Microsoft deal’s expected closing in 2023.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Snap Officially Launching ‘Snapchat Plus’ Subscription Tier
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Snap is officially launching Snapchat Plus, a paid subscription plan on Santa Monica-based social media company’s flagship app.
Snap is now the latest media company to tack a “plus” to the end of its name—announcing Wednesday that the new service will provide users with “exclusive, experimental and pre-release features” for the price of $3.99 a month. The first features available to paying subscribers include the ability to customize the style of app’s icon, pin a “BFF” to the top of their chat history and see which users have rewatched a story, according to The Verge.
The new product arrives after Snap confirmed reports earlier this month that it was testing Snapchat Plus—though the version that it has rolled out does not incorporate the rumored feature that would allow subscribers to view a friend’s whereabouts over the previous 24 hours.
Snapchat Plus will initially be available to users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. While certain features will remain exclusive to Plus users, others will eventually be released across Snapchat’s entire user base, Snap senior vice president of product Jacob Andreou told The Verge. (Disclosure: Snap is an investor in dot.LA.)
The subscription tier introduces a new potential revenue stream for Snap, which experienced a “challenging” first quarter marked by disruptions to its core digital advertising market. However, Andreou told The Verge that the product is not expected to be a “material new revenue source” for the company. He also disputed that Snap was responding to its recent economic headwinds, noting that Snap had been exploring a paid offering since 2016.
Despite charging users, Snapchat Plus does not include the option to turn off ads. “Ads are going to be at the core of our business model for the long term,” Andreou said.
Snap is not the first popular social media platform to venture into subscriptions: Both Twitter and Tumblr rolled out paid tiers last year, albeit with mixedresults.Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.