Satellite navigation device

• The Federal Trade Commission has finalized an order prohibiting data broker X-Mode and its successor Outlogic from sharing or selling any sensitive location data to settle allegations that the company sold precise location data that could be used to track people’s visits to sensitive locations such as medical and reproductive health clinics and places of worship.
• In a complaint first announced in January 2024, the FTC charged that X-Mode/Outlogic failed until May 2023 to remove sensitive locations from the raw location data it sold and did not implement reasonable or appropriate safeguards against downstream use of the precise location data it sold, putting consumers’ sensitive personal information at risk.
• In addition to the ban on selling or sharing sensitive location data, the order also imposes several other requirements on X-Mode/Outlogic including mandating that it create a program to ensure it develops and maintains a comprehensive list of sensitive locations, and ensure it is not sharing, selling or transferring location data about such locations.
• Follow the FTC on social media, read consumer alerts and the business blog, and sign up to get the latest FTC news and alerts.

• In an article published today in Nature, my colleagues and I show that illicit, often out-of-control road building is imperilling forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
• Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive.
• Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples.
• All nations have some unmapped or unofficial roads, but the situation is especially bad in biodiversity-rich developing nations, where roads are proliferating at the fastest pace in human history.

Mapping ghost roads

• This workforce then spent some 7,000 hours hand-mapping roads, using fine-scale satellite images from Google Earth.
• For starters, unmapped ghost roads seemed to be nearly everywhere.
• In fact, when comparing our findings to two leading road databases, OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Inventory Project, we found ghost roads in these regions to be 3 to 6.6 times longer than all mapped roads put together.

• When ghost roads appear, local deforestation soars – usually immediately after the roads are built.
• We found the density of roads was by far the most important predictor of forest loss, outstripping 38 other variables.

Roads and protected areas

• In protected areas, we found only one-third as many roads compared with nearby unprotected lands.
• The bad news is that when people do build roads inside protected areas, it leads to about the same level of forest destruction compared to roads outside them.
• Keeping existing protected areas intact is especially urgent, given more than 3,000 protected areas have already been downsized or degraded globally for new roads, mines and local land-use pressures.

Hidden roads and the human footprint

• To gauge how much impact we’re having, researchers use the human footprint index, which brings together data on human activities such as roads and other infrastructure, land-uses, illumination at night from electrified settlements and so on.
• When ghost roads are included in mapping the human impact on eastern Borneo, areas with “very high” human disturbance double in size, while the areas of “low” disturbance are halved.

Artificial intelligence

• Worse, these roads can be actively encouraged by aggressive infrastructure-expansion schemes — most notably China’s Belt and Road Initiative, now active in more than 150 nations.
• You might think AI could do this better, but that’s not yet true – human eyes can still outperform image-recognition AI software for mapping roads.
• Once we have this information, we can make it public that so authorities, NGOs and researchers involved in forest protection can see what’s happening.

Distinguished Professor Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic bodies. He is a former Australian Laureate and director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University.

• Immix offers an intuitive and easy-to-use software integration platform for managing and responding to security events.
• Through its integration with LVT, Immix users can now seamlessly access their LVT cameras alongside other security products for full network control, including LVT alert delivery and management, light toggling, and the ability to play prerecorded sounds.
• In addition to its Immix integration, LVT added two new camera options:
  Long range fixed thermal cameras, which track movement at least 1,200 feet away in complete darkness.
• “Our new Immix integration allows organizations to bring LVT mobile surveillance units into their existing security response ecosystems while maintaining the intelligence, reliability, automated deterrence, security, and command and control LVT is known for.”
  Visit LVT at ISC West Booth #11099 and L21, and learn more about its intelligent safety and security solutions at www.lvt.com.

• LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP), the leading data collaboration platform, today announced it has received the 2024 Google Cloud Partner of the Year Award for “Industry Solution - Technology: Retail.” LiveRamp was recognized for delivering solutions that help retailers and brands unlock the value of marketing data and analytics in Google Cloud.
• The accolade follows LiveRamp’s recognition as Google Cloud’s “Global Industry Technology Partner of the Year” in 2023.
• “Google Cloud's Partner Awards celebrate the transformative impact and value that partners have delivered for customers," said Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem and Channels at Google Cloud.
• In all, LiveRamp’s flexible solutions support BigQuery, CortexAI, Google Analytics Hub, Google Ads, Google Ads Data Hub, Google PAIR, and Looker with additional connectivity to LiveRamp’s ecosystem of 900 global partners.