Huang Biren explores the topic in new drama Your World In Mine
Richie Koh pivots from lighthearted roles to playing a disabled young person, while Hong Ling and Zong Zijie, who play his siblings, feel they’ve become “better” people after working on the show. (Photo: Mediacorp)
Huang Biren returns for a heartstrings-tugging drama exploring what families of disabled children go through. In Your World In Mine, she and Yao Wen Long play the parents of three grown-up children, played by Hong Ling, Zong Zijie and Richie Koh. Koh’s character is a 21-year-old with the intellectual capacity of a seven-year-old. The cast also includes Desmond Ng, Xiang Yun, Priscelia Chan, Zhu Hou Ren and Guo Liang. “The drama explores what parents go through – the challenges of raising their disabled child, and, on top of that, the societal pressures they face,” said Huang. “These parents especially need the concern and support of the people around them – and also society’s understanding and acceptance.”
In the drama, her character does her best for her family with the loving support of her husband, but finds herself nearly succumbing to the stresses of everyday life. A scene from Your World In Mine. (Photo: Mediacorp)
Hong and Zong, who play siblings who must look out for their little brother, said the storyline was so moving that they felt personally changed after working on the show. “I feel I’ve become a better person,” said Zong, whose character is frequently impatient with his brother. “The drama teaches us how to be understanding and empathetic. You might feel dissatisfied with your life now, but you realise you should never take what you have for granted.”
Hong said she hoped audiences would be motivated to better appreciate the people around them, like their parents and siblings. For Koh, portraying the disabled central character was “an opportunity to do something meaningful” that he’d been waiting for for years. To prepare for the role, the production team arranged for him to meet with kids with Down syndrome. “They shared with me about their lives,” Koh told CNA Lifestyle. “They can work; they cook dinner for their families; and they have very strict routines, otherwise they feel uncomfortable.”
Additionally, “I watched documentaries on YouTube and Netflix, to study speech tempo, tone, gestures and body movements.”
A scene from Your World In Mine. (Photo: Mediacorp)
While shooting, he confessed, he did feel some concern about how audiences would receive his performance. “I started to feel pressure from the role – what if I did too much or too little?” But eventually, “I realised there’s no point thinking about it because if I did, I wouldn’t be fully immersed in the role.” And, “No matter what you do, there’ll always be positive and negative feedback. So, don’t think – just do first!”
One of the challenges he faced was that “it’s quite lonely”, he said. The character is always in his own world – hence the show’s title – and, as an actor, he didn’t get to interact much with fellow actors. “Sometimes, I felt quite lonely, even at home or on set,” he said, comparing the feeling to pandemic isolation. “There was mental tiredness.”
But the important part, he said, isn’t about his acting, but spreading awareness through the show. As Huang said, “We all put in a lot of effort – not to act, but to enter the character's inner world. We hope the audience will do that, too, and come to better understand disabled kids and their parents.”
Catch Your World In Mine from Jul 18, available on demand for free on meWATCH and at 9pm on Channel 8. Source: CNA/my

How do parents of disabled kids feel? Huang Biren explores the topic in new drama Your World In Mine

News provided by
Share this article
Share this article
VANCOUVER, BC, May 9, 2022 /CNW/ - Trevali Mining Corporation ("Trevali" or the "Company") (TSX: TV ) (BVL: TV) (OTCQX: TREVF) (Frankfurt: 4TI) provides an update on search efforts at the Perkoa Mine in Burkina Faso following an April 16 flooding event. To date, approximately 32 million litres of water have been removed from the Mine and access has been restored to Level 550. There has been no communication with the eight missing workers since April 16 and none have been located yet. The Company continues to strengthen search capabilities with additional equipment and resources, and search crews will continue to work at maximum capacity, 24-hours-per-day to locate the missing individuals. Throughout the search process, senior representatives of Trevali and Byrnecut, the mining contractor at Perkoa, have been in daily communication with the families of the missing workers and continue to offer support. "We are working in solidarity with all levels of government and as fast as we possibly can using all available resources in the country, as well as importing additional machinery and equipment to assist with locating our missing colleagues," said Ricus Grimbeek, President and CEO. "Our thoughts are with our colleagues' families, and we continue to work closely with the families and the government to ensure their needs are met during this difficult time." Added Mr. Grimbeek, "Trevali is appreciative of the support of the government and various agencies in Burkina Faso. We welcome the decision by the government to move its crisis management committee nearer to the mine site to better include family members of the missing workers and facilitate closer collaboration as we rapidly work to locate the missing individuals. We will remain closely engaged with government authorities to help the community respond to the impacts of the recent flooding. " 
Dewatering and Mine Access Rehabilitation Progress Update
The search effort requires the careful rebuilding of the road on more than 5,000 metres of underground decline ramp in order to facilitate the search efforts and safely install and operate pumping and piping infrastructure to remove floodwater. As of May 8:
Approximately 25,000 tonnes of waste rock has been used in rehabilitation of the mine access ramp
5,000 metres of new poly pipe has been welded and installed in addition to the existing pipes
More than 24 electric and diesel pumps have been installed and put into operation
Approximately 32 million litres of water have been removed from the mine
The full extent of required mine rehabilitation efforts will become known as dewatering progresses to the bottom of the mine at Level 710. The Company is in regular communications with Burkinabe authorities and is grateful for the search and rescue assistance received from them as well as the Burkina Faso mining community. The Burkina Faso National Fire Brigade has been on site at the Mine since shortly after the flooding event, working alongside Trevali's and West African Resources's search and rescue teams. Personnel from the Burkinabe Ministry of Mines and Quarries, the Governor of Central-West Region, the High Commissioner of Réo, the President of the Chamber of Mines, the Minister of Civil Service, Labour and Social Protection; the Minister of National Education, Literacy and Promotion of National Languages; Military Civil Construction, and others have all lent their support and coordination to the urgent search and rescue activities and have made numerous visits to the mine site. Trevali welcomes all support from the authorities in assisting with the search and rescue efforts. In addition, family members of the missing workers have received regular briefings on the search status and have been to the site and reviewed progress underground. The Company is committed to full transparency in its actions and communication of updates to the families and the authorities. The Company will provide further details on progress of search activities and site investigation as more information becomes available. About Trevali Mining Corporation
Trevali is a global base-metals mining Company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. The bulk of Trevali's revenue is generated from zinc and lead concentrate production at its three operational assets: the 90%-owned Perkoa Mine in Burkina Faso, the 90%-owned Rosh Pinah Mine in Namibia, and the wholly owned Caribou Mine in northern New Brunswick, Canada. In addition, Trevali owns the Halfmile and Stratmat Properties and the Restigouche Deposit in New Brunswick, Canada. Trevali also owns an effective 44% interest in the Gergarub Project in Namibia. The Company's growth strategy is focused on the exploration, development, operation, and optimization of properties within its portfolio, as well as other mineral assets it may acquire that fit its strategic criteria. Trevali's vision is to be a responsible, top-tier operator of long-life, low-cost mines in stable pro-mining jurisdictions. Trevali is committed to socially responsible mining, working safely, ethically, and with integrity. Integrating responsible practices into its management systems, standards, and decision-making processes is essential to ensuring everyone and every community's long-term sustainability. The shares of Trevali are listed on the TSX (symbol TV), the OTCQX (symbol TREVF), the Lima Stock Exchange (symbol TV), and the Frankfurt Exchange (symbol 4TI). For further details on Trevali, readers are referred to the Company's website ( www.trevali.com ) and to Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information and Statements
This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, expectations and opinions of management of the Company as of the date the statement are published, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "outlook", "guidance", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative of these terms or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's expectations or beliefs regarding future events including, but not limited to, statements with respect to the suspension of mining and milling operations at Perkoa, the search efforts at Perkoa, including the Company's plans with respect thereto, the efficacy of the Company's pumping, decline ramp rehabilitation and de-watering activities and  its efforts to restore electrical power and communications at the lower levels of Perkoa, the Company's ability to effectively dewater the mine and restore access to the lower levels of Perkoa, the results of any investigation of the flooding incident, the Company's assessment of the effect of the flooding on the safety and structural integrity of Perkoa's underground areas, the effect of the flooding on the cost of production at Perkoa, the length of time before underground mining operations can be recommenced safely at Perkoa and the effect of the suspension on the Company's results of operations and metal production. As well, forward looking statements relate to the Company's growth strategies, the continued success of mineral exploration, the content, cost, timing and results of future exploration programs and life of mine expectancies, Trevali's ability to fund future exploration activities, estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources, the realization of mineral reserve estimates, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production and capital expenditures, success of mining operations, environmental risks, unanticipated reclamation expenses and title disputes or claims. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, risks related to to the Company's search efforts and plans to remedy the impact of the flooding at the Perkoa Mine, including that such efforts and plans will not be effective or achieve their desired outcomes; actual results of current exploration activities, including the inherent uncertainty of mineral exploration and estimations of exploration targets; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of zinc, lead, silver and other minerals and the anticipated sensitivity of our financial performance to such prices; possible variations in ore reserves, grade or recoveries; dependence on key personnel; potential conflicts of interest involving our directors and officers; labour pool constraints; labour disputes; availability of infrastructure required for the development of mining projects; delays or inability to obtain governmental and regulatory approvals for mining operations or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities; counterparty risks; increased operating and capital costs; foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; operating in foreign jurisdictions with risk of changes to governmental regulation, including any new or ongoing decrees and regulations issued by any governmental authority in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; compliance with governmental regulations; compliance with environmental laws and regulations; land reclamation and mine closure obligations; challenges to title or ownership interest of our mineral properties; maintaining ongoing social license to operate; impact of climatic conditions on the Company's mining operations; corruption and bribery; limitations inherent in our insurance coverage; compliance with debt covenants; competition in the mining industry; our ability to integrate new acquisitions into our operations; cybersecurity threats; litigation; and other risks of the mining industry including, without limitation, other risks and uncertainties that are more fully described in the Company's annual information form, interim and annual audited consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis of those statements, all of which are filed and available for review under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Trevali provides no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events may differ from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. SOURCE Trevali Mining Corporation
For further information: Investor Relations Contact: Jason Mercier - Director, Investor Relations, Email: [email protected] , Phone: +1 (778) 655-6084
×

07:00 EDT
Trevali Provides an Update on Search Efforts at Perkoa Mine

How Biden Can Bring Hope to Prisons Like Mine
May 5, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
Credit...Matt Chase
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Give this article
Mr. Lennon, a contributing editor for Esquire, has been incarcerated since 2002. FALLSBURG, N.Y. — In 2017, I was sitting in on a Columbia University course at Sing Sing. I heard that Elias Alcantara, a former White House aide in the Obama administration, was supposed to talk to the class, and I had a question. Mr. Alcantara, who was then a senior fellow at the Center for Justice at Columbia, was 31. He told us his story: how he was born and raised in the Bronx, navigated the neighborhood, made it to college, then went to the White House. I imagined it was inspiring for some of my peers who looked like him, a first-generation American with parents from the Dominican Republic, to picture Mr. Alcantara, as I was, working alongside President Barack Obama. He fielded a few light questions. Then I asked mine: Why in eight years couldn’t President Obama get meaningful criminal justice reform passed? “President Obama was proud of the progress the administration made on criminal justice reform,” Mr. Alcantara told me. “That said, one of his biggest regrets may have been not seeing a criminal justice reform bill passed in Congress during his time in office.”
In 2018, President Donald Trump signed the First Step Act , which amended federal sentencing guidelines and provided federal prisoners with avenues to petition the court and ask for reduced sentences. In late 2020, before he left office, Mr. Trump signed an omnibus Covid relief bill . In it was a provision that lifted the 26-year-old ban on federal college aid, called Pell Grants , for incarcerated students at both federal and state facilities . After decades of being blocked, incarcerated people will be able to obtain federal funds to go to college. The ban on federal college aid to prisoners was put in place in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also called the Clinton Crime Bill, which was co-authored by Joe Biden when he was a senator. President Biden has since said his support for the bill was a mistake. He has a chance to make it right. If Jared Kushner, the privileged and powerful man married to Ivanka Trump, hadn’t had the humiliating experience of visiting his father in prison and hearing the man he idolized describe the awfulness of it all, I doubt we would have the First Step Act. What affected Mr. Kushner personally compelled him to persuade Mr. Trump that prison reform would benefit the president politically. By the end of his four-year term, Mr. Trump had signed more criminal justice reform legislation than any other president in the past generation (though his signatures didn’t tell the full story of his administration’s policies, which walked back some previous reforms). It is time for President Biden to back a bill that helps both incarcerated people and corrections workers — because our fates are inextricably linked. I’m no fan of Mr. Trump. But I won’t diminish the significance of his signature. After 2023, when Pell Grant access goes into effect, prison education programs will become available to students across the country, maybe even surpassing the number that operated in the early 1990s, when 770 college programs were in 1,300 facilities nationwide. Access to college courses can be life-changing. Research has shown that education reduces recidivism. But education in prison can mean more than just that. Education programs also raise a big question: To what end do we educate ourselves? After I wrote an Op-Ed in 2015, faculty members for the Bard Prison Initiative responded in a letter to the editor , saying, “Prison education repurposes a captive space for the recovery of an ideal.” I agree. On top of the Pell Grant ban, the 1994 crime bill’s “truth in sentencing” policies offered states billions of dollars to build new prisons. More than half of the states accepted the deal, including New York. The funding required that states agreed to amend their sentencing laws to keep violent offenders in prison for 85 percent of their sentence. In “Locked In,” John Pfaff, a Fordham University law professor, argued that high rates of admissions into prison on the front end, not “truth in sentencing” policies that kept people in for longer sentences on the back end, drove mass incarceration. What Mr. Pfaff can’t speak to, but I can, is the overall toxic sentiment in the cell blocks when there are no incentives for those of us who committed violent crimes to do better or want better for ourselves. It brings to mind the James Baldwin quote taped to my cell wall: “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
I propose that President Biden consider what I’m calling a “hope and healing” bill. It would build on the benefits of education to offer more federal funding so that prisoners with mental health problems would be treated more humanely. It would also provide more vacation days for corrections officers and offer them resources to treat PTSD. They have a hard job, and it’s harder for them to treat us well if they are unwell themselves. While writing this essay I was reading a white paper on the well-being of corrections officers titled “I Am Not Okay.” On top of elevated PTSD and suicides, C.O.s have high rates of depression, divorce and heart disease. We should not expect unwell and untrained people to treat people with serious mental illness or special needs, or to spot anxiety. According to the white paper, “officers either learn to leave compassion and empathy at the time clock or, like many other new recruits, they quit.”
States shouldn’t automatically get this funding. To be eligible to receive it, they should agree to enact “second look” legislation that affords every prisoner an opportunity to petition the court, after 15 years, for a sentence reduction. Or they can qualify by enacting other sentencing reform bills that shave off time for good behavior or send prisoners to a parole board. This federal “hope and healing” policy, which attempts to balance out the harm of “truth in sentencing,” would entice states to pass reform bills that are already written and languishing. New York has a couple now that are ready to be signed. With the possibility of getting a reduced sentence, many will behave better and participate in more positive programming. I first heard about the “second look” review in an Op-Ed by a federal district judge who expressed regret for sentencing an enforcer for a drug gang to an 18-year sentence. It made me curious about whether my judge ever wondered what had become of me. In 2004, the judge who sentenced me to 28 years to life looked at me as if I was such a loser who’d squandered opportunities. I was. And I did. I never imagined I’d build my journalism career from a cell, but I sure wish I could tout my résumé in front of a judge today. This policy may give judges hope, too, for seemingly hopeless defendants who come before them. When the federal funds dried up and colleges left in the mid-1990s, the hope did, too. When uneducated prisoners got out, they often came back. By the early 2000s, when I started my stint in state prison with a ninth-grade education, few college programs were left. (Others, like the privately funded Columbia courses offered in Sing Sing, came later.) We became a lost generation in American prisons. We were hardly jolly and drinking and traveling, though. By 2011, I got my high school equivalency diploma and joined the pilot college program in Attica, hosted by Genesee Community College, which was funded by the philanthropist Doris Buffett . President Obama did make some progress toward increasing access to education in prisons. In 2015, the Department of Education took the first step toward the reinstatement of Pell Grants with an experimental program called Second Chance Pell . (An expansion of that program, which will enable thousands of prisoners at state and federal institutions to enroll in education and training programs, was announced last month.) College programs slowly started to pop up in prisons again. In 2019, a report from the Vera Institute found that Pell Grant reinstatement would enable hundreds of thousands of academically eligible prisoners to pay for higher education; it would lower recidivism rates and save states a combined $365.8 million per year. Last month, New York’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) for incarcerated people was restored. Access to education will change prisoners’ lives. But it should be paired with reforms to sentencing requirements, too. When long passages of time in prison allow you to get away from the old you — earn degrees, gain emotional intelligence — there’s a new kind of harrowing hopelessness that sets in. You realize you’re ready to go, but you’re unable to leave. Even though some governors, like Kathy Hochul of New York, have pledged to make changes to the executive clemency process, we still need more realistic sentencing reforms happening in laws and the courts, too — reforms that give more people a shot at getting out one day. A few cells down from me is Franklin McPherson, 35, who is the president of the Lifers and Long-Termers Organization at Sullivan Correctional Facility. Mr. McPherson is N.C.A.A.-basketball tall. At 20, he wasn’t a criminal, but he did feel lost. One night in 2007, he drove drunk and killed a man in a head-on collision on a Long Island road. When he woke up in a hospital jail wing, paralyzed and with face burns from the airbag explosion, he couldn’t remember what he’d done. He received 25 years to life for depraved-indifference murder. In prison, he not only rehabilitated his body, learning to walk again, but also educated his mind, earning a bachelor’s degree with honors from St. Thomas Aquinas College. The college program at Sullivan is sponsored by Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, a nonprofit run largely by formerly imprisoned people. “I took a life, so I deserved to be here,” Mr. McPherson told me. “But at a certain point it’s overkill — I can’t get anything else from corrections. I feel like I was kept alive for a reason, so I know I needed to change my life. But there was never an incentive to do it.” When I shared my reform ideas with Mr. McPherson, he said he wished he could petition the court and show the judge how he’d changed. “We all deserve a second chance,” he said. Still, not everyone in prison has the interest or intellectual capacity to go to college or learn a vocation in a technical trade school. Prisons should provide resources and support for inmates, including those with disabilities, who might be on different paths. My neighbor here is James Lorman, 34, a heavyset, tall fellow with short cropped hair, who has a bad habit of appearing in front of my bars with headphones on and yelling, “Hey, what’s up, John!” He has Landau-Kleffner syndrome, or LKS, which affects his speech and social skills. Recently, he was issued a misbehavior report after being accused of saying something inappropriate to a female corrections officer (Mr. Lorman said he didn’t do it). Days later, I heard a male C.O. yell out, so everyone in the cell block could hear, that Mr. Lorman has a sex crime. The C.O. told him to write 100 times that he will never again disrespect a female staff member. Mr. Lorman can’t read or write. He did better when he was on psych meds, he tells me, but they stopped giving them to him. “I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t adapt too good in the general population,” he told me. He said he hopes he can be transferred to a specialized unit that provides mental health services at another state prison soon. In addition to investment in education, states desperately need funding to address the mental health crisis in prisons. In 1955, when this country had about half the 330 million people it has today, we had a half million beds on state-run psych wards; in 2016 we had about 38,000 . In 2006, a Department of Justice report said 24 percent of people in jail and 15 percent of those in state prisons reported symptoms that met the criteria for a psychotic disorder. And as a nation, we treat 10 of every 11 psychiatric patients housed by the government behind bars . Prison is just about the worst place to suffer from serious anxiety. The other day I had to give a urine sample as a C.O. watched. I knew in advance that I had to give the sample, and I drank so much water my vision was fuzzy. Every time I felt I had to go, heat swarmed my chest and my heart bounced. After all these years, I’d developed anxiety. The C.O. looked annoyed, but also sad, like he had his own problems. A provision for “shy bladder” allows for you to be alone — but it’s nearly impossible to get the administration to approve it. Others with more serious issues are worse off. But it affects so many of us. President Biden has been in office for only 16 months, so it’s unfair to compare records. But in spite of all the competing demands before him, he should want this reform, too — not because he was responsible for a lost generation of prisoners, and not because Mr. Obama regrets that he couldn’t get reforms passed. And he shouldn’t just do it to outdo Mr. Trump. He should want this because it’s the right thing to do. John J. Lennon, a contributing editor for Esquire, is incarcerated at the Sullivan Correctional Facility and will be eligible for parole in 2029. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com . Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram . Advertisement

How Biden Can Bring Hope to Prisons Like Mine

The company Mine says it uses artificial intelligence to show users where their information is being stored – like whether an online shoe store kept your data after a sneaker purchase three years ago. — Laptop table photo created by master1305 - www.freepik.com
Three young Israelis formerly serving in military cyber units have figured out how to locate your digital footprint – and give you the tools to delete it. The company Mine, co-founded by Gal Ringel, Gal Golan and Kobi Nissan, says it uses artificial intelligence to show users where their information is being stored – like whether an online shoe store kept your data after a sneaker purchase three years ago. Ringel said Mine’s technology has already been used by one million people worldwide, with over 10 million “right to be forgotten” requests sent to companies using the firm’s platform. Mine launched after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – now an international reference point – set out key rights for users, including the deletion of personal data that was shared with a site for a limited purpose. The company’s AI technology scans the subject lines of users’ emails and flags where data is being stored. Individuals can then decide which information they want deleted and use Mine’s email template to execute their right to be forgotten. It means they can delete their digital footprint “with a click of a button”, Ringel said. “We’re not telling people to not use Facebook or Google. We say: go ahead, enjoy, use whatever you want,” he said. “But as you enjoy using the Internet, we’ll show you who knows what about you, what they know about you... what is the risk” and how to remove it, he added. ‘Challenging’
Last year, hackers broke into the database of Atraf, an Israeli LGBTQ dating website, using the personal information there for extortion. The year before, Shirbit, a major insurance company, was hacked and troves of data stolen. Despite those and smaller breaches, Naama Matarasso Karpel from advocacy group Privacy Israel said the public was relatively indifferent. She also criticised Israel’s privacy legislation as inadequate for tackling today’s online challenges. “Privacy is a bit like health or air – we don’t really feel the need for it until we really see how much we lack it,” she said. While public awareness on privacy rights has been slow on the uptake, she said many corporations were realising that better privacy practices made for good business. “Nobody wants to be caught off-guard,” Matarasso Karpel said. Companies are starting to see privacy “as a value that has to be maintained in order to establish trust with customers”, she added. Mine’s co-founder Ringel said companies had contacted his firm for help with the “challenging and cumbersome” process of locating and removing information, in line with the right to be forgotten. “We help companies to automate that process without any human involvement,” he said, reducing their efforts and costs. But lawyer Omer Tene, co-founder of the Israel Tech Policy Institute, cautioned that deleting specific individual requests was “a complicated technical exercise”. Some companies and organisations cannot legally delete information like blockchains or records of financial interactions needed for tax purposes. Even information that can be deleted is often kept in varying degrees of identifiability, Tene said. “All of this nuance makes it difficult to deliver on a promise from both the consumer side and the corporate side, to enable deletion by pressing a button,” Tene warned. – AFP
Article type: free

‘Right to be forgotten’: Firm promises to purge digital footprint

‘Right to be forgotten’: Israeli firm promises to purge digital footprint
   
Co-Founder and CEO of the Israeli company “Mine” Gal Ringel (L) speaks with a colleague at his office in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on April 26, 2022. — AFP
JERUSALEM: Three young Israelis formerly serving in military cyber units have figured out how to locate your digital footprint — and give you the tools to delete it. The company Mine, co-founded by Gal Ringel, Gal Golan and Kobi Nissan, says it uses artificial intelligence to show users where their information is being stored — like whether an online shoe store kept your data after a sneaker purchase three years ago. Ringel said Mine’s technology has already been used by one million people worldwide, with over 10 million  “right to be forgotten” requests sent to companies using the firm’s platform. Mine launched after the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — now an international reference point — set out key rights for users, including the deletion of personal data that was shared with a site for a limited purpose. The company’s AI technology scans the subject lines of users’ emails and flags where data is being stored. Individuals can then decide which information they want deleted and use Mine’s email template to execute their right to be forgotten. It means they can delete their digital footprint  “with a click of a button”, Ringel said. “We’re not telling people to not use Facebook or Google. We say: go ahead, enjoy, use whatever you want,” he said. “But as you enjoy using the internet, we’ll show you who knows what about you, what they know about you... what is the risk” and how to remove it, he added. ‘Challenging’
Last year, hackers broke into the database of Atraf, an Israeli LGBTQ dating website, using the personal information there for extortion. The year before, Shirbit, a major insurance company, was hacked and troves of data stolen. Despite those and smaller breaches, Naama Matarasso Karpel from advocacy group Privacy Israel said the public was relatively indifferent. She also criticised Israel’s privacy legislation as inadequate for tackling today’s online challenges. “Privacy is a bit like health or air — we don’t really feel the need for it until we really see how much we lack it,” she said. While public awareness on privacy rights has been slow on the uptake, she said many corporations were realising that better privacy practices made for good business. “Nobody wants to be caught off-guard,” Matarasso Karpel said. Companies are starting to see privacy  “as a value that has to be maintained in order to establish trust with customers”, she added. Mine’s co-founder Ringel said companies had contacted his firm for help with the  “challenging and cumbersome” process of locating and removing information, in line with the right to be forgotten. “We help companies to automate that process without any human involvement,” he said, reducing their efforts and costs. But lawyer Omer Tene, co-founder of the Israel Tech Policy Institute, cautioned that deleting specific individual requests was  “a complicated technical exercise”. Some companies and organisations cannot legally delete information like blockchains or records of financial interactions needed for tax purposes. Even information that can be deleted is often kept in varying degrees of identifiability, Tene said. “All of this nuance makes it difficult to deliver on a promise from both the consumer side and the corporate side, to enable deletion by pressing a button,” Tene warned. Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2022
Advertisement

‘Right to be forgotten’: Israeli firm promises to purge digital footprint

Twitter

SRT Group

Stanford University

Seed VC

Mine, developed by Denwen, is an ownership directory that connects people and the items they buy to create personalized networks of product discovery. Mine is an application focused exclusively on ownership; members create, control, update and share information on purchases using Mine's database of products and merchants. As a member of the Mine ownership directory, users can tap into the buying choices of friends, family and people they admire to help make informed and inspired purchase decisions.

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Pierre Legrain		Founder	Current
Siddharth Batra	Twitter, and SRT Group	Founder	Former
Deepak Rao	Twitter, and Stanford University	Founder	Former

Name	Pierre Legrain	Siddharth Batra	Deepak Rao
Work History		Twitter, and SRT Group	Twitter, and Stanford University
Title	Founder	Founder	Founder
Status	Current	Former	Former

Wells Fargo Success Story

3M Success Story

Platform Overview

Mine

Executives

Mine Management Team

3 Team Members

Discover the right solution for your team