Vort3x | Cybersalon | July 15, 2022
Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary | Jobs
Cybersalon Events
Next Campaign Lab hackathon will take place in early September, working on
New social media aggregators for campaigners, video-to-text misinformation alerts for MPs and many others. Email [email protected] to book your place
NEWS
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European Parliament passes Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act
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Both the Digital Services Act (539-54, 30 abstaining) and the Digital Markets Act (588-11, 31) have passed the European Parliament by very broad majorities, Natasha Lomas reports at TechCrunch. The DMA will introduce new competition rules for gatekeeping technology giants, and the DSA will set governance rules for both large and small platforms regarding the handling of illegal content and products. In a Twitter thread, IT and Internet lawyer Graham Smith provides a preliminary analysis of what the laws will mean in practice.
DARPA Finds Cryptocurrency Networks Are Centralized
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The new report “Trail of Bits” from the US Defense Advanced Research Agency finds that “unintended centralities” leading to top-down control mean that public blockchains are vulnerable to tampering, Martin Kaste reports at NPR. Among these centralities: large mining pools are highly concentrated, and 60% of Bitcoin traffic is handled by just three ISPs. Also alarming: 21% of Bitcoin nodes are running an old version of the core Bitcoin client with known vulnerabilities, easing the way to a 51% network takeover. New forms of cryptocurrencies, such as proof of work, are even more centralized. At Coindesk, Frances Coppola argues that in their short lifetimes cryptocurrencies have benefited from central banks’ historically extravagant money creation. With that era disappearing and cryptocurrencies largely tied to, but not backed by, the US dollar, “illusory riches are now giving way to real losses”. At the New York Times, Nelson Rauda Zablah finds that El Salvador’s embrace of Bitcoin is failing; only 1.5% of the remittances that form 20% of the country’s GDP went through digital wallets, 71% of El Salvadoreans see no benefit, and only 20% support it. At Rest of World, Leo Schwartz, Lucía Cholakian Herrera, and Andrea Paola Hernández report that cryptocurrencies are popular in other parts of Latin America, where many have no access to the US dollar and stable economies and banking systems; Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil are all among the top 15 countries for adoption. Finally, Alex Hern reports at the Guardian that Tether will launch a “stablecoin” tied to the British pound. The company believes the UK is the “next frontier for blockchain innovation”.
European Commission Plans to Require Platform Contributions to 5G
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Later this year, the European Commission will propose the Connectivity Infrastructure Act, a revision of the 2014 Broadband Cost Reduction Directive that will require major platform services like Google, Meta, and Netflix to contribute to the costs of rolling out 5G, Harry Baldock reports at Total Telecom. The proposal follows a report published in May, in which the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ ASsociation argue that the technology giants should contribute €20 billion a year to network infrastructure. While some argue that the proposal would violate network neutrality, Samuel Stolton reports at Politico that European governments have written in a joint position that “all market actors benefiting from the digital transformation” should make a fair and proportionate contribution to the costs of public goods, services and infrastructure”.
Google Will Delete Location Histories for Abortion Clinic Visits
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Google will delete users’ location histories for abortion clinic visits, Gerrit De Vynck reports at the Washington Post. Also at the Post, Cat Zakrzewski, Pranshu Verma, and Claire Parker report that according to a survey from the reproductive justice NGO I/When/How in more than 60 cases in the US between 2000 and 2021, someone has been arrested or charged for allegedly ending their own pregnancy or assisting someone else. In some cases, text messages, search history, and other forms of digital evidence played a part – and in the case of Indiana’s Purvi Patel, a crucial role. Patel, whose conviction was later overturned, was charged, convicted, and sentenced with “feticide” for terminating her pregnancy. At Slate, Danielle Keats Citron argues that the end of Roe v. Wade means the US needs a new civil legal and moral right to privacy. Citron has been working with US senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and US representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) on the Health and Location Data Protection Act as a first step. Finally, The Hill explains how law enforcement uses the data it can compel technology companies to disclose, and notes that federal grants often pay for purchasing the necessary equipment.
EU Data Protection Regulators Say Google Analytics is Not Compliant with GDPR
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The Italian data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is not compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation because user data is transferred to the US, where it is not protected by an equivalent framework, Natasha Lomas reports at TechCrunch. The ruling follows similar findings by the France and Austrian data protection regulators and the European Data Protection Supervisor and are in response to a series of complaints filed by the Max Schrems-founded NGO noyb. Reuters reports that in a draft ruling the Irish data protection regulator holds that Facebook’s transfers of EU user’s data to the US are not compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation. Fellow European regulators have a month to comment. Facebook says a decision would force it to shut down its EU-based services. In a posting at noyb, Schrems, who filed the relevant complaint in 2013, expects the other regulators to issue objections, and for Facebook’s appeal to take years in the Irish courts.
FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
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China’s Surveillance Technology Moves into Prediction
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In this article at the New York Times, Paul Mozur, Muyi Xiao and John Liu report that China’s latest, largely unproven, big data-based surveillance technology aims to predict crimes and protests in advance, and the difficulty of avoiding being watched. The report is basd on procurement documents shared with the Times by the online magazine ChinaFile, which has gathered years of records on government websites. At CNN, Nectar Gan reports that victim’s of a Chinese bank run found their health codes turned red, barring them from public places, when they traveled to Zhengzhou to protest. Dozens of depositors were taken into quarantine under guard before being escorted onto trains bound for their home towns. Although TikTok has promised that information it gathers about US users remains in the US, Emily Baker-White reports at BuzzFeed that leaked audio from 80 internal meetings at TikTok shows that the data has been repeatedly accessed by China-based employees of TikTok’s owner, ByteDance.
The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy
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In this article at the New York Times, Kevin Roose writes about the end of the “millennial lifestyle subsidy” in which venture capitalists underwrote low-cost ride shares, food delivery, and free trials of household goods like mattresses as interest rates rise and capital is more tightly squeezed. At The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, who predicted its demise in 2019 after the WeWork crash, writes that the loss of the millennial lifestyle subsidy is playing a part, along with spiking energy and labor costs, in making life feel much more expensive.
The Guardian reports that an examination of more than 124,000 leaked documents covering 213 to 2017 shows that Uber broke laws, sought to lobby national leaders, used a “kill switch” to block police from seeing data during rates, and was aided in French lobbying efforts by president Emmanuel Macron.
European Security Officials Propose Client-Side Scanning of Encrypted Context
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In this blog posting at Lawfare, Robert Gorwe examines a policy paper published by European security officials that favors automated detection and removal of a broad range of content over mandatory assessments conducted by each platform to establish its risk of proliferation child sexual abuse material. The proposal would shift today’s largely voluntary regime to a mandatory one, and would create a new EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse to oversee its deployment. In addition, the proposal would provide leverage for Europol and other security agencies to push platforms to push their moderation into encrypted content. At Light Blue Touchpaper, Cambridge security engineer Ross Anderson warns that client-side text scanning is harder than people such as authors of both these proposals and the UK’s Online Safety bill think, based on his lab’s 15 years of collecting and analyzing Internet wickedness.
Ukraine’s “e-Enemy” App Features Risks Turning Civilians into Combatants
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In this article for Wired, Lukasz Olejnik notes that civilians in Ukraine who use the “e-Enemy” feature in the country’s government-issued Diia app that enables them to report invading soldiers’ movements may be crossing the line between civilians and combatants, leaving them open to military attack. Even though Russian forces have already targeted Ukrainian civilians, the issue creates difficulties such as whether captured civilians using the app are prisoners of war. Ukraine needs to be transparent with the app’s users about the risks they are taking.
NGOs Call to Modify the UK’s Online Safety Bill
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In this letter to Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Nadine Dorries, 16 organizations including Cybersalon, 5Rights, Fair Vote, and Hacked Off warn that the UK’s Online Safety bill, which has passed its second reading in the House of Commons, is near-unworkable, both failing to keep people safe online while threatening freedom of expression. The letter goes on to propose ways to improve the bill, including strengthening rights protections, adding protections against harmful misinformation and disinformation, and strengthening child safety provisions. In May, the Economist argued that the bill is illiberal and impractical, and said it should be scrapped entirely.
DIARY
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In light of the coronavirus outbreak, please check links to events listed below for participation restrictions and updates as to whether events will go ahead.
ONE-OFF EVENTS
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July 22-24, 2022
New York, NY, USA
Four years after the last edition of the New York-based hacker conference, A New HOPE promises to be transformational for the hacker community and the first in its new venue at Brooklyn’s St. John’s University.
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society
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August 1-3, 2022
Oxford, UK and online
The fifth AAAI/ACM conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society will be hybrid.
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August 11-14, 2022
Primarily virtual, with local clusters
The largest hacking conference presents its 30th edition.
Wikimania 2022
Virtual but we will be holding local London/Oxford events, please follow @Cybrsalon for details and sign ups
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August 11-14, 2022
The seventeenth Wikimedia conference will be a VIRTUAL event organized by a diverse group of global volunteers with distributed in-person events if local and global circumstances allow. Wikimania will bring Wikimedians together to create, celebrate and connect. For London Chapter – please follow @Cybrsalon on Twitter as we will be organizing local events during that week (London and Oxford)
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November 28-December 2, 2022
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and online
IGF is a global multistakeholder platform that facilitates the discussion of public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, The 17th IGF on Resilient Internet for a Shared Sustainable and Common Future will be a hybrid event. This year’s IGF program closely reflects the Global Digital Compact envisioned by the UN Secretary-General in his Our Common Agenda report. Accordingly the five themes are “Connecting All People and Safeguarding Human Rights”; “Avoiding Internet Fragmentation”; “Governing Data and Protecting Privacy”; “Enabling Safety, Security and Accountability”; and “Addressing Advanced Technologies, including AI”.
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December 14-18, 2022
Auckland, NZ
The Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) is an annual selective, single-track international conference addressing theory and practice of machine learning for robots (and automation: where robot prototypes are scaled for cost effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability in practice). CoRL publishes significant original research at the intersection of robotics and machine learning.
Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection
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May 24-26, 2023
CPDP is a multidisciplinary conference offering the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic, and technological development in privacy and data protection. Within an atmosphere of independence and mutual respect, CPDP gathers academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels, offering them an arena to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends.
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June 1-2, 2023
TBC
PLSC is the oldest and largest gathering of privacy scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the world. The conference is a paper workshop, intended to incubate and critique scholarship at the vanguard of the intersection of law and technology.
ONGOING
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London’s Ada Lovelace Institute, founded in 2019 to ensure the ethical use of AI, is running a series of events on the issues surrounding the use of technologies in response to the pandemic. Late-2020 events included discussions of regulating for algorithm accountability and “almost-future” AI.
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Recent webinars sponsored by Bace Security include a “fireside” discussion with prominent women in security, security problems in online voting, methods for privacy-protecting digital contact tracing, advanced botnet researcher, and using marketing techniques to improve cybersecurity communication.
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The Benchmark Initiative is running regular events on topics such as the use of location data to end the global sanitation crisis, the safe use of location data in human migration; data, power, and the pandemic; and managing social distancing in public spaces. All events are posted on Vimeo soon after they conclude.
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The Communication and Media Institute (CAMRI) at London’s University of Westminster hosts a series of online events presenting the work of sociologists, historians, economists, and activists studying online developments around the world. Spring 2021 offerings include a reassessment of the 2010 Arab Spring and studies of internal communication connections within the Global South, the changing role of public service media, decolonizing the curriculum, and using Facebook to reduce polarization.
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
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The Carnegie Council runs frequent events on topics such as illiberal threats to democracy, the societal limits of AI ethics, AI and ethics in Africa, and inclusion. The Council posts audio and a transcript after each event.
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Ongoing series of events on topics such as new legislation, using data to combat counterfeit goods, and trends in online advertising.
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Data & Society has moved its weekly Databites and Network Power Hours programs into online interactive formats. Its first event for 2021 examines digital technology and democratic theory.
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The Research Group on Data, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Law & Society is presenting a series of discussions on topics such as robotics (Frank Pasquale, April 1), rights, technology, and society (Anne-Sophie Hulin, May 19), and justifiability and contestability of algorithmic decision systems (Daniel Le Métayer, June 1).
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EFF and its local counterparts in the Electronic Frontier Alliance are running numerous events on subjects such as technology education, open source, voting security, and content moderation.
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Frequent events on topics such as cybersecurity, digital tax, online content moderation, and upcoming EU legislation.
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Future in Review is running a series of online “FiReSide” events. Recent topics include Chinese-US relations after the presidential election, and the future technology struggle.
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The Geneva Internet Platform (GIP), a Swiss initiative run by DiploFoundation is organizing monthly briefings on internet governance, providing updates and news and projections of how they will influence future developments.
Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford
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HAI’s series of events covers AI-related topics such as upcoming regulation, issues with algorithms, health, and AI and society.
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Kate Klonick, an assistant professor at St John’s University School of Law who specializes in online speech and governance, and Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and co-founder and chief editor of Lawfare, hold a nightly discussion of current affairs, law, politics, and digital media with invited guests. Daily at 5pm Eastern Time.
Legal Frontiers in Digital Media 2020
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The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s online seminars on emerging legal issues at the intersection of digital media, freedom of speech, and law include AI, privacy law, technology law as a vehicle for anti-racism, and a look ahead to the next telecommunications act.
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The London Futurists group, led by former Psion and Symbian architect David Wood, is presenting near-weekly speaker-led events focusing on potential radical transformations of humanity and society. Upcoming topics include anticipating future pandemics and a discussion of Michael Baxter’s new book, Living in the Age of the Jerk. Event recordings are made available soon after meetings conclude.
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The ODI’s Friday lunchtime (London time) talks have moved online. These one-hour talks cover topics such as data ethics, social equity, trust, and converting weather into music.
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The Open Rights Group and its local offshoots are running frequent online presentations and discussions of digital privacy, democracy, and data exploitation. Recent topics have included the launch of ORG’s data and democracy report, a proposed law to ensure that contact-tracing apps are surrounded with privacy-protecting safeguards, and the effect of the pandemic on democratic institutions.
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Public Knowledge is running public web events on subjects such as algorithmic amplification of hate speech, the survival of local journalism, and how to protect privacy during a pandemic.
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London’s Royal United Services Institute is running frequent online events considering topics relating to international politics, terrorism, financial crime, policing, and warfare, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes it will bring.
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Singularity University’s upcoming events include reimagining primary education and a series of executive programs aimed at various countries.
JOBS – CYBERSECURITY/IT
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