Vort3x | Cybersalon | September 15, 2024
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
Cybersalon Events
Cyberia Internet Café 30 Anniversary Party – Join us for a few pints on 27th September, 7.30pm, Central London
AI in Government – Newspeak House are hosting a workshop on AI in Government and AI Fairness on 25th September, 7.00pm East London
NEWS
Internet Archive Loses Appeal in OpenLibrary Case
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A US appeals court has ruled against theInternet Archive in the case brought against it by Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and Harper Collins over the Open Library and “controlled digital lending”, Emma Roth reports at The Verge. The case has so far led to the removal of 500,000 ebooks from the Open Library. At Techdirt, Mike Masnick analyzes the many flaws he finds in the ruling, which fails to understand the difference between scanning a book and creating a derivative work and implies that library lending deters authors from writing new works.
Brazilian Supreme Court Bans X
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Brazil’s Supreme Court has upheld a lowercourt ruling banning X (formerly Twitter) from the country, João da Silva and Vanessa Buschschlüter report at the BBC. The events leading up to the ban began in April, when Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts on the grounds that they spread disinformation. The courthas ordered the removal of the X app from Apple and Android app stores, ordered phone manufacturers to block the service on iOS and Android, and said it will find individuals and businesses using VPNs to access it. At Rest of World,Russell Brandom studies the spread of election-related disinformation on X innumerous countries with nothing being done to stop it. At the Washington Post, Faiz Siddiqui finds that two years on from Elon Musk’s acquisition ofTwitter the investors and banks who covered most of the $44 billion purchaseprice are valuing their stakes at 70% less than they paid.
French Court Charges Telegram CEO Pavel Durov
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Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov hasbeen arrested in France, formally charged, and released on bail of €5 million, CNN reports. Charges include “complicity in the administration of a platform enabling an illegal transaction in an organized gang”, as well as money laundering. At the International Business Times, Marvie Basilan reports thats ince Durov’s arrest Telegram has been updated to allow users to report illegal content and to request automated takedown, while in his first public statement Durov calls his arrest “surprising” and says Telegram is prepared to leave countries where it can’t agree with a regulator’s position on security and privacy. The New York Times also explores the “toxic speech” on the platform, analyzing more than 3.2 million messages to find numerous illegal and extremist activities that easily avoid scrutiny by the authorities.
Intel and Karma Partner to CreateSoftware-Defined Vehicles
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At Ars Technica, Jonathan M. Girlinoutlines a partnership between Intel and Karma Automotive to develop a standardfor software-defined vehicles. The result, which would rely on a series of ethernet-linked domains controlling groups of functions, would save power and weight, and allow manufacturers to update vehicles over the air.
US Police Department Use AI to Write Reports
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US police departments are beginning to use AI chatbots to write crime reports based on the audio pulled from officers’ body cams, Sean Murphy and Matt O’Brien report at APNews. The idea raises numerous questions about built-in bias, the suppliers offering these tools, the potential for making it easier for police to surveil, harass, and inflict violence on ethnic minorities, and accuracy.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
Centralized Control Places Cloud-BasedSolar Installations at Risk
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In this article at Berthub, Bert Hubertexplores the concentration of control over solar power grids, following an incident in which a Dutch hacker was able to seize control of 4 million solar panel installations. Solar panels appear to democratize electricity generation, but the reality is that the vast majority are centrally managed by a handful of companies, most of them outside Europe, with almost no rules in place to regulate their behavior. The risk of this concentration has crept up unnoticed since early days, when the damage an individual solar installation could do was too small to worry about.
Grace Hopper’s Prescient 1982 Lecture onProtecting Information
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In this article at Ars Technica, JenniferOuellette provides a brief history of the computer programming pioneer GraceHopper, who foresaw the importance and difficulty of protecting information, to herald the posting to YouTube of a video clip of Hopper’s prescient 1982 lecture on this subject.
New option for individuals to Use DNATesting to Prove Citizenship Claims
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In this article at the Observer, Donna Ferguson finds that people are using ancestral DNA testing to prove their birthright eligibility for citizenship in countries such as the US and Ireland.
How to Unfollow Facebook – Lawsuit Claims S230 Protects Building User Tools for Platforms
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In this article at the New York Times, David McCabe explains the reasoning behind a lawsuit that Ethan Zuckerman, with the support of the Knight First Amendment Institute, has filed a lawsuit to force Meta to permit the use of a browser tool that automates unfollowing everything on Facebook. Zuckerman argues that the provision protecting”technical means” for blocking objectionable content in the Section230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from liability for material posted by third parties, can apply to deleting any content users don’t want to see. At his Dropsafe blog, former Facebook engineer Alec Muffett contends that Zuckerman fails to grasp the technical impact of the browser extension, which he says stresses Facebook’s internal mechanisms beyond their design specifications.
Experts needed – The Rising Cost of Data Labeling
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In this article at Fortune, Sharon Goldman argues that the rising cost – as much as 40% in the last year – of building today’s large models is due to the often overlooked and escalating cost of labelling data and, related, Reinforcement Learning Human Feedback, which uses human-provided quality assessments to fine-tune the models. This is especially expensive in fields like law, medicine, and other sciences because those providing the feedback must be experts themselves.
DIARY
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September 19-21, 2024
Hamburg, Germany
The Re:Publica Hamburg programme will shed light on current socio-political debates and bring discussions about technology design, AI and net culture to the stages. It will be about the shift to the right in our society and engagement against it. The super election year 2024and the influence and role of internet culture in the election campaign as well as the impact of the results on digital policy.
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October 12-13, 2024
Manchester, UK
OggCamp is an unconference celebrating FreeCulture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. If you’ve got a story to tell, no matter your background or current status, whether it’s your first talk or you’ve loads of experience, as long as the talk is connected (somehow) to our theme then we want to know about it.
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November 5, 2024
London, UK and online
This year’s IGF will include a range of fascinating keynotes on topical issues and panel discussions which will explore questions regarding digital inclusion, digital governance, the impact of misinformation and disinformation on democracy, and ethical AI.
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November 8-11, 2024
Brussels, Belgium
Freedom not Fear (FNF) is an annual self-organised conference on privacy and digital rights. People from all acrossEurope meet and work towards more freedom in the digitalised world, plan actions against increasing surveillance and other attacks on civil rights.
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December 15-19, 2024 and online
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The 19th IGF, “Building Our Multi stakeholder Digital Future”, will focus on four main themes:harnessing innovation and balancing risks in the digital space; enhancing the digital contribution to peace, development, and sustainability; advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age; and improving digital governance for the Internet We Want.
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December 27-30, 2024
Hamburg, Germany
The 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3) is Europe’s largest hacker gathering, featuring lectures, workshops, and other events relating to security, privacy, freedom of expression, and cryptography.
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February 4-5, 2025
London, UK
The third annual State of Open Con will focus on Open Technology including open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open standards, and the value that the open community brings to the UK and its digital economy. Alongside a diverse range of topics, the event promises to include a diverse range of speakers and participants.
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February 24-27, 2025
Taipei, Taiwan and online
Each edition of RightsCon convenes business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, academics, journalists, and human rights advocates from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and technology. RightsCon is where the global community comes together to build strategies and drive forward change toward a more free, open, and connected world. Proposals for sessions are due June 2, 2024.
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August 7-9, 2025
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Since 2006, Netroots Nation has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond.
