Vort3x | Cybersalon | April 15, 2025
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
9th June 2025, 7pm Portcullis House, London
“Beyond Tariffs – the new world order”
Joint event with “Claim the Future” and John McDonnell MP, Prof Radhika Desai and BoE advisors
Invites to follow
NEWS
No Secrets – A win for transparency as UK Tribunal Rules That Apple Appeal Cannot Be Secret
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The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled that it is unlawful for the Home Office to withhold from the public the basic details of Apple’s appeal against the technical capability notice requiring the company to provide backdoor access to data stored in the cloud using its Advanced Data Protection feature, Dan Milmo reports at the Guardian. Journalists and legal representatives for the media were barred from a hearing in March. The decision is significant in that the Investigatory Powers Act criminalizes disclosing the existence of a technical capability notice.
When it rains, it pours –Multiple Factors Led to Signal Chat Leak
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In this article at the Guardian, Hugo Lowell attributes the security failure in adding The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a high-level Signal chat discussing plans for war in Yemen to a complex set of interacting failures of technology design, user interface, policy, and AI that took months to develop. The details provide a worked example of the principle that complex systems fail in complex and unpredictable ways. A must-read for anyone responsible for preventing leaks
Bullying continues as OpenAI and Google Oppose UK Government AI Copyright Plans
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In comments submitted as part of the UK government’s consultation, which closed in February, OpenAI and Google have rejected the UK’s proposal to carve out a copyright exception for generative AI while permitting rights holders to opt out and requiring greater transparency from AI companies. The two companies claim the rules would bring “significant implementation challenges” and cause them to “deprioritize” the UK market. They are urging the US government to oppose such requirements by foreign governments, arguing that scraping the open web should be free. At The Register, Dan Robinson reports that in an open letter Open AI says the US government should provide the industry with critical support by declaring AI training “fair use” and preventing “less innovative countries from imposing their legal regimes on American AI firms”. *Cybersalon contributed to gov consultations, arguing for more protection for UK Creative Industries
Listening Always On: Amazon Echo Sends Your Conversations to Company Servers
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Starting on March 28, 2025, everything users say to Amazon Echo smart speakers will be sent to the company’s servers for processing in order to support generative AI features, Scharon Harding reports at Ars Technica. This is a major change as formerly, users could set the devices to process the data locally and prevent excessive sharing with Big Tech supplier.
Déjà vu as Trump Delays TikTok Ban again…and again…
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US president Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to abstain for another 75 days from enforcing the law requiring TikTok to be sold or face a ban beginning on April 5, 2025, itself a 75-day delay from January, NBC News reports. Numerous potential buyers have been mentioned in press reports, but no deal has been signed. At TechDirt, Mike Masnick, who has called the ban “unconstitutional”, writes it is likely to happen (eventually) but only after Chinese owners agree to hand over TikTok algorithm – not on the cards in the current discussions.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
Delete your data: 23andMe Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
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In this article at the Guardian, UCL genetics lecturer Adam Rutherford argues that the consumer DNA testing company 23andMe did little to improve but a great deal to make big data big business. In exchange for what Rutherford calls a “scientific trinket” – dubious information about ancestry and personal makeup – customers paid money to give their most intimate data to a company that sold it onward to pharmaceutical companies. Rutherford writes, “23andMe was trading on ignorance of how the genome actually works.”
Facial Recognition tools and The Far-Right Origins of Clearview AI
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In this article at Mother Jones, Luke O’Brien examines in detail the far-right origins of the founders of facial recognition company Clearview AI, based on interviews with insiders, thousands of newly obtained texts, emails, and other records, including internal communications from within US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While the company was unknown until Kashmir Hill exposed its existence in the New York Times in 2020, O’Brien uncovers the years prior, when the company’s founders conceived and built it with using it to target immigrants in mind.
The Failure of Meta’s Horizon Worlds Metaverse
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In this blog posting at New World Notes, Wagner James Au analyzes the reasons why Meta’s Horizon Worlds has largely failed, based on inside employee information. Among his discoveries: internal developers, ordered to spend a certain amount of time playing it, developed workarounds that let them pretend to comply, and few were willing to use Meta’s Quest headsets, so they remained focused on 2D. In addition, Horizon Worlds lacks the tools programmers need and gets no advantage from being 3D.
Google Drive users blocked as Italy Expands Piracy Shield System
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In this posting at the Walled Culture blog, Glyn Moody discusses a letter from the Computer and Communications Industry Association to the European Commission warning of the dangers of Italy’s Piracy Shield system, which requires ISPs to block sites within 30 minutes of being notified that they are being used to pirate live sports streams. In December, copyright companies used their access to this system to order ISPs to block Google Drive throughout the country. Italy is now extending Piracy Shield to include other live content, VPNs, and public DNS providers, and require search engines to deindex pirate sites, threatening privacy and the technical operations of the Internet. CCIA notes that Italy failed to notify the European Commission of the proposed legislation under the TRIS procedure, intended to prevent the creation of barriers in the internal market, so others could comment before passage.
DIARY
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April 18-21, 2025
Hamburg, Germany
Easterhegg is a friendly community event organized by the Chaos Computer Club where attendees can get to know each other and collaborate to brainstorm new ideas. It is the perfect opportunity to present your topic to an interested and colorful audience in an informal atmosphere or to plan entirely new projects together. Four days of workshops, talks and other events will revolve around the motto “Unhandled Eggception” – and CCC is looking forward to your creative, technical and extraordinary interpretations of it.
Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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April 23-24, 2025
Cambridge, UK (by invitation only) and (free) livestream
The 2025 Cambridge Disinformation Summit is designed to convene global thought leaders to discuss research regarding the efficacy of potential interventions to mitigate the harms from disinformation.
Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection
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May 21-23, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
CPDP is a non-profit platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond. As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference, CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic, and technological development in privacy and data protection, gathering academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends. This unique multidisciplinary formula has served to make CPDP one of the leading data protection and privacy conferences in Europe and around the world.
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May 29-30, 2025
Los Angeles, California, US
PLSC started in 2008 to bring privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world together to discuss current issues in information privacy law and policy. The conference is, first and foremost, a paper workshop. Authors, commentators, and participants all work together to discuss ideas contained in the drafts. PLSC is conducted under the Chatham House Rule.
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May 12-14, 2025
Strasbourg, France
EuroDIG is a platform for discussion and the exchange of ideas on emerging issues and challenges concerning the Internet. All stakeholders are invited to shape the agenda jointly and take part in the discussion. The inclusive and continuous dialogue, which culminates in an annual event, has taken place in a different European country every year since its inception in 2008. The resulting “Messages” are forwarded to policy makers and fed into the annual global UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
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May 26-28, 2025
Berlin, Germany
The motto for the 2025 festival for digital society is “Generation XYZ”. The program will once again bring the most important topics relating to the Internet and its communities, and the opportunities and challenges that lie in the digitalization of society to the stages.
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June 10-11, 2025
Mechclen, Belgium, and online
TICTeC 2025 will bring together people working on defensive technology against threats to democracy, and those who are using technologies constructively to enrich and strengthen the heartbeat of civic and democratic life. With a distinctive mix of tech practitioners, civil society leaders, and academic researchers, TICTeC isn’t just about showcasing cutting-edge pro-democracy tech innovations, at TICTeC you can learn about everything from combating corruption and misinformation to empowering communities and enhancing civic participation. It is a unique platform where attendees connect and collaborate.
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June 11, 2025
Washington, DC, USA
Join the Future of Privacy Forum for the second annual DC Privacy Forum: Governance for Digital Leadership and Innovation. This event will be held live, in person-only.
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June 12-15, 2025 (TBC)
Athens, Greece
The eighth annual ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency will have a cross-disciplinary focus that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems.
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June 19-21, 2025
Boston, MA, USA
State of the Map US is the largest gathering of OpenStreetMap community members from across the country. In 2025 we will spotlight the successes and challenges of mobility mapping with the theme “Charting the Course”. The event will connect mappers, businesses, academics, government agencies, and nonprofits, who all collaborate around the free and editable map of the world.
Workshop on the Economics of Infosecurity
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June 24-25, 2025
Tokyo, Japan
For more than 20 years, WEIS has been the leading forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science.
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Lillestrom, Norway
The IGF is a global multistakeholder platform that facilitates the discussion of public policy issues pertaining to the Internet. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the World Summit for the Information Society.
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July 8-11, 2025
Geneva, Switzerland
Organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland, the AI for Good Global Summit is the leading UN event on AI. It brings together top names in AI with a high-level lineup of global decision makers. Our goal is to identify practical applications of AI, accelerate progress towards the UN SDGs and scale solutions for global impact.
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July 21-23, 2025
San Francisco, CA, USA
TrustCon is the global conference dedicated to trust and safety professionals who are responsible for the challenging work of keeping our platforms and communities safe. This conference will create an enduring and supportive community; offer workshops and presentations focused on the practice of trust and safety; and explore successes, lessons learned, and the future of the field. Attendees have the opportunity to collaborate, hear from trust and safety thought leaders, and connect with peers from all over the world.
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July 31-August 3, 2025
Portland, OR, USA
Software Freedom Conservancy hosts Free and Open Source Software Yearly to focus on the creation and impact of free and open source software. The event includes community-led tracks with talks and workshops over four days. Previous topics have included community building, education, development and legal and licensing issues. We will use free software to run our conference and reduce the amount of proprietary software that is treated as default.
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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.
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August 06-09, 2025
Nairobi, Kenya, and online
Wikimania is the annual celebration of all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation with four days of conferences, discussions, meetups, training, and workshops. Hundreds of volunteers and Free Knowledge leaders from around the world gather to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, and exchange ideas.
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August 7-10, 2025
Las Vegas, Nevada, US
Def Con is one of the world’s largest hacker conventions.
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August 15-17, 2025
New York, NY, USA
HOPE 16 will welcome hackers of all types: makers,
artists, educators, experimenters, tinkerers, and more – anyone who is interested in playing with technology, coming up with new ideas, learning from others, and sharing knowledge. Now an annual event.
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September 26-29, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
The annual self-organized conference on digital rights and data protection draws people from across Europe and beyond to come together to advocate for freedom in the digitalized world, plan actions against attacks on civil liberties and increasing surveillance, and seek discussions with decision-makers.
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September 30, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
Privacy Camp is organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), in collaboration with its partners the Research Group on Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Privacy Salon vzw, the Institute for European Studies (IEE) at Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, the Institute of Information Law (IViR) at University of Amsterdam and the Racism and Technology Center.
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October 4, 2025
Boston, MA, USA
Instead of hosting one LibrePlanet conference in 2025, the Free Software Foundation is planning a jam-packed anniversary year, filled with several new and exciting activities in 2025, culminating in a final celebration in Boston in October.
