Vort3x | Cybersalon | July 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
Key points from our House of Commons event Future of Money held on 26/6/205
Guests: Iza Kaminska (Politico), James Meadway (Macrodose Pod) and
David Birch (author of” Currency Cold War”), Dr Richard Barbrook
New Event by Wikipedia
Aug 6th to 9th join Wikipedia Annual Conference streamed live from Kenya
To join online, please sign up here (you will need your Wiki ID)
NEWS
Digital Doctors? UK Government Launches Ten-Year NHS Plan
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The UK’s Labour government has announced a ten-year plan for a digital overhaul of the NHS which will include a “doctor in your pocket” app intended to give patients more control, Denis Campbell reports at the Guardian. Health minister Wes Streeting hopes digital efficiency will reduce the number of frontline workers required and keep people healthier.
Also at the Guardian, Anna Bawden lists 12 key elements of the plan, including integrated digital patient records, self-referrals, community health hubs, and greater use of AI and wearable devices. At its blog, medConfidential warns that the plan threatens to shift decision-making power away from patients and their families to hospitals and technology companies, and notes the absence of a delivery chapter containing the details that matter.
Pre-announcements suggest a single patient record held on Palantir’s federated data platform. At The Register, Lindsay Clark writes that Palantir has suggested the UK adopt a “common operating system” for government data.
At Wired, Caroline Haskins reports, based on a published contract justification, that ICE is paying Palantir $30 million to build a platform called “ImmigrationOS” that will provide the agency with “near real-time visibility” into people “self-deporting” from the US.
Finally, at The Register, Lindsay Clark reports that English hospitals are reluctant to install Palantir’s Federated Data Platform because in some cases they will lose functionality.
Vort3x Comment: The last major NHS upheaval was the Health and Social Care Act (2012), which the government claimed would put patients at the center of the NHS and empower health care professionals, including GPs, and created a new commissioning system. Critics at the time warned that it would increase layers of middle management, add expense, and bring creeping privatization. Some of this government’s proposals have a familiar ring. The major change is the continually expanding dependence on technology companies, especially Palantir, to provide data infrastructure. Once embedded in what ought to be public infrastructure, these private companies will be hard to dislodge and potentially pose a serious and unpredictable privacy risk under future governments.
Flock Halts Access to License Plate Database in Three US States
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The automated license plate reader company Flock has stopped agencies across the US from search cameras within Illinois, California, and Virginia, following publicity that local law enforcement in the US was using it on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a Texas police officer used it to conduct a nationwide search for a woman they suspected of having an abortion, Joseph Cox reports at 404 Media.
Flock cameras continuously scan the plates, models, and colors of passing vehicles. Virginia, California, and Illinois all have laws limiting the use and/or sharing across state lines of such data. More recently, several cities have decided not to renew or expand their contracts with Flock.
Vort3x Comment: This story is a great example of the dangers of installing systems that seem innocuous but that become dangerous when laws and attitudes change. No one installed ALPR cameras thinking they would be used to track immigrants for deportation or to pursue a woman who had a miscarriage.
Lies, damn lies and 5G
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Londoners’ phones are lying to them about their access to 5G networks, Jim Waterson reports at LondonCentric. Partly, phone icons are inconsistent about making clear the difference between 5G being available and the phone’s being connected to it. But partly, the density of London’s population, the requirements for planning permission, and local opposition to masts combine to create the problem that London’s networks lack sufficient capacity and coverage. Ofcom is aware of the issue but says that some phones can’t tell accurate whether they’re using 4G or 5G.
Crooks & Books? – US Judge Rules AI Use of Legally Acquired Books Fair Use
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A US District Court judge has ruled that AI companies don’t need permission to train their large language models on books they have legally acquired and that doing so is fair use, Ashley Belanger reports at Ars Technica. Unlike other such cases, in this case against Anthropic the authors who brought the case did not claim that its Claude text generator was reproducing their works or expressive style. Alsup accordingly ruled against them on the basis that the Copyright Act was written to “advance original works of authorship, not to protect authors against competition”. However, Anthropic still faces trial for downloading 7 million pirated books.
Age-Gating is upon us: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age Verification Law
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The US Supreme Court has upheld an age verification law adopted in Texas in 2023 that targets adult content platforms on the Internet, rejecting claims that it violates the First Amendment, Mike Masnick reports at Techdirt. The justices argued 6-3 in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, brought by the parent companies of the largest adult tube sites, that online age verification is comparable to real-world requirements to prove age in order to buy certain types of goods, such as alcohol and cigarettes. Masnick predicts that age verification demands will now proliferate across the Internet to include social media and news sites and will allow the “regulatory state” to control online expression. In a follow-up, Michael McGrady complains that the ruling creates an”artificial market” of age verification providers potentially worth billions of dollars based on technology that does not work. To date, about 20 states have passed age verification laws, and the 40% of the US population they represent have been blocked from porn sites owned by Aylo, one of the most visible adult entertainment companies.
Vort3x Comment: Until now, the First Amendment has blocked attempts to bring in age verification in the US. No more. This decision will pave the way for age-gating all over the Internet even though there is as yet no technology that is both effective and privacy-protecting.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
Human web content as rare as rare as hen’s teeth
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In this article at Ars Technica, Benj Edwards explores former Cloudflare executive John Graham Cumming’s web-based effort to collect human-created content and treat it as a precious resource. The idea behind lowbackgroundsteel.ai is to emulate scientists’ work during the Cold War to find sources of steel uncontaminated by radiation from nuclear testing. The increasing difficulty of finding human content uncontaminated by AI, similarly, has already forced one tool, wordfreq, to shut down.
25% of Women missing out on Digital Skills – including lag in AI use
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In this article at the Financial Times, Isabel Berwick finds that women lag in AI use, and need to exercise curiosity and explore it in order to close the gap. Women are both more likely to be in jobs at risk of being lost to automation, and 25% less likely to have basic digital skills. The challenge, Berwick writes, is therefore urgent. In a new study of writing essays with and without ChatGPT at the MIT Media Lab, Nataliya Kos’myna finds “cognitive debt” – that is, that those using generative AI struggled to quote their own work and underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels in succeeding months.
Is Revenge a dish best served cold and online?
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In this episode of the Fast Politics podcast, Molly Jong-Fast interviews James Kimmel about his new book, The Science of Revenge. Kimmel argues that the dopamine hit from getting revenge is an addictive high, and that satisfying that craving lies behind much of the angry piling-on behavior visible daily on social media. The US, he says, “seems like a revenge-addicted nation”, fueled by platforms that make it easy to retaliate instantly and inspire others to join in offline. He goes on to suggest ways to end the cycle.
Vort3x Comment: It’s not clear that Kimmel’s ideas for teaching people forgiveness will scale the way social media behavior does, but his thoughts about revenge as a motivator are nonetheless interesting and a new approach.
Alerting all scriptwriters! – here Cryptocurrency Crimes that still await screen s
treatments
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In this article at The Optionist, Andy Lewis picks out five cryptocurrency crimes and criminals whose rights are still available that could make TV shows and movies, ranging from dramas and thrillers to satirical comedy.
DIARY
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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.
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November 7-9, 2025
Barcelona, Spain
Mozilla Festival is where passionate individuals unite to build a better Internet. Reclaiming the Internet starts with all of us. At the Mozilla Festival, participants unlearn defaults, rethink power, share bold ideas and have thoughtful discussions that drive real change. Join us in shaping a digital future that’s more open, inclusive, and firmly grounded in fundamental rights.
November 10-13. 2025
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Lisbon, Portugal
“The world’s largest technology conference.” Founded in 2009, Web Summit focuses on Internet and emerging technologies, marketing, and venture capitalism. Partners range from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, and attendees represent all levels and sectors of the global technology industry.
