Vort3x | Cybersalon | October 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
Cybersalon Christmas Event 29th Nov 2022
Games, Gore and Governance in virtual reality. Can immersive games teach us self-governance and improve democracy for human tribes? For this year’s Christmas event we will review and share game-playing on three virtual worlds that take interactivity and learning to the next level, while also providing gore and drama.
Books
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New Book from Cybersalon Press ”22 Ideas About The Future” is now available!
Review by Professor of Forecasting James Woudhausen here
Get the book from Waterstones or Amazon
NEWS
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EU proposes Big Tech payments to telcos for Internet traffic
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Twenty-nine Internet experts and academics have written to EU commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton urging them to abandon plans to require the six biggest technology companies – Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Netflix, which jointly account for more than half of all Internet traffic – to pay telecom companies to carry their traffic, Mike Masnick reports at TechDirt. The chief objection to the idea, which AT&T mooted in the US 20 years ago, is that it undermines network neutrality. Masnick also notes the long history of telecom subsidies without adequate oversight of how that money is used.
Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework replaces struck-down Privacy Shield
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US president Joe Biden has issued an executive order laying out the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, new rules for data transfers between the US and EU, intended to replace the US-EU Privacy Shield agreement, which was struck down by the European Court of Justice in 2020, Brandon Vigliarolo reports at The Register. The new framework restricts how US spy agencies may gather signal intelligence, applies conditions to the collection of data, and creates a Data Protection Review Court made up of non-government employees to hear cases brought by EU citizens. Max Schrems, who brought the cases that led to the strike-down of Privacy Shield and its predecessor, the Safe Harbor Agreement, believes the new order is unlikely to fulfill the requirements of EU law.
French parliamentarians seek levy for commercial exploitation of public domain
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Seventy-five politicians in the French parliament introduced an amendment to a finance bill that would introduce a levy on the “lucrative commercial use of works in the public domain,” Glyn Moody reports at his blog, Walled Culture. Moody, author of the new book Walled Culture on the history of the Internet and copyright, calls the proposal a “fundamental subversion” of the intended balance between allowing creators an exclusive period in which to exploit their work and the public interest in culture. The amendment was quickly withdrawn due to protests, but for Moody it warns of a potentially dangerous direction of travel.
Wiley withdraws 1,300 ebooks from textbook subscription service
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Irish libraries have condemned the academic publisher Wiley for abruptly withdrawing 1,300 ebooks from college libraries, Jess Casey reports at the Irish Examiner. The move is especially disruptive because many of the books were listed as key texts on course reading lists. The Library Association of Ireland is also objecting to the publisher’s new business model, under which books are not sold but offered via subscription based on class sizes at prices the LAI describes as “unsustainable, anti-competitive, and highly problematic in the use of public funds”.
Biden administration publishes AI Bill of Rights
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The Biden administration has published an AI Bill of Rights that outlines five protections necessary for holding AI accountable, Melissa Heikkilä reports at MIT Technology Review. The protections mirror similar EU proposals, but is nonbinding and must be incorporated into legislation to become government policy. At The Markup, Julia Angwin interviews employment attorney Jennifer Lord about the seven-year struggle to gain redress for the many errors made by the automated MiDAS system for identifying fraudulent unemployment claims in Michigan. Legislators passed a law in 2017 requiring the agency to make fraud determinations manually, and allocated $20.8 million in refunds to those who were wrongfully accused, but it can’t compensate for the bankruptcies and lost jobs and homes. In a blog posting, the Open Rights Group finds that the UK government’s recently published policy paper on regulating AI has broken its promise not to scrap the right to human review, equates lack of regulation with innovation, and is too eager to help companies “move fast and break things” rather than protect citizens.
FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
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Fraud fills the online advertising industry
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In this article at Wired, Morgan Meaker deplores the state of online advertising, an economy in which cybercriminals profit while bots distort the market. Some estimates suggest that fake users may account for 40% of web traffic, and businesses pay millions to advertise to them. Meaker cites evidence from the trial of convicted fraudster Aleksandr Zhukov that shows how the trade in fake clicks works: his company sold ads to other advertising networks and placed them on sites he created at more than 6,000 spoofed domains, then used 2,000 servers in Texas and Amsterdam to simulate human online behavior. While the technology exists to defeat such fraud, many sites don’t like to look too closely at the traffic that makes them appear popular, ad exchanges like the revenue-producing volume, and advertisers don’t want to be embarrassed by admitting they’ve been defrauded.
Commercial companies use academic and nonprofit researchers to launder data
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In this blog posting at Waxy.org, technologist Andy Baio accuses academic and non-profit researchers of providing the means for commercial companies like Meta to launder the data they use to train their models. The data has often been collected under terms and conditions barring commercial use. In some cases, such as that of Stability AI, which funds research groups at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the non-profit LAION the companies are funding the researchers. Baio believes the result is to let commercial companies evade accountability and cite fair use rules to escape legal liability.
Post-Brexit isolation threatens British science
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In this article at the Guardian, Anna Fazackerley predicts an exodus of scientists from Britain as prospects dim that the UK will be able to negotiate post-Brexit associate membership of the Horizon Europe program. Membership negotiations have been disrupted by the UK’s failure to implement the Northern Ireland protocol as well as the lack of a science minister for three months this summer.
ICANN seeks dialogue on closed generic domain names
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In this blog posting at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mitch Stoltz writes about ICANN’s resurrection of “closed generics” – top-level generic domain names that are exclusively owned by a single company. Such plans have failed in the past because of public protest over the risks of giving already-dominant companies control over domains based on ordinary words that traditionally can’t be trademarked. A 2020 ICANN working group report made no recommendation; this year a “framing paper” proposed to start a “dialogue” on the subject.
Lamina1 proposes infrastructure for open metaverse
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In this article at The Drum, Webb Wright reviews a “litepaper” published by Lamina1, the blockchain company founded by science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who coined the term “metaverse”. The company, which will be the founding sponsor of the first Open Metaverse conference, hopes to shape the power dynamics characteristic of today’s Internet and deliver interoperable tools and decentralized services to give communities the infrastructure for a more immersive Internet. Lamina1 expects to deliver a fully operational “mainnet” around the middle of 2023.
DIARY
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November 1, 2022
London, UK and online
The UK Internet Governance Forum (UK IGF) is the national IGF for the United Kingdom. The purpose of IGFs is to facilitate a common understanding of how to maximise the opportunities of the internet whilst mitigating the risks and challenges that the internet presents. Messages from the UK IGF are compiled into a report and carried to the Global UN IGF.
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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.
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January 13-15, 2023
Switzerland
The World Crypto Conference will bridge traditional finance and DeFi products, focusing on blockchain, digital currencies, and digital assets. The goal of the WCC is to facilitate the connection between blockchain companies and startups, developers, investors, media, and traditional corporates:
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February 8-9, 2023
Los Angeles, CA, USA
The OMC is the first conference dedicated to gathering the worlds of the Metaverse and Web3 in one place. It will be a big tent for creative, development, product, and business teams exploring their visions of a more immersive Internet – one that empowers creators and consumers to build the Open Metaverse together.
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March 20-24, 2023
TBC
Join 1000s of activists in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane digital world.
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.
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