Vort3x | Cybersalon | December 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
NEWS
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San Francisco Police Propose to Use Killer Robots
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The San Francisco Police Department has submitted a proposal that would allow it to use robots with a “deadly force option” in cases where there is a risk of loss of life to either officers or the public, Emma Roth reports at The Verge. The SFPD also asks to be able to use robots in a number of other circumstances including training and simulations, criminal arrests, and executing a warrant. Most of SFPD’s robots are used for defusing bombs or handling hazardous materials, some of its newer models have optional weapons systems. A robot used deadly force in a police operation for the first time in 2016, when the Dallas Police Department used a bomb disposal robot armed with an explosive device to kill a suspect who had shot at police officers, killing five and wounding several others.
FTX Owes $3.1 billion to Its 50 Biggest Creditors
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The cryptocurrency exchange FTX has told a bankruptcy court that post-collapse it owes $3.1 billion to its 50 biggest creditors,, which include venture capital company Sequoia Capital; asset manager Blackrock, and a series of hedge funds Jasper Jolly reports at the Guardian. At his blog, software engineer Stephen Diehl puts FTX’s collapse into context with historical financial manias and FTX CEO Sam-Bankman Fried’s philosophy of “Ethical Altruism”. At Blockworks, Cornella Hernandez reports that non-fungible tokens minted on the FTX site now show a blank image or divert to a bankruptcy restructuring page because the hosting servers have been deactivated.
Online Right Sees Conspiracy in The Twitter Files
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The online far right is interpreting leaked emails (“the Twitter Files) posted to Twitter by journalist Matt Taibbi and hyped by Elon Musk to show that Twitter plotted to suppress a New York Post story about the copied contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and elect Joe Biden to the US presidency, Justin Ling reports at Wired. Taibbi himself says the files prove no such thing. At TechDirt, Mike Masnick summarizes the “content moderation learning curve” in 20 steps for Musk’s benefit.
Apple Plans End-to-End Encryption for iCloud
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Apple is backing away from its 2021 proposal to scan users’ iCloud uploads for child sexual abuse images and plans to expand end-to-end encryption Jon Fingas reports at Engadget. The new approach looks likely to conflict with various governments’ demands that technology companies cooperate with court-ordered requests to access user data. Law enforcement may even be locked out of data they were previously able to access. At Forbes, Tom Brewster reports that Elon Musk has put plans to encrypt direct Twitter messages on hold in part because of Musk’s stated desire to prioritize safety on the platform. Concerns remain about Musk’s own access to users’ direct messages. In a video clip of his presentation at the UK Internet Governance Forum, security consultant Alec Muffett explains why strong encryption needs to be widely available, using as an example the world of applications that removing security limitations (“selective availability”) on GPS has enabled.
CJEU Rules That Google Must Delete “Manifestly Inaccurate” Personal Search Results
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The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that people in Europe can get Google to delete search results relating to them if they can prove the information provided is “manifestly inaccurate”, Vincent Manancourt reports at Politico. Evidence presented does not have to come from a court case but may consist only of evidence that can be “reasonably required” of them.
EFF calls to avoid content policing by Internet service providers
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San Francisco—Internet infrastructure services—the heart of a secure and resilient internet where free speech and expression flows—should continue to focus their energy on making the web an essential resource for users and, with rare exceptions, avoid content policing. Such intervention often causes more harm than good, EFF and its partners said today.
FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
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The Fully-Surveiled Airport of the Future Is Already Here
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At PapersPlease, Edward Hasbrouck writes about a recent experience at London Heathrow and the change coming to airports as they incorporate automated facial recognition and other biometric tracking into their infrastructure. The changes are, he writes, deliberately invisible, and the integrated surveillance represents a converge of interests between government agencies, which are interested in predictive profiling and control, and the airports and airlines themselves, for whom automation and tracking represent operational efficiency.
The Value and Difficulties of Horizontal Government Services
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In this article at Public Digital, Tom Loosemore tells the story of “Tell Us Once”, a horizontal government service that allows bereaved individuals to report a death in one location and have it notified to most of the many other government departments that need top know. This type of service helps hundreds of thousands of people a year, but is notoriously difficult to establish because of the many decisions that have to be made and the lack of trust between departments. Conceived by the Pensions Service in 2005, Tell Us Once took until 2020 to reach the last mainland UK council.
ChatGPT Marks Step Change in AI Bot Capabilities
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In the short time since its release, ChatGPT, the latest AI bot from OpenAI, has been used to generate full marks-worthy responses to exam questions and solved coding challenges in obscure computer languages, all with an easy-to-use question and answer interface, Alex Hern reports at the Guardian. Trained on huge samples of text taken from the Internet, the bot even recognises impossible questions and can refuse to answer. At his Substack, Noah Smith, a researcher at an AI company, predict the future of work in the face of generative AI (“autocomplete for everything”): it will take over tasks but not jobs.
Digital Exclusion Increases Across Britain
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In this article at the Guardian, Miles Brignall writes about the millions of Britons who are increasingly excluded by either not owning or not being able to operate a smartphone. Banking, contacting a GP, local authority, or insurance company, and, especially, parking are becoming increasingly difficult. The Digital Poverty Alliance estimates that 11 million people across the UK are struggling with this problem, which has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic; Age UK estimates that 40% of over-75s do not use the Internet at all.
Digital Privacy Defender Turns to Cybersurveillance
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In this article at Politico, one of a series, Elisa Braun profiles French former digital privacy defender Eric Leandri, whose new venture, Altrnativ, specializes in cybersurveillance. Leaked internal documents show that Altrnativ has investigated the critics, rivals, and employees of some of France’s biggest brands, and has cooperated with arms dealers based in Poland and the Middle East to offer its services to authoritarian African governments. Gathering personal information online and weaponizing it by selling it to governments and companies is a rapidly growing industry.
DIARY
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*** Please check links to events listed below for participation restrictions and updates as to whether events will go ahead and what protocols may be in place. ***
ONE-OFF EVENTS & Grants
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Grants Deadline – Cybersalon has a number of grants for attending /presenting at Mozfest in March 2023. If you have a project that would benefit from presenting, get in touch with [email protected] before 1/12
Conference on Robot Learning
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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.
World Crypto Conference 2023
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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:
Privacy Camp
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January 26, 2023
TBC and online
In 2023, the Privacy Camp invites you to participate in, and foster, a discussion about the critical state(s) of our a world in which the digital is, itself, critical. What does it mean to regulate digital technologies and infrastructures in times of crises?
Open Metaverse Conference
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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.
LibrePlanet 2023
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March 18-19, 2023
Location TBD and online
The 15th annual LibrePlanet is themed “Charting the Course”. Hosted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), LibrePlanet provides an opportunity for community activists, domain experts, and people seeking solutions for themselves to come together in order to discuss current issues in technology and ethics. In 2023, LibrePlanet speakers will show ways of progressing the free software community’s understanding of new opportunities and new threats to the movement. We’ll learn about the impact artificial intelligence (AI) has upon the free software community, and the role software freedom has to play in working for ecological sustainability.
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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.
Privacy Law Scholars
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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.
RightsCon
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June 5-9, 2023
TBC
RightsCon provides a platform for people from around the world – activists, technologists, business leaders, policymakers, journalists, and more – to come together and set the agenda for human rights in the digital age. Every year, the summit supports a program of 400+ sessions across 15+ program tracks, all sourced and selected from an open Call for Proposals.
Def Con
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Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 10-13, 2023
The world’s largest hacking conference.
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 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.
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.
