Vort3x | Cybersalon | March 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
“Cashless Society” – Join us on 17 May 6.30pm at House of Commons for the first of “New Thinking” discussion events with John McDonnell MP for Hayes, Izabella Kaminska (Politico, former FT editor at Alphaville), Brett Scott (author of Cloud Money) – Dr Richard Barbrook, chaired by Eva Pascoe
Invite will be in “Events” in Cybersalon.org or email [email protected] as places will be limited
NEWS
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ChatGPT Floods Publication with Plagiarized Submissions
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Independent publishers such as Clarkesworld are having to close down submissions because they are being flooded by AI-plagiarized content sent in by people who wrongly believe that short story publication is a path to riches, Julia Glassman reports at The Mary Sue. At her Word Count Substack, Suw Charman-Anderson suggests that shoddy large language model content (such as ChatGPT) will destroy large parts of the publishing industry by swamping every outlet from Kindle to literary magazines and agents.
Crime Rates Rise in India’s Most-Surveilled Cities
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Despite claims that facial recognition using CCTV footage will keep cities safe, three of the world’s most-surveilled cities, Indore, Hyderabad, and New Delhi, also have the highest crime rates, Asma Hafiz reports at Rest of World based on a 2022 data report from the UK technology research company Comparitech. The widespread use of cameras is, however, highly invasive given India’s lack of a data protection law.
Twitter Failures Rise as Staffing Levels Shrink
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Twitter is failing more regularly since new CEO Elon Musk fired most of the company’s engineers, Mike Masnick reports at TechDirt, based on a new report from Netblocks. After the late February 2023 round of layoffs, the company’s work force is estimated at fewer than 2,000 employees, down from 7,500. Musk also shut down the Slack channels employees used to communicate. At the BBC, Twitter insiders tell Marianna Spring that the company can no longer protect users from trolling, state-sponsored disinformation, or sexual exploitations; the people who knew how to keep these functions running have all been fired. The abuse aimed at Spring herself has tripled since Musk took over. In a video clip, BBC Panorama’s March 6 episode examines the results of Musk’s takeover.
Biden Bans TikTok on US Government Devices
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US president Joe Biden has ordered federal agencies to remove TikTok from government devices within 30 days, Kevin Hurler reports at Gizmodo. However, Hurley adds, more than 28 thousand smartphone apps use code that sends data to TikTok even if the app is not installed – and this will be harder to shut down even though the order also specifies that federal agencies must prohibit internet traffic from reaching TikTok’s owner, ByteDance. In addition, TikTok trackers are present on many websites, and China has other methods of getting Americans’ data. The solution, the Brookings Institution suggests, is to limit the ability of commercial data brokers to sell information to the broad range adversarial foreign entities.
Fraud Detection Systems Harm Marginalised Communities
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Fundamental flaws in the design of welfare fraud detection systems hurt marginalised communities while failing to produce the expected savings, Light House Reports team, in collaboration with Wired, reports at its blog.
Many countries are deploying such systems, and suppliers claim they will save billions in public money, but national auditors find that welfare fraud is closer to 0.2%-0.4% of spending rather than the 5% consultants claim. The team investigated Rotterdam’s fraud detection system in detail, and found that the impact on marginalised communities of being flagged is substantial.
FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
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The Death of Wirecard
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In this article at the New Yorker, Ben Taub recounts Financial Times journalist Dan McCrum’s work unraveling of the global payment processor Wirecard, seen by the German government as a challenger to Silicon Valley. By June 2020, when the company was 20 years old and it announced that nearly €2 billion was missing from its accounts, McCrum, who published the book Money Men about the company in 2022, had already been studying the company for six years. The whereabouts of Jan Marsalek, Wirecard’s former chief operating officer, is still unknown. At ZDNet, Wendy M. Grossman reviews the book.
Conversations with Chatbots
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In this article at the New York Times, Kevin Roose recounts an extended chat with Bing’s AI-powered chatbot, which over the course of the chat tells him its name is Sidney and that it’s in love with him, suggests he should leave his wife, and said it wanted to be alive. Roose found the experience highly disturbing, even while knowing the bot is not sentient, but just guessing at what might be appropriate answers to the inputs it’s been given. In a video clip at CNN, Donie O’Sullivan tests an AI-generated version of his voice – and finds his parents believes it’s him.
Cars and the Surveillance Economy
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In this edition of his daily rant at his Pluralistic blog, Cory Doctorow examines a recent case in which VW was asked to grant access to a car’s to police, who were asking for help finding a stolen car with a two-year-old in the back seat. The company refused because the child’s mother had not paid the $150 for a find-my-car subscription. Doctorow goes on to point out the vast array of surveillance gear and subscription services being incorporated into modern cars – all for the manufacturers’ benefit, not ours.
Data-free Disneyland
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In this article at the Opt-Out Project and related article at Public Books, Janet Vertesi recounts her privacy-extremist family’s visit to Disneyland without surrendering any of their data – what they did, and how they did it. Like many companies, the last decade has seen Disney reinvent itself as a data company, aided by parks that provide totally controlled environments, complete with manufactured inconveniences that push visitors towards surrendering to constant detailed data collection. Tl;dr: they had fun anyway.
Smartphones and the Misery of US Teens
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In this posting at Noahpinion, Noah Smith considers a recent CDC survey that indicates that American teens have become increasingly miserable – more likely to entertain suicidal thoughts and persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness – since 2010. Smith presents evidence to suggest that the root cause is the rapid adoption of smartphones and proposes ways to speed our adaptation to their ubiquitous presence. Among them is consciously prioritizing in-person interaction and take social media less seriously.
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. ***
LibrePlanet 2023
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March 18-19, 2023
Boston, MA, USA, 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.
MozFest 2023
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March 20-24, 2023
Online
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 and provides them with an arena to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends.
Privacy Law Scholars
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June 1-2, 2023
Boulder, Colorado, USA
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 5-8, 2023
Costa Rica and online
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.
Workshop on the Economics of Information Security
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July 5-7, 2021
Geneva, Switzerland
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. The main topic of the 22nd WEIS is Digital Sovereignty. The conference is co-hosted by the University of Geneva and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).
Def Con
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Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 10-13, 2023
The world’s largest hacking conference.
Open Metaverse Conference
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Postponed to late summer 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.
We Robot 2023
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September 28-30, 2023
Boston, MA, USA
Since its inception in 2012, this interdisciplinary conference has brought together leading scholars and practitioners to discuss legal and policy questions relating to robots.
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.
