Vort3x | Cybersalon | July 15th
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
=====
Deep Fake Voice – Impostors Use AI to Enhance Phone Scams
———————————————————————-
A new type of impostor scam uses AI to artificially render voices and make what seem to be emergency phone calls from family and close friends in order to ask for money, Eve Upton-Clark reports at Business Insider. The ability to clone someone’s voice cheaply from as little as three seconds of audio – often easily found on social media – makes the impersonation hard to spot. At Rest of World, Nilesh Christopher reports the conflicting results of three analyses of two controversial audio clips of an Indian politician who claims they are Deepfakes. The bigger threat, says the AI expert firm DeepMedia, is that everyone has plausible deniability.
Musk in Court – Twitter-Threads War as Former Employees Sue Twitter
———————————————————————-
A class action lawsuit brought by former Twitter employee Fabien Ho Ching Ma, who was laid off when Elon Musk took over alleges that the company is blocking 891 arbitrations by refusing to pay the arbitration fees, Jude Karabus reports at The Register. Ma claims the arbitration service provider, JAMS, intends to close the cases. At Wired, Eve Fairbanks charts the decline in Twitter’s functionality, since there are no staff to fix problems, and prospectively mourns the loss of its social value. At the Guardian, Josh Taylor reports that Twitter is also being sued by the Sydney-based infrastructure company Facilitate, which says Twitter has failed to pay for office services in London, Dublin, Sydney, and Singapore. Facilitate says Twitter has not disputed the invoices. Finally, at TechDirt Mike Masnick reports that Twitter is suing Meta, complaining that Meta has misappropriated its trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring hired some of Musk’s fired employees to build its Twitter competitor, Threads. Threads launched the first week in July.
EU Throws a Spanner In The Works of Meta – Court of Justice call on Consent for Profiling
———————————————————————-
A judgment handed down by the Court of Justice of the European Union on July 4 has found against Meta and in favor of Germany’s antitrust authority, the Federal Cartel Office, ruling that Meta must obtain users’ consent before profiling them and showing them personalized ads, Natasha Lomas reports at TechCrunch. The court also upheld the FCO’s argument that antitrust authorities may incorporate data protection law into their assessments. Lomas speculates that the ruling could mean the end of surveillance capitalism.
Who is afraid of GDPR Harmonization?
———————————————————————-
The European Commission is working on proposals to harmonize administrative procedures for cross-border data protection cases in order to speed up enforcement of the GDPR, Luca Bertuzzi reports at Euractiv. Twenty-four civil society groups including Access Now, NOYB, and Article 19 are concerned the new law could cost complainants their standing in such cases. Separately, NOYB reports that the Irish parliament has passed a last-minute amendment to the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) bill 2022 that would allow the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to declare its procedures confidential, thereby making speaking publicly about them a crime.
Look Mum, No Hands!
———————————————————————-
Ford has become the first to offer a car with hands-free driving capabilities in the UK or Europe, Jasper Jolly and Simrin Fahman report at the Guardian. The BlueCruise feature, available for the Mustang Mach-E, will cost £18 a month. Drivers may only use it on motorways, and an infrared camera will monitor their eyes to ensure they have not stopped watching the road. At TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan reports that safe streets activists in San Francisco are disabling Cruise and Waymo robotaxis by placing a traffic cone on their hoods. The “Week of Cone” precedes a California Public Utilities Commission hearing that will likely increase the number of robotaxis in San Francisco. Residents complain they block traffic and impede public responders and public transport. At the Guardian, Johana Bhuiyan considers the risk to privacy and public safety of the cameras mounted on and inside self-driving cars, which are turning cars into policing tools.
NEW PODCAST
The Future of Cashless Society
Jana Histova from “The Purse” and Eva Pascoe (Cybersalon) discuss Digital Pound, CBDCs, alternative futures reimagined in “22 Ideas About The Future”. Listen here.
Cash or E-cash?
Calls for Anonymous E-Cash option in Cybersalon submission to CBDC government consultation (by Cybersalon Policy Team)
FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
=====
Did Google Mislead Advertisers on Video Ads?
———————————————————————-
In this article at The Register, Thomas Claburn discusses a report from the advertising research organization Adalytics claiming that Google may have taken millions or even billions from advertisers using its TrueView proprietary video ad product, whose ads on third-party websites may never have been viewed. Among the advertisers purchasing such ads are US and EU government organizations, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, Samsung, Merdecedes Benz, and Microsoft. Google responded with a blog post saying that it strictly enforces its policies for TrueView ads, which ensure valid traffic by requiring them to be unmuted, properly shown, and skippable.
Security Vulnerability Leaves Solar Facilities Exposed
———————————————————————-
In this article at Ars Technica, Dan Goodin finds that a vulnerability in Internet-exposed SolarView devices, which are used to monitor solar facilities leaves them reachable on the open Internet. A patch is available, but more than 400 have yet to install the update. Code to exploit the vulnerability has been available since Mary 2022.
Quiet Quitting – this time it is for real
In this article at Business Insider, Aki Ito argues that it’s not employees who are “quiet quitting” but employers, who are taking advantage of remote work to shift from traditional full-time employment to contracts, part-time employees, temps, and outsourcing, thereby paying less and providing fewer benefits. McKinsey estimates that these workers now account for 36% of the US workforce. At the New York Times, Stefanos Chen discovers forgotten casualties of the move to remote working: masses of abandoned office furniture.
Strange Shenanigans in Streaming Services – Who Deletes Shows for Tax Write-offs?
—————————————————————
In this article at Kiplinger, Kelley R. Taylor examines the claim that streaming services are deleting popular programs to claim tax write-offs. At The Hollywood Reporter, Alex Weprin reportsthat Warner Bros. Discovery will take a write-off of up to $3.5 billion that will see the company cancel or remove from its services numerous titles such as Wonder Woman (canceled), Westworld, and The Nevers (both pulled). Some of these shows will be bundled for licensing to other services.
The problem is humans – new podcast on Artificial and Natural Intelligence
———————————————————————-
In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Joanna Bryson, an export on artificial and natural intelligence, discusses regulation and policy with hosts Jon Lebowsky, Scoop Sayer, and Wendy Grossman. Bryson sees people’s use of robots as a bigger threat than the robots themselves. The problem, as ever, is humans.
DIARY
=====
——————–
London
Luke Robert Mason from Virtual Futures will interview Stephen Oram for his new book Launch (27/7) ‘Extracting Humanity’ discussing AI and the future of us. Free but please book as limited space
——————–
Las Vegas, NV, USA
August 10-13, 2023
The world’s largest hacking conference.
——————–
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.
——————–
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.
——————–
October 8-12, 2023
Kyoto, Japan and online
The theme of the 18th IGF annual meeting is “The Internet We Want – Empowering All People”. IGF 2023 will be organized in a hybrid format with the goal ithat all participants, whether onsite or online, will be able to engage in an equally meaningful way in IGF sessions. Workshop and session organizers are expected to consider elements of interactivity and accommodate the hybrid format in their proposals. Stakeholders are invited to apply to organize different types of sessions at IGF 2023 within the deadline: 19 May 2023, 23:59 UTC.
ONGOING
—————————————-
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.
—————————————-
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.
