Vort3x | Cybersalon | March 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
Cashless Society, Digital IDs and the future of BRICS
In Person Event at House of Commons/Portculis House Monday 17th 6.30 pm
With Guests: Prof Radhika Desai (Maniotoba University), Wessel von Rensburg (Cybersalon) and Danisha Kazi (Positive Money)- chaired by Dr Richard Barbrook with introduction from John McDonnel MP
Invite here – please sign in early as security in Portculis House needs our guest list in advance
Note the event starts at 7pm but pls arrive 6.30 as takes est 20mins to get through security checks
NEWS
Defiant Apple Appeals UK’s Technical Capability Notice
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Apple has filed an appeal with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal against a Home Office demand that it builds law enforcement access into its Advanced Data Protection iCloud encryption, Bill Goodwin reports at Computer Weekly. The case will be the first to test the limits of the government’s power to obtain and read encrypted communications. The case could be heard as early as this month.,
Timely move -US President Orders Strategic Cryptocurrency Reserve
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US president Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a government cryptocurrency reserve, comparing it to a “digital Fort Knox”, Alan Suderman reports at AP News. The reserve will, at least initially, be populated by 200,000 bitcoin that has been seized in criminal and civil proceedings. Trump also wants Congress to pass “industry-friendly” legislation and since he took office the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun dropping enforcement actions against crypto companies. At The Verge, Elizabeth Lopatto notes that in a Truth Social post before issuing the order, Trump said the reserve would include Ethereum, Solana, Ripple’s XRP, and Cadano. Lopatto calls the plan “stupid”, because the US will undermine the soft power of its own dollars in favor of a currency developed to bypass governments. In her latest Citation Needed newsletter, Molly White analyzes these developments in the context of dropping cryptocurrency valuations and the news of the latest record-breaking hack, of Bybit, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange. Finally, at 404 Media, Joseph Cox discovers that for $250 he can buy a residency permit from the island of Palau that he can use as ID on cryptocurrency exchanges to bypass the US’s still-strict laws limiting cryptocurrency trading.
When sharing is selling- Mozilla Deletes Promise Not to Sell User Data
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Mozilla has updated the terms and conditions for Firefox to remove language promising not to sell users’ data, Liam Proven and Thomas Claburn report at The Register. The company says it does not sell user data “in the way most people think about ‘selling data'” and that the change was made because of jurisdictional variations in the definition of “sell”.
Who is the boss? EU takes Open Source leadership at Policy Summit, big investment
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The crucial importance to Europe’s digital future of open source software was highlighted at the EU Open Source Policy Summit, which was convened to discuss how open source can enhance digital sovereignty, competitiveness, and innovation, Sara Petti reports at Open Knowledge. Also essential: prioritizing interoperability and security. At Forbes, Iain Martin reports that in February the EU allocated $56 million to develop an open source AI model.
Are in-car Ads a “Glitch” or a feature?
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Stellantis, the company that owns Jeep, Dodge, and other car manufacturers, dismissed as a “glitch” a Jeep owner’s report that every time he hit the brakes an ad for an extended warranty popped up in his vehicle’s center console, Aarian Marshall reports at Ars Technica. Despite safety concerns, the temptation to use the comprehensive infotainment system inside modern cars for advertising and upselling may be too great for manufacturers to resist.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
What we want, what we really, really want from Digital Identity
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In this blog posting at Careful Industries, Rachel Coldicutt discusses her new report, Digital Identity in the UK, which finds significant social divisions and high levels of concern about the potential impact of digital ID among younger people and ethnically diverse communities. The report finds that people do want a single, voluntary form of ID to make life easier, but have greater trust in some parts of the government that in Big Tech. In the public interest, she calls for better transparency, engagement with the public, and the rollout of a digital ID that addresses people’s needs.
Devil in the details – Decoding the Online Safety Act
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In this posting at his Decoded Legal blog, Neil Brown discusses what needs to be done to make the UK’s Online Safety Act, which comes into force on March 16, fit for purpose. Among the items on his list : re-write it for clarity, exclude small user services with a reasonable belief that their service is of low or no risk; and remove the discriminatory age verification requirement from accessible forms of text when it doesn’t apply to text itself. Elsewhere, Brown collects and explains the OSA’s requirements and attempts to help the owners of small sites understand how to comply.
The Spy in the Internet-Connected Bed
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At Truffle Security, Dylan Ayrey investigates an Amazon Web Services he had found in his Eight Sleep bed, which he bought in the hope that its temperature control features would help cure his insomnia. He goes on to discuss how he got the bed’s firmware and the functions the backdoor enabled, which included allowing all of EightSleep’s engineers to run code on any customer’s bed.
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In this article at 404 Media, Janus Rose advocates keeping personal physical and digital copies of media content, in the wake of Amazon’s decision on download of ebooks. As technology companies increasingly pursue the goal of ensuring that consumers can’t own anything digital, Rose recommends becoming a “digital packrat” and discusses his strategies for preserving user-controlled copies.
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In this article at the New Yorker, Margaret Talbot analyzes why Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation are attacking Wikipedia. With its devotion to transparency and fact-checking, it’s the “opposite of Trumpism”; its “neutral point of view policy” means not stating opinions as fact or facts as opinions. Musk has been calling for its “defunding”, while the Heritage Foundation plans to identify the people behind editors’ pseudonyms. Luckily, editors and most of tech team are volunteers, so the threats just show lack of knowledge of the attackers. No surprise there.
DIARY
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March 25-27, 2025
Munich, Germany
The ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law is a leading venue for cross-disciplinary scholarship at the intersection of computer science and law. Computer scientists have often interpreted law as though it can be reduced purely to a finite set of rules about which the only meaningful computational questions are those of decidability and complexity. Legislators and policy makers have often advocated general, imprecisely defined requirements and assumed that the tech industry could solve whatever problems arose in designing and implementing products and services to conform to those requirements. Central to the study of “computer science and law” is the replacement of these limited, disciplinary approaches with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research and development. Existing work on privacy, fairness, freedom of expression, and other essential social values demonstrates the importance of crossing disciplines and provides examples of both success and failure.
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April 18-21, 2025
Hamburg, Germany
Easterhegg is a friendly community event organized by the Chaos Computer Club where attendees can get to know each other and collaborate to brainstorm new ideas. It is the perfect opportunity to present your topic to an interested and colorful audience in an informal atmosphere or to plan entirely new projects together. Four days of workshops, talks and other events will revolve around the motto “Unhandled Eggception” – and CCC is looking forward to your creative, technical and extraordinary interpretations of it.
Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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April 23-24, 2025
Cambridge, UK (by invitation only) and (free) livestream
The 2025 Cambridge Disinformation Summit is designed to convene global thought leaders to discuss research regarding the efficacy of potential interventions to mitigate the harms from disinformation.
Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection
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May 21-23, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
CPDP is a non-profit platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond. As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference, CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic, and technological development in privacy and data protection, gathering academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends. This unique multidisciplinary formula has served to make CPDP one of the leading data protection and privacy conferences in Europe and around the world.
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May 29-30, 2025
Los Angeles, California, US
PLSC started in 2008 to bring privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world together to discuss current issues in information privacy law and policy. The conference is, first and foremost, a paper workshop. Authors, commentators, and participants all work together to discuss ideas contained in the drafts. PLSC is conducted under the Chatham House Rule.
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May 12-14, 2025
Strasbourg, France
EuroDIG is a platform for discussion and the exchange of ideas on emerging issues and challenges concerning the Internet. All stakeholders are invited to shape the agenda jointly and take part in the discussion. The inclusive and continuous dialogue, which culminates in an annual event, has taken place in a different European country every year since its inception in 2008. The resulting “Messages” are forwarded to policy makers and fed into the annual global UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF).
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May 26-28, 2025
Berlin, Germany
The motto for the 2025 festival for digital society is “Generation XYZ”. The program will once again bring the most important topics relating to the Internet and its communities, and the opportunities and challenges that lie in the digitalization of society to the stages.
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June 10-11, 2025
Mechclen, Belgium, and online
TICTeC 2025 will bring together people working on defensive technology against threats to democracy, and those who are using technologies constructively to enrich and strengthen the heartbeat of civic and democratic life. With a distinctive mix of tech practitioners, civil society leaders, and academic researchers, TICTeC isn’t just about showcasing cutting-edge pro-democracy tech innovations, at TICTeC you can learn about everything from combating corruption and misinformation to empowering communities and enhancing civic participation. It is a unique platform where attendees connect and collaborate.
June 11, 2025
Washington, DC, USA
Join the Future of Privacy Forum for the second annual DC Privacy Forum: Governance for Digital Leadership and Innovation. This event will be held live, in person-only.
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June 12-15, 2025 (TBC)
Athens, Greece
The eighth annual ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency will have a cross-disciplinary focus that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems.
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June 19-21, 2025
Boston, MA, USA
State of the Map US is the largest gathering of OpenStreetMap community members from across the country. In 2025 we will spotlight the successes and challenges of mobility mapping with the theme “Charting the Course”. The event will connect mappers, businesses, academics, government agencies, and nonprofits, who all collaborate around the free and editable map of the world.
Workshop on the Economics of Infosecurity
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June 24-25, 2025
Tokyo, Japan
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.
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Lillestrom, Norway
The IGF is a global multistakeholder platform that facilitates the discussion of public policy issues pertaining to the Internet. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the World Summit for the Information Society.
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July 8-11, 2025
Geneva, Switzerland
Organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland, the AI for Good Global Summit is the leading UN event on AI. It brings together top names in AI with a high-level lineup of global decision makers. Our goal is to identify practical applications of AI, accelerate progress towards the UN SDGs and scale solutions for global impact.
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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.
